The Originating Mind

Who is the originator of this gigantic project, with its elaborate yet simple arrangement with the Government, is not officially announced. But it is understood that Charles M. Hays, General Manager of the Grand Trunk Railway Company and also President of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, is the guilty party. At least he has been found with the goods in his possession, and the burden is on him to prove an alibi.

Hays is an American-a Yankee, as they call him. He was born at Rock Island, Illinois, and as a boy got into the railroad business. He served in various

GROUP OF ESKIMO. View taken at midnight.

capacities with the railroads of the West. He went from the Wabash to the Grand Trunk, where his personality and his methods soon turned that conservative institution upside down. The Grand Trunk had been run from London. When Hays took hold, it was run from Hays's office. The energy and consummate grasp of the situation that have been shown in the Grand Trunk Pacific project, seem to spell Charles M. Hays.

Details of Construction

James J. Hill spent $750,000 in the preliminary surveys of the Great Northern Railway. It was cheaper to do this

than to change the grades and straighten the line after it was built. The policy of the Grand Trunk Pacific is to secure the lowest possible grades and the most direct route across the continent. The grades on the Eastern Division will be kept down to 4 per cent (21 feet to the mile). In the Mountain Division, 14 per cent (53 feet to the mile) will be the maximum. This will be possible, as the passes selected have an extreme summit elevation of only 2,500 feet, as against 5,299 feet on the Canadian Pacific Railway, 5,202 feet on the Great Northern, and 5,567 feet on the Northern Pacific.

The route throughout will be unusually straight for such a railroad. There will be no swerving aside for this or that town which offers a bonus. From Winnipeg to Edmonton, but two points. of importance-Portage la Prairie and

Saskatoon are touched. The other ambitious towns, such as Brandon, Regina, Port Arthur, Prince Albert, and Calgary, must be content with branch lines.

Statistics are as a usual thing dry reading; but the following figures prepared by an engineer with a bent for such things, show up the magnitude of the enterprise as nothing else can.

Considering the main line alone-3,600 miles-with 3,000 ties to the mile, the construction will take 10,800,000 crossties. If these are produced entirely by hand, it will take 500 men working three

years to get them out. If the steel rails were placed end to end, the line would cover 7,200 miles; and if the side tracks and the branch lines were included, the steel band would reach half way around the globe.

In every tie there are at least four spikes, making a total of 43,000,000. For every rail, two angle-bars are used and four bolts, four washers, and four burrs -a total of 2,534,400 angle-bars, and 5,068,800 each of bolts, washers, and burrs.

The estimates of locomotives is 500, at

an average cost of $15,000-an expenditure of $7,500,000 for power. The average cost of passenger cars is $10,000. There will be 500 of these required-$5,000,000. The average cost of freight cars is $700, and it will require 30,000 to handle the traffic -another item of $21,C00,000. The fencing of the right of way will cost $1,530,000. The average cost of a telegraph line is $200 per mile-another item of $720,000. The largest item in the telegraph estimate