The Story of a Dark Plot; Or, Tyranny on the FrontierA.L.O.C.
History
The Story of a Dark Plot; Or, Tyranny on the Frontier
A.L.O.C.
Smith, William W.; Temperance
"SIR,--In your issue of October 9th, a statement occurs which
suggests the necessity of a word of caution. The following is the
sentence: 'Some astonishing revelations may be expected, as the
temperance people are intensely indignant that the Company should
have yielded to the demands of the liquor party, and removed from
its service one who has been for years a trusted servant and
faithful officer.' From a personal acquaintance with several
gentlemen who control the appointment of officials of this and
similar grades of office in connection with the Canadian Pacific
Railway, I wait an explanation of this act of executive power
which will present it in an altogether different light from that
in which it now appears. I cannot believe that officers of any
Company, transacting business with, and dependent upon, the
public, as the Canadian Pacific Railway is, would descend to an
act as described in the case in hand. What the explanation will
be, I will not conjecture, but I can easily conceive it is
susceptible of an explanation which will remove all cause of
censure from the Company. In more than one instance, I have known
the officials of this Company to firmly support an employee in
the maintenance of moral principle, even at a financial loss to
the Company. But, apart from all loyalty to right principle, on
the part of the officiary of the Company, it is to me simply
inconceivable that shrewd business men as these officials are
known to be would be guilty of an act which from a purely
business point of view would be a stupidly suicidal one. It taxes
one's credulity to too great a degree to ask one to believe that,
in view of the recent plebiscite taken in several Provinces, that
any officer, possessed of mental qualifications sufficient to
secure a position of power in the Company, would ally himself
with a coterie of lawbreakers in a secluded village, and
perpetrate an act which would be resented by thousands of
business men and tens of thousands of the travelling public in
our Dominion, and attach a stain to the name of the Company which
would challenge contempt for years future. The facilities
afforded by other competing lines at so many points in our
Dominion for such as would resent an act of this character are
too great to permit a Company that is hungering for freight and
passenger traffic to yield to such inconsiderable and immoral
influences as the liquor men of Sutton Junction and their
sympathizers could command. The Company knows well how slight a
matter often creates a prejudice for or against a railway which
affects its dividends for years, and they know well also that
when an act of this kind is actually done and unearthed, that it
appeals to principles held as sacred by the public of our
Dominion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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