The final reliance for Canadian railway expansion was of course, the comparatively small British investor. But, with so many opportunities to place money all over the world, this multitudinous host could not be depended on to produce, at a day or two’s notice all the money that was required to build a thousand miles of track from Pembroke to Port Arthur. Rushes to gold and silver camps have no counterpart in railway building spread over many years. To windward of the small investor, there must, therefore, be anchorages in the deeps of underwriting. The railway requires, say, fifteen million dollars for a certain range of construction. Experience has shown that the wide advertising of an issue in the British money market usually brings at once subscriptions of from thirty to forty per cent. of the money required. Great financial houses must be found to guarantee purchase of the whole issue; they, in turn, retailing the securities as the demand for them continues. The retired colonel, who takes five hundred pounds’ worth of Government-guaranteed debenture stock on to-day’s advertising, will be ready for more at midsummer, when he gets what he wants from his broker--and that is how issues are absorbed, when they are not all snapped up as soon as they are offered. [Illustration: A. J. MITCHELL “Vice-president in charge of finance ... retired with the president” (P. 170)] [Illustration: R. M. HORNE-PAYNE “A man of extraordinary mentality and financial genius” (P. 243)] The financial representative of the swiftly-growing Canadian Northern required, then, three outstanding qualifications--first, great and sincere faith in Canada’s immediate future; secondly, capacity to impart his confidence to important underwriters; and thirdly, a sound judgment of the temper and capabilities of the investing class whose response is the primary justification of the underwriters’ confidence. Mr. Horne-Payne, in a degree that can only be appreciated by those who have worked with him, has these qualifications--the proof of which was the British investment of over three hundred million dollars in the Canadian Northern, during his representation of it. One illustration only of his faculty can be given. A friend saw him at his house in Brentwood, Essex, early one autumn. “I have just come in after motoring from Buxton, where I have had a short holiday,” said Horne-Payne. “We passed through Leamington. I think I can get about three hundred and fifty thousand pounds out of the town next winter.” The records show how accurate his forecast was.