y now most needed.

The first task was to find the money necessary to build the nineteen
hundred miles remaining of the main line, to build or acquire necessary
branches and extensions, and to provide equipment.

The government subsidies were the first {153} resource. The
$25,000,000 cash and the 25,000,000-acre land-grant were to be paid as
construction advanced. If the land-grant were put on the market at
once, for sale to settlers, it would bring relatively little, in face
of the competition of the free homestead land in adjoining sections.
Three expedients were devised to make it available as soon as possible.
An extensive campaign was begun to advertise the government free land
and thus exhaust the supply along the railway line, and at the same
time provide producers of freight. Bonds based on the security of the
land-grant were issued to the amount of $25,000,000; $10,000,000 of
this issue was sold in 1881 at 92, and varying proportions of the
remainder were used as pledge for the government loans or execution of
the contract. These bonds were redeemed and cancelled as the lands on
which they were based were sold. Further, the Canada North-West Land
Company was organized to buy five million acres for a long hold. The
company included several members of the syndicate as well as some
English investors to whom land appealed more than railway stocks. It
found itself unable to handle this amount and the purchase was reduced
to 2,200,000 acres. Sales to other companies {154} and to individuals
brought the total amount received or due from land by the end of 1885
up to $11,000,000.

Next came the contributions of the members of the syndicate and other
private investors. The capital stock authorized was $100,000,000. In
1881 the members of the syndicate subscribed $5,000,000 at par. In May
1882 they allotted themselves $10,000,000 at 25. In December of the
same year $30,000,000 was issued at 52 1/2 to a syndicate of New York
bankers organized by W. L. Scott; this stock was eventually sold
largely in Holland and in England. A final ten millions were pledged
in New York and Montreal for a loan of half that sum, and later sold
for about the amount of the loan. All told, sixty-five millions of
stock had been issued and some thirty-one million dollars had been
brought into the treasury.

Then the flow ceased. The brief gleam of prosperity which had shone
over North America after the gloom of the later seve