, as the map shows, branches from the main Great
Northern line nosed up to the border at nearly a dozen other places.

The activities, real and projected, of the {231} Great Northern in
Canada brought up acutely the question of the interrelations of
Canadian and American roads. To some these activities appeared
evidences of an infamous plot to drain Canadian traffic southward to
United States ports and roads: to others they seemed to be
philanthropic endeavours to rescue Western Canada from the clutches of
monopoly. They were not, however, due to either political intrigue or
knight-errantry, but to the same desire for profit which had led the
Canadian Pacific to build up its great system in the western states.
Other things being at all equal, it was of course desirable that
Canadian traffic should follow Canadian territory to Canadian ports; it
was to this end that uncounted millions had been spent. Yet patriotism
had a seamy reverse side of political buncombe. Every hint of outside
competition in the preserves of railway or industrial corporations in
Canada was denounced in interested quarters as dangerous and
empire-smashing, while the counter-incursions into the territory of the
United States were ignored or regarded as merely normal business
enterprise.

[Illustration: Great Northern Railway, 1914]

As a matter of fact, in 1914 Canadian railways controlled four miles in
the United {232} States for every mile in Canada controlled by railways
of the United States. The Canadian Pacific alone owned or leased over
five thousand miles in the United States, chiefly in the northwest,
while it had close working agreements with the Wabash and the New York,
New Haven and Hartford. The Grand Trunk controlled over seventeen
hundred miles, two-thirds in the Michigan peninsula and the remainder
in New England, while the Canadian Northern ran for some forty miles
through the United States, south of the Lake of the Woods. The
American interests in Canada were more scattered, but the Great
Northern, the Michigan Central, the Pere Marquette, and the New York
Central all developed important Canadian extensions.

In short, the interrelations were certainly no more extensive than
would have been expected in the case of two friendly nations lying side
by side for three thousand miles, connected by ties of speech and by
common commercial and social customs. The only difficulty which arose
out of the situation was the division o