Bay
route to Europe would cut rates to England from the Orient by half, and
from the wheat plains by the difference between one thousand two
hundred miles and four hundred, and two thousand four hundred miles and
eight hundred. But land rates are not water rates. From Alberta to
the Great Lakes is roughly one thousand two hundred miles. From the
Great Lakes to tidewater is roughly another one thousand two hundred
miles--either by way of Chicago-Buffalo, or Lake Superior-Montreal.
For the one thousand two hundred miles from Alberta to the Great Lakes,
grain shippers at time of writing pay a rate of twenty-two to
twenty-five cents a bushel. For the one thousand two hundred miles
from the head of the Lakes to Buffalo, the rate is three cents, from
the head of the Lakes to Montreal five to six cents. In other words,
the rate by land is just five to eight times higher than the rate by
water.

To the argument--shorter distances by half by the northern route--is
added the argument cheaper rates as eight to one.

That is why for twenty years Canada has gone sheer mad over a Hudson
Bay route to Europe. For obvious reasons the ports in Eastern Canada
have fought the idea and ridiculed the whole project as "an iron tonic
from rusting rails" for the cows. That has not stopped the West.
Grading is under way for the railroad to Hudson Bay from the grain
plains. The Canadian government is the backer and the builder.
Construction engines, dredges, steamers now whistle over the silences
of the northern inland sea; and Port Nelson, which for three centuries
has been the great fur entrepot of the wintry wastes, now echoes to
pick and hammer and blowing locomotive intent on the construction of
what is known as the Hudson Bay Railroad. Should the war last for
years as wars of old, and Port Nelson become a great grain port as for
three centuries it has been the greatest fur port of the world, the
navies of Europe may yet thunder at one another along Hudson Bay's
shallow shores, as French and English fought there all through the
seventeenth century.

III

The Hudson Bay railroad hung in mid-air for almost a quarter century.
It was regarded by the East as one of the West's mad impossible "boom"
projects. Hadn't Canada, a country of seven million population, a
railroad system of 29,000 miles? Hadn't the Dominion spent
$138,000,000 on canals heading traffic to the St. Lawrence? Why divert
half that traffic north to Hudson Ba