Part 27

As Chairman of the Commission he never made a statement that was good for a headline, or coined an epigram, or lost his temper, or spluttered into print. But on a certain occasion, before retiring from the Commission, Sir Henry put on record a number of things that the people of this country read with acute and sustained interest. This was the report of the Smith-Drayton-Acworth Commission for the purpose of finding out whether the Canadian Northern and the Grand Trunk Pacific could ever manage to pay their own debts, including interest on multi-millions borrowed from abroad, or whether, debts and all, they should be handed over to the people of Canada?

During the war this nation had many commissions. Their very names are mostly forgotten. Most of them committed themselves to nothing. This commission to investigate railroad bankruptcy was fated to be very different. Much of the difference was in Sir Henry Drayton who, had he been asked the question, might have saved the country the cost of the Commission.

But of course he was prejudiced, and against the roads. He knew those roads. The minority report of the chief of the New York Central made no difference to the grim bulldog judgment of the Chief Railway Commissioner--that the two secondary systems of Canadian railways were alike and for much the same causes constitutionally bankrupt, and should therefore be given the nationalizing cure.

What more disagreeable qualification could a man have for being made Minister of Finance? The air holes that White had skated around, Drayton proposed to go right over and to take the people with him. What the common stock of these roads might be worth was for Sir Thomas to find out. By the time Sir Henry went to the national ledger that matter was all adjusted and the thing left was to raise the money.

There's a divinity that shapes our ends even when they do not meet. The little Houdini of calculations was at last into a predicament where it seemed that he never could figure himself out. One fancies him gazing intently over the Finance Department of whose precise technique he knew nothing as yet, and saying to himself:

"Well, White did a wonderful turn. I don't believe the audience will like mine half as well--at first. No audiences ever do. I'm bound to be more or less unpopular because I don't know how to act a bit like Tetrazzini."

The great organized orgy was over, when the dollars followed the drum and the drum thumped at every crossroad; when a Victory Bond in every top commode drawer was more necessary than a bottle in every cellar. The whole nation, four times tagged for Victory, was once more tagged for reconstruction. Done with credits to England for purchase of war material in Canada, we were invited to extend credits to war-swept nations in Europe who would be sure to want things made in Canada to help put them on President Wilson's new map of self-determination. Even profiteers now admitted everything to be abnormal. The whole country was like a milkfed pumpkin at the fair. War wages inclined every man to become a profiteer. The land was teeming with war money and denuded of necessary goods. People who used to be content with good wages, a plain rented home and a bottle of beer, went out after short hours, high wages, French heels, $300 coats and motor-cars. It was part of the emancipation of people for which soldiers had not died.

"Er--if you need me, telephone, old chap," one fancies Sir Thomas saying as he carried Sir Henry's luggage to his room. "But I'm sure you are the man for the job. I really have to go back to private finance. However, the super-tariff on imports of luxuries is one thing with which you will feel at home, I am sure. Quite suited to your temperament, Sir Henry."

In one of Scott's novels a gentleman named Front de Boeuf pulls out a Jew's tooth every time he wants more money. Both our national dentists knew that a super-tariff on anything is the very thing that makes a large number of well-to-do people want it. People bought luxuries in this country and growled at the high cost of necessities. Most folk feel rather proud of a big price for a coat or a gown or a Chesterfield, if they can get even by skimping on the price of butter and potatoes. Low-value money and visions of Utopia had played far worse havoc with the people than legalized liquor had ever done. And one of the worst features of the situation was that the bulk of our luxury buying was done in the country which had the only remaining standard of value on the exchanges. Canada had convenient access to the country which alone had a surplus of factory goods. Our tremendous buying average in the American market was even used as propaganda in the interest of keeping the peace with Britain.

Hence the devil of exchange and Drayton's dilemma. The things Drayton said to this country even before he presented his first budget were as comfortable as what the doctor prescribes when you are overfed. On went the unpopular luxury tax and sales tax. The general principle was that the more people bought, the more they got out of living, and the more they should pay for the privilege. It was not merely a tax on improvements, but an impost on being alive. Accustomed as we had been to war taxes which never came off, this was a sanctioned way of "passing the buck" such as we had never known. The advantage is that when we pay 14 cents for a box of matches that used to cost five cents, we can read "5 cents War Excise Tax Paid" on the wrapper.

