notes.

In the early years, thanks to general prosperity and to the strategic
location and careful management of the system, ends always met, and a
little over, and funds were always forthcoming for fresh expansion.
But early in 1914 a crisis arrived in the company's affairs. The
mountain section particularly, what with the higher cost of labour and
the unexpected engineering difficulties, was calling for tens of
millions more; the stringency in the world's money markets, following
the Balkan Wars, made investors chary of even gilt-edged offerings.
There were many {194} millions of subsidies and guarantees still to
come from the state, but they would come only as the road was
completed, and meantime construction had to be financed. The
partner-owners could not provide the ready cash needed for completing
the gigantic task. The bondholders had no inducement to do so unless
further guaranteed by the state. The western provinces were at last
becoming frightened of the load they had already assumed. There was
only one resource, the Dominion government. True, it had only in 1913
made a gift of $15,000,000 on solemn assurances that not a cent more
would be needed. But, it was urged, the emergency was real. The road
could not be left hanging half finished, after all the millions already
spent. Canada's credit must be protected, and so the government, after
a lively struggle, put through a positively last guarantee of
forty-five millions. In return it was given forty out of the hundred
millions stock to which the capital was reduced, and took the right to
appoint one government director. Whether this step meant that the
government was now going to share the control and the profits of the
company, or whether it meant that it was henceforth to be saddled with
the {195} responsibility for any deficits, was a point much in dispute.
Later, the outbreak of war in Europe delayed, but did not altogether
halt, the floating of the loan and the completion of the remaining
links.

Meanwhile, the many subsidiary enterprises, which the example of the
Canadian Pacific has caused us to think appropriate to the
transcontinental railway, had been undertaken by its youngest rival.
Fast steamers between Montreal and Bristol, grain elevators, hotels,
express and telegraph companies, all brought grist to the mill. Hardly
to be distinguished were the allied interests of the
partner-owners--iron-mines in the Lake Superior district, coal