Quite apart from rivalry, which it does not fear, for the new lines will open up new country and get their traffic from the new towns and villages and farming and lumber districts, the present resources of the C.P.R. are heavily overtaxed to meet the growing traffic of the Prairie Provinces, while the opening of the Panama Canal is certain to set in a tremendous flow of traffic towards the Pacific, as well as through the Lakes to the States and westward to the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic. People tell stories of the ubiquity and omniscience of the C.P.R.; of its grandmotherly benevolence to the farmers, and its liberal treatment of its _employés_. One shrewd settler at Regina told me that the C.P.R. has rather “spoiled” the farmers by doing too much for them. There is the matter of grain elevators, for instance. Grain is stored in these huge tin-plate structures until it can be removed by the freight trains. The farmers, said the critic, ought not to depend on a railway for the storing of their grain. They should combine to provide their own elevators. As it is, scores of millions of bushels have to remain in ear on the prairie waiting to be threshed until the elevators are empty, or the freight trains are available in the sidings. Prompt transit is necessary, or the best of the market may be missed. The C.P.R. has encouraged settlement on its concessions on the easiest terms to suitable men. Just now it is creating “ready-made farms,” with house, etc., all provided, for men with a little capital to enter into possession of at once. Then it has its hotels all along the line. At a pleasure resort in the Rockies a Canadian “drummer” said “the C.P.R. is running up a sixteen-storey two-million dollar hotel at Lake Louise.” It even regulates the time along the route. There is “C.P.R.” time, changing in the central part of Canada to the European-Continental twenty-four hour system. The story is told of a visitor who got tired of having C.P.R. “deepos,” elevators, hotels, and the rest pointed out to him, and when he asked what hour it was, and was told “22.18 C.P.R. time,” he answered, “Good heavens! Does the C.P.R. own the sun and the time, too?”