Sir Henry Drayton had no superb suavity with which to beguile those who made complaints. He heard the howlings of all the babies in the national dormitory and went ahead. He did not impress us as a financier, but as a plain doctor of homely common sense. He said in public many things which threw much instructive light upon our buying and selling. He spoke some blunt but kindly truths even in the United States at whose supremacy in our markets his policy was aimed.

"The men who save the world," says The Onlooker, "are those who work by rule of thumb; who do the day's work by the day's light and advance on chaos and the painful dark by inches; in other words, the practical men."

Such a motto might be Drayton's crest. He is very practical; too much so to be an interesting personality to the average man. But by his dull and diligent practicality he has done rather more than his bit in helping to re-establish Canada. He would, if he could, cut our imports from the United States in half in order to rectify exchange. Whenever he dies the Canadian $ par on exchange will be found graven upon his heart.

Drayton's tariff tour was one of the most characteristic things he ever did. In this, however, there may have been an element of politics. A travelling tariff commission taking evidence in almost every village with a smokestack from coast to coast must have had some real object. But Sir Henry had cleaned up most of the possibilities in direct taxation; it was time he tackled the tariff, even though he knew it was largely a show to satisfy the people that the most patient investigator in the world at the head of a small court had taken evidence on what every Tom and Dick had to say for and against in any part of the country outside of the Yukon. Had it been practicable to hold a session on Great Bear Lake, to determine the trade relations between the copper-kniving Eskimos and the meat-swapping Yellow Knife Indians, Sir Henry would have done it.

Such vast patience is phenomenal even in Drayton. One almost fears that he is becoming interested in a Federal election. If so, the end is in sight. The day we partyize Sir Henry we shall lose one of the oddest and rarest personal identities we ever had. But we can better afford to lose his personal identity in his party service than to lose both in putting into the Finance Department in 1922 some idealistic experimenter in the efficacy of Free Trade.

THE PERSONAL EQUATION IN RAILROADING

EDWARD WENTWORTH BEATTY, K.C.

The main thing that E. W. Beatty, K.C., did to help win the war was to become President of the C.P.R. And he did it well. A glance at this polished pony engine of a chief executive suggests that he has never done anything but well, and that he is the kind of man likely without preachments to stimulate well-doing in other people.

I first met this self-controlled master of executives not long after he became President. He was most cordial; as Shaughnessy had been austere. Under such a direct impression it seemed that I had at last found a man who would make the inexorable old C.P.R. become a golden door to humanity. Of course I was mistaken. That kind of man is born often enough, but he seldom stays with his birthright. I knew that the railway of railways was no school for the humanities; but this university graduate, Chancellor of Queen's, distinguished counsel and potential eminent judge, bachelor, Canadian born, every inch an athlete and as rugged as Carpentier, seemed to my aroused imagination one who would be as much bigger than the stodgy C.P.R. as that system was greater than others of its kind.

Beatty has not been at his new job long enough yet to prove what I suspect--that I was wrong. But he has been long enough with it to know that the surging ideals and aspirations of a young, healthy man in his own office are pretty rudely shaken down by the practical operation of a great system in a time of financial difficulty.

We talked for nearly an hour. He seemed to have the time and the interest. His big office was as quiet as a library. His desk was almost devoid of signs of labour. Not a paper to be seen that required immediate attention; every item neatly disposed; himself smoking--a fairly strong pipe; scarcely a telephone call to interrupt. He seemed the sculptor's embodiment of strength in reserve; a man who never could be tuckered or peevish or unable to detect either the weakness of an opponent, the penetration of a critic or the need of a man who came to ask him for advice. There was a big instant kindliness about him that would have won the cordiality of the stolidest of interviewers, as we talked about railways, government ownership, the needs of journalism and the value in business of the personal equation--his own phrase which he repeated so often that it seemed to contain something of prophetic intention. He paid his venerating respects to the founders of the C.P.R., but he seemed to have more enthusiasm for Lord Mountstephen than for Van Horne.

I heard him say some strong, sincere things about the uselessness of rich men who would sooner use their money on the gratification of vanity than upon public service. He meant that. He repeated such things at various interviews. In doing so he proved that he himself had always made a god of very hard work, discipline and self-denial, for the sake of giving his own personality a square deal, without regard to the money he could make. He had the strength and he used it. As solicitor and chief counsel he became almost a machine to win cases for the railway. He must win, and know how to lose. Fighting a corporation's battles is a good way to believe that the system can do no wrong. But I don't think Beatty was ever blind to the native defects of the C.P.R.

