"2. The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, with a main line extending from Portland, Me., to Detroit, Mich., a distance of 861 miles; another from Niagara Falls to Windsor, Ontario, 229 miles, branches and extensions sufficient to give it a total length of 2,924.5 miles. The road was opened from Portland to Montreal, mostly through American Territory it will be observed, in 1853; from Montreal to Quebec in 1854, from Montreal to Toronto in 1856; and from Montreal to Port Sarnia and Port Huron, on the St. Clair River, in 1858. It acquired by purchase and construction a line now known as the Chicago and Grand Trunk, extending from Port Huron to Chicago in 1879, and the whole line was opened for through business in 1880. A part of this system, known as the Great Western Railway, was completed in 1854, but was not consolidated with the Grand Trunk till 1882.
"This system first began to do a transit business in imported merchandise, in a small way, from Toronto to Collingwood on Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, in 1854; but it never became a great competitor of the American Trunk lines till 1880, nor became a great disturber of rates till 1882.
"It was built for political and military as well as for commercial purposes, has received frequent subsidies from the Canadian Governments, and has always had more or less of their fostering care. Ever since its through lines were opened, it has enjoyed the privilege of unrestricted competition with the American roads between the West and all points in the Atlantic States that it could reach. It has enjoyed all the privileges of an American railroad; it has been active, aggressive, and unscrupulous, and has inflicted great injury upon its competitors.
"3. The Canadian Pacific Railway extends from Montreal to Port Moody and Vancouver, on the Pacific Ocean, a distance of 2,905.3 miles. At Montreal it connects with the Intercolonial Railway, running from that place to Halifax, Nova Scotia, 678 miles. The latter road and its branches are owned and operated by the Government of Canada. The total distance from Halifax to Vancouver is therefore 3,583 miles; and the total length of main line and branches of the two systems is 5,522 miles. Their aggregate cost and capitalization are $206,942,852, besides a subsidy of 25,000,000 acres of public lands, all of which, both money and land, has come directly or indirectly from the Dominion of Canada, which guarantees the interest on the funded debt, and also dividends upon the capital stock till August, 1893. Notwithstanding the princely subsidies which this corporation has received, the length of line which it has constructed, the monopoly which it has secured, and the high political mission it has filled in binding together the widely separated provinces of the Dominion, its managers are not yet satisfied. Spurning all restraint, it has finally overleaped the boundary line and boldly invaded the territory of the United States. With true English effrontery it ignores the authority of Congress, and under the thin disguise of a charter procured by trickery and deception, if not by fraud, from the Legislature of Maine, it is now building a cut off through the northern part of that State to St. Andrews, New Brunswick, with all the rapidity that the unlimited control of men and money can command.
"Just what the volume and value of the transit traffic is, it is impossible for me to state, but the statistics are doubtless in the possession of the Bureau of Statistics, or can be more readily obtained by it than by any private individual, and I venture to suggest that, whatever other action may be taken by your committee in respect to this important matter, it should not fail to call for the statistics in question. Some idea may be had of its enormous volume from the statement made by the Chicago Board of Trade that the Grand Trunk alone 'received from its rail connections at the Detroit River, and at its lake ports on Lake Huron and Georgian Bay, during the year 1888, 1,629,283 tons of United States products,' which it transported eastbound through the Dominion of Canada in bond and reëntered the United States free of duty. This, as near as I can make out, was something like 15 per cent. of the entire volume of east-bound business from that region. The entire business by the various Canadian routes east and west bound cannot be less than 5,000,000 tons dead weight, and has been estimated by an expert at 7,000,000.
"It is well known that the Grand Trunk Railway, by means of its Chicago and Michigan connections and branch lines, and by those which connect it with Portland, Me., under the privilege allowed it by the laws and Treasury regulations heretofore cited, is the great beneficiary of the transit trade. It has been shown that the Canadian Pacific, under the same laws and regulations, has been free almost from the day it was opened, by means of the bonded Pacific Coast Steamship Company, and by its connections with the roads running north and east from St. Paul to the Canadian border, and by its connections at Niagara Falls, Kingston, St. Albans, and Montreal, to carry any business it can secure between San Francisco on the west, to New York and Boston on the east.
"It should be remembered that these roads constitute more than one-half of the entire railroad mileage of the British possessions in North America, that one of them was built for military and political purposes by the Government of the Dominion and under the special encouragement and sanction of the British Government, for the purpose of carrying out its scheme for federating its North American colonies; that both of them have been heavily subsidized by the Dominion Government for purposes antagonistic, if not absolutely hostile, to our national interests, and that they are not only absolutely free from any control by us, or from the Dominion Government to make whatever local or through rates they please, but, as matter of fact, are frequently engaged in cutting the rates of the American trunk lines, paying rebates, granting passes, charging more for a short haul than for a long one, and entering into all kinds of private arrangements with their American connections and their American shippers, to the prejudice and injury of the American Trunk lines, whose hands are bound in respect to all those and many other matters by the Inter-State Commerce Act.
"It is also the fact that, while the Canadian railways are enjoying these extraordinary privileges, unheard of in any other country, the Dominion Government has protected its Pacific line by a practical monopoly of all the business on or tributary to it, and positively refuses to allow American railways to take wheat out of Manitoba, haul it through the United States, and redeliver it in Canada free of duty; and this is a fact which cannot be successfully denied. Not only is it true, but it is also true that the Dominion Government has refused, and still refuses, to permit the people of Manitoba to build an independent railway to connect with the American system of railroads, and this refusal is made for the avowed purpose of continuing and protecting the monopoly which the Canadian Pacific Railway has of the business of that region. The unjust and oppressive conduct of the Dominion Government, controlled as it is by the Canadian Pacific Ring, is matter of public notoriety, and has been the subject of earnest and repeated remonstrances at Ottawa on the part of the people of Manitoba within the last thirty days, but so far without effect.
"But this is not all. While they or their connections at Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, New York, St. Albans, Boston, Portland, and San Francisco are compelled by the Inter-State Commerce Act to make their through rates to all American points public, the roads lying wholly in Canada, forming parts of their through lines, existing wholly under Canadian law, and managed by officers and directors entirely beyond our jurisdiction, are under no restrictions whatever as to rebates, drawbacks, passes, constructive mileage, car mileage allowances, or any other of the numberless devices by which one line gains advantage over another, or by which a long through line gives advantage to a short connection.
"The trouble with Canada and the Canadian Railroads is that we have become accustomed to treat them as though they were not foreign and did not belong to a foreign empire. They expect to have all the benefits of unrestricted trade without any of the limitations and burdens which are imposed so freely upon our own railroads and citizens.