The memorial service read in the American Presbyterian church to which previous allusion has been made, was one of the most impressive ever held within the borders of Canada and the tributes to Mr. Hays on that occasion attested how high was the position which he held in the regard of business colleagues, of eminent educators, ministers and others. Principal Peterson of McGill University said in part: “We have done well to come together in this solemn manner, not to meet in a useless parade of grief and sorrow, but to pay a sincere tribute to the worth of one who has gone to his last reward and to express our sympathy to those who suffer the loss of one so dear, and who have scarcely yet survived the shock of their sudden bereavement. Our men died like heroes—in that last dread extremity they bore themselves nobly and well.
“And I doubt not that foremost in fortitude was that great-hearted man who today is mourned throughout the world, Charles M. Hays, who was then eagerly returning to take his controlling part in those great enterprises with which his name will always be associated, and no doubt looking forward with joy to returning to his accustomed work and surroundings here. The vast transportation system over which he so well presided, and to which he gave fresh life, has just paid him well earned tribute in those moments of organized, concerted, silence stretching across this continent—the awed hush of reverent respect and tender sympathy from every section of the railway service and from every rank and class in the community at large. It was a moving incident, but only a slight indication of the esteem in which he was held everywhere, and of the loss which the railways and the people have sustained.
“Mr. Hays came to Montreal in 1896, shortly after I came here, and since then it has been my privilege to know him well, and to meet him frequently in university and other affairs. Only a short time before Mr. Hays left for Europe I had a walk with him, when he talked to me of his plans for the future, and discussed university and other educational matters, with the grave and serious hope for future advancement which marked his thought. Little then did either of us think it possible that so terrible a disaster should cut short his vigorous and useful career. He was a real leader of men, a true captain of industry, carrying a huge burden of work and responsibility on his shoulders, and always carrying it as a strong Christian man should. We shall go forth from this solemn service to our customary duties, graver and sadder men. It may be that we shall not have the melancholy duty of following to the grave the remains of this man whose work interlinked a vast continent. He has found his grave in the ocean, and it may be literally said of him that the whole world is his tomb. Certainly his memory will not soon die; for long will the memory live of this impressive memorial of his sad fate and the sorrow of his stricken family. And when the far-reaching plans for which he stood sponsor are realized we shall often go back in thought to what this city, this dominion and the empire at large owes to the ability, the integrity and dauntless energy of Charles Melville Hays.”
One of the glowing and well deserved tributes paid to the memory of Charles Melville Hays was spoken by Rev. T. S. McWilliams. D. D., of Cleveland, Ohio, who said: “The man whose loss we mourn today, and whose memory we would honor was not merely a national, he was an international figure. The great enterprise of which he was at the head, and, to an unusual degree the guiding and animating spirit, was not merely a national, but an international railway. It seems fitting therefore that one from the United States should have a small part in this memorial service. The humble tribute which I bring is not merely that of a former pastor—as such I was privileged to say a few words on Sunday last. Nor is my tribute that of a personal friend—as such my place would not be here in the pulpit, but in position with the mourners, amongst those who most deeply and genuinely feel a sense of personal loss. Mine is the privilege today of bringing a neighboring nation’s tribute, if you will; of assuring you that many of the American people share with you the sorrow and sense of loss which you feel so keenly. In the United States the late Charles M. Hays was born, and there he spent the larger part of his life. Of our country he remained a citizen to the last. Yet there were few men more genuinely devoted to the interests of Canada or more intelligently attached to British institutions than he. Few, if any, in Canada saw with clearer vision the great possibilities of the future of your country and believed more intensely in the great destinies of Canada.
“To speak of Mr. Hays’ preeminent ability as a railway man is scarcely necessary. We have only to look around to see the monuments to his genius. There are two immense office buildings that ornament your city; there is that wonderful steel bridge over Niagara’s gorge and the great station at Ottawa. There is the rejuvenated and vastly extended Grand Trunk Railway. And, perhaps greatest of all, there is the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, destined at no distant date to span this continent, making accessible natural resources of incalculable value, and bringing into practical part of the national progress vast regions at present inaccessible to the agriculturist. These are great enterprises which have attracted the admiring attention of the world and stimulated rival systems to greater activity, while bringing millions in money to your land, and, what means much more to you, an unprecedented tide of immigration. It is but just to say that such enterprises as these have been no small factor in the building up of that great progress and prosperity which characterizes Canada at the present time.
“The credit of such achievements is, of course, to be shared with Mr. Hays’ earnest colaborers—and he would have been the first to give them such credit—but to Mr. Hays is certainly due the credit of the initiative. For a man at the early age of thirty-eight years to rise from the bottom of the ladder to the presidency of such a railway system as the Wabash, and later to be selected as president of the Grand Trunk, charged with its rehabilitation, and to so conduct its affairs that after only five years its securities had enhanced in value by eighty-six millions of dollars; to be called to the presidency of the Southern Pacific, and then called back again to the Grand Trunk to consummate yet vaster plans—these are proofs positive and sufficient of his preeminent railway genius. The tribute of silence in which we a few minutes ago reverently joined—a silence in which we were joined by that great army of employes from ocean to ocean—was not the silence of obedience to an enforced order. It was the genuine heart-felt tribute of men of all ranks to a leader whom they had loved and lost.
“The contagion of his example spread through every part of that great system. Himself a hard and rapid worker his own example was a sufficient incentive to do away with indolence and incompetence. His presence anywhere on the system encouraged and thrilled to better work not by fear of the tyrant’s command to go, but they thrilled at the leader’s call to come.
“Mr. Hays was first, last and all the time a great railway man. But it would be unjust to speak merely of that. He possessed other qualities that impressed me even more than that. He was throughout his life a man of lofty and unbending principle. I personally know that his early ending of his connection with a great railway system, sacrificing a position to which was attached great honor and an immense salary, and his going out of that office, not knowing whither he went, was a wonderful example of the triumph of principle over what appeared to be personal interests. It stands as a proof of Mr. Hays’ unwillingness to be the tool of a designing genius no matter what that might seem to offer him in the way of personal remuneration. And in the great positions he held it was his constant endeavor to be just to all. It was his endeavor by day and his prayer by night to always carry an even balance between the employes of his company and those who had invested their living in it with even justice to both. Knowledge of this permeated the whole system, and brought a realization amongst the men that the main endeavor of the leader was not to get out of the employes as much as possible and give them in return as little as possible, but that they were really working with, not for, their president, in the interests of all.
“And he was a public-spirited man in many other spheres. That he was a generous friend of education is proven in that he was a governor of McGill University; that he was a benefactor to suffering humanity is shown by the hospitals of which he was a governor. But far more than these public positions were innumerable cases in which he proved himself a generous but unostentatious friend to the needy. And may I for a moment draw aside the sacred veil, and speak of his home life. As a father, husband, brother, comrade, to all in his household he was ever the genial, pure, high-minded Christian gentleman—the idol of his home, as he deserved to be. His religious influence was unmistakable and caused him inevitably to work for the right. I am confident that his deep religious sense of duty was at the bottom of much that we admire in his career—he was utterly honest, not because he believed it to be the best business policy, but because he had faith in the right; he was filled with genial optimism, not from blindness to the facts, but because he knew them.
“That such lives should be allowed to be interrupted by such disasters as that we now mourn is a problem which cannot be satisfactorily answered. It may be said that no man’s place is impossible to be filled. But Methodism has never found another John Wesley, and the Grand Trunk will look and wait for long before it finds another Charles Melville Hays.”