The maximum Canadian Northern grade eastward is seven-tenths of one per cent. The C.P.R. maximum is two per cent.--it was over three during thirty years of operation. Put another way, by the time you are twenty miles beyond Calgary on the C.P.R. you are as high as the highest summit of the C.N.R., and on the C.N.R., instead of having to rise a further 1,600 feet, and then to climb in a few miles, 1,900 feet more, there is only a negligible second rise to get over the watershed of the Canoe and the North Thompson rivers, whence the road to the Pacific is downhill. The contrast between the Canadian Northern and the more southerly American roads is even greater. The Union Pacific switchbacks to a maximum of 8,200 feet, and the Sante Fé to 7,421 feet. The difference made by the grades to operating costs can be judged by the difference in the load which an engine can pull up a four-tenths and a one per cent. grade. Up twenty-six feet to the mile--four-tenths--a 190-ton locomotive will haul 3,768 tons. Up sixty-feet per mile--one per cent.--she will drag only 1,780 tons. The disparity increases with the acclivity. The Canadian Northern, then, had the elements of a great permanent success, given enough tributary population creating traffic to earn expenses and fixed charges during the earlier operating years. That there was calamitous overbuilding of Canadian railways nobody will deny. To attempt to fix responsibility for it might invite a certain degree of political controversy which no lover of a quiet life desires. This is a strictly moral tale, and a few facts will point out their own moral. In 1904, when a general election solidified the Grand Trunk Pacific legislation, the Canadian Northern had already in existence 2,500 miles beyond Port Arthur, all aiding the Western development which was absolutely vital to Canada’s future. This railway was altogether a native growth, the executive force in which had been concerned with Western railway construction since before the first locomotive entered Winnipeg. There was no imposition from without--no grandiose scheme intended to dazzle an electorate, or fill a Parliament with swelling pride. The Canadian Northern grew in Time’s own fruitful womb; and struck its roots deep and wide all over the Western land. From the point of view of the prairie provinces’ development, the nicer problem of the wisdom of hastening the Superior and Mountain sections may be put aside momentarily by this question: “What would be the relative positions of the two junior railways if their revenues depended solely on traffic originating between the Great Lakes and the Great Mountains?” In different terms, the question is: “How do the old Canadian Northern and the old Grand Trunk Pacific compare, twenty years after the Grand Trunk Pacific was launched, as servants of the country, which is the only reason for their existence?”