For two generations, as statisticians reckon time, and for five generations as politicians take the count, the first Government-owned, Government-operated railway in Canada was regarded, in the territory it traversed, more as a rich and benevolent relative than as a servant who gave service only for money received. One feature of the “rich relative” notion of public-owned railways should be mentioned tenderly. It was a legacy from the days when barter was most common as a form of disposing of farm products, and eggs and butter were traded at the general store at values that were amazingly low, for groceries and dry goods, the costs of which were extraordinarily high. Real money was scarce indeed, everywhere, and a job that brought pay in cash was a rare and coveted beneficence. The best job of all was a post with the Government. All over the country there was severe competition for country postmasterships, the revenue from which would nowadays buy but small quantities of gasoline. Wherever the Government railway ran, a job as a section hand became a lawful prize of electioneering war. It is useless to mourn bitterly over these conditions which are an inheritance not only from the economic construction of Canada, but also from the Government departments of the Old Lands--Britain as well as France. Men bought civil appointments as they bought the right to appoint their own friends to the livings that rewarded the cure of souls. When I was an office boy in Glasgow the system of purchase in the British army was still operating. It cost twenty-two hundred dollars to get a cadetship and sixty-three hundred dollars to become a lieutenant-colonel. Every intermediate step in promotion was paid for commensurately with the rank acquired. The abolition of purchase in the British army was only achieved after long and bitter opposition. In the younger days of those of us who are still on the humorous side of seventy, the idea that there must be perquisites attached to all sorts of offices was apparently as invincible as the Rock of Gibraltar. The cook had the fat, the fur and the feathers from everything that came into the squire’s kitchen. The official of the College of Heralds and the royal clerk who records the outpourings of the fountain of honour receive their fees. The notion that it isn’t necessary to work very hard at a Government job wasn’t born on this continent. It was expressed in the sinecure that was waiting for a British Prime Minister’s son, and in the ease with which the clerk in Whitehall could begin his work a little after ten, and lay down his quill a little before four.