Railroading is a great university of character. Nothing else in our practical affairs attracts such a variety of men. None of our railwaymen have climbed to the peak of the railway operation business quite so successfully and so Canadianly as E. W. Beatty. Most other transportation magnates we have imported from either Scotland or the United States. This one is Canadian from his cradle up. He embodies the best characteristics of the average Canadian in a very high degree. He is an amateur athlete whom hard work has never been known to make weary. At the end of any perfect day of hard work he has as much strength in reserve as he had in the morning when he came to it. Even in his talk he wastes never a word, states everything clearly and in forcible language, but is seldom curt at the expense of courtesy. He does not talk like any big American executive whose equal or superior he may be in administration. He copies nobody. The day's work has always been his exemplar. He has no desire for mere personal success. Years ago he could have made more money by exporting his brains to the United States. But he preferred Canada where he has made less money, justly earned more fame, and where he can continue to do more work that counts for efficiency in himself and in other people. He is the kind of man--like Arthur Meighen--who inspires other men to go in with him on a heavy task to get it done in a big way.

Beatty's type of mind, though somewhat dry and legal and at times judicial, is also capable of an immensely quiet enthusiasm that transmits itself to other people. He invites discussion, but not familiarity. Not personally careful just to maintain traditions, he profoundly respects the men who created them--and goes ahead to transact business now, and to hand out decisions immediately, that get to-day ahead of yesterday and as near as possible to the day after. He believes in the square deal in action and in the high common sense of a decision. There is no public question upon which his opinion might not be sanely valuable, though one would never expect him to succeed as a leader in politics. As a business reorganizer of McGill University he is bound to consider a college as a "going concern". As Chancellor of Queen's, he upsets all traditions as to the dignity of pure scholarship.

It seemed like a long stride from being Chief Railway Counsel to becoming Chief Executive. But to his practical personality the stride was only a step. On an average this is no lawyer's job. Judges in the United States can preside over big corporations. The chief executive of the C.P.R. works. He must know the system, its men, its technique. Railroading is a complex of specialities. A good president must enter into the spirit of the man who builds a locomotive and of one who constructs a timetable.

It fell to this first Canadian President that the road ever had to shoulder a load which would have made the wizard Van Horne read up Hercules. Beatty holds the record for getting through with a programme that would have puzzled either of his two eminent predecessors in that office. Shaughnessy at the same age might have done it. Van Horne never. Yet Beatty never could have built the C.P.R. His brain has no wizardry in it. He is a co-ordination of facts that knows not the meaning of magic. He is the most matter-of-fact man in any high executive position in Canada. The task he undertook was all cut out for him. Fate decreed that he should take it. He never dreamed of refusing. And what a task!

The greatest trouble Beatty had to face when he became President was too much traffic, too little rolling stock, an almost tragic scarcity of labour and the McAdoo award in wages. Railroading costs were at an apex before even munitions costs began to be. The collapse of railways in the United States drove a vast amount of traffic over Canadian roads. The two younger transcontinental systems were on the verge of receiverships. The brunt of the burden fell upon the old C.P.R., which at that time, in spite of the McAdoo awards was making a heavy profit. The cash value of traffic handled was colossal. War work was wearing the railways down. New locomotives and cars were hard to get. Orders could not be placed outside. Canada's railways had to depend on Canada. Ships could not wait, though submarines could. Freight must move. Two hard winters nearly paralyzed all the systems. No new lines were being built. The old lines were wearing out. Canada had the longest hauls of any nation in the world. Our systems were built for the long haul. The railway systems of other countries were demoralized with wastage, low repairs and enormous traffic. Even in short-haul England of the easy climate, there was railway paralysis. But England had great gasoline highways and coastal routes when Canada had neither. It is said in a report of that period, "General Superintendents in charge of some of the "key" divisions of the big roads have had to work from 12 to 20 hours a day to keep roadbed, rolling stock and crews up to top mark." 22,000 Canadian cars were "lost" in the United States in one winter. What war left of the railways winter did its best to debilitate. Industry stole transportation labour at high wages and rolled out vast quantities of material that had to be moved, when even C.P.R. efficiency seemed to be just about obliterated from the chart of the world's work.

This was no time for any man to pray that he might be made chief executive of the greatest transportation system in the world; nor a time for Lord Shaughnessy to continue in that office. The work was now too heavy for the autocrat and for a man whose eyesight was bad. A successor had to be found. The directors did it almost automatically. There was but one man to consider; and he had no experience in any of the mechanical departments.