The trail of the swinging lanterns : $b a racy, railroading review of transportation matters, methods and menCopeland, John Morison
History
The trail of the swinging lanterns : $b a racy, railroading review of transportation matters, methods and men
Copeland, John Morison
Railroads -- Canada
From the pinnacle position in the steeple, ably filled by a shrewd,
democratic nobleman, down the scale through a labyrinth of departments
to the youngster affixing postage and dreaming of the Vice-Presidency,
every official and employee in that busy headquarters of the greatest
transportation corporation within the world’s ken, plays his part in
the drama “making hay while the sun shines.” Feeling that they are an
integral part of a gigantic organization, they play tick, tack, toe
with $153,000,000 in rolling stock and participate with sincerity in
the annual round-up of 30,000,000 tons of freight that require 95,000
cars of divers shapes to transport, in addition to moving 16,000,000
passengers for $30,000,000 necessitating a string of equipment that
would reach forty miles from Toronto to Hamilton. 2255 locomotives
pull this traffic. When all hands and the cooks on the dining cars
are intensely occupied in harvesting the golden honey, then is the
management in clover.
Concealed in the brains of this directorate of specialists, or tableted
in the company’s archives and records, repose secrets pertaining
to matters, methods and men, of crowned heads, governments and
undercurrents of commerce, finance and future intention which, if given
publicity, would make the listener gasp in wonderment and likewise aid
him to roll in riches.
Apart from an extensive, intermediate network, (totaling 15,000
miles) her unbroken chains of trains span an additional 3,600 miles
of continent from the cod banks of the Atlantic to the salmon
spawning beds along the Pacific Ocean, dovetailing there with some
of the splendid units of a fleet of a hundred vessels valued to-day
at $65,000,000, which circumvent the seven seas carrying “Canadian
Pacific” prestige, influence, secret service and international
communications between all races and temperatures. There are no fields
of production in any clime on the planet known to civilized man that
this dynamo of energy, trade and travel has not investigated and if,
through development or encouragement, a modicum of reciprocal traffic
is extracted or the sweets of industrial success can be promised, rest
assured that exploring bees will return to the hive with documentary
proof or Marconigrams, cable and mails will herald most recent results.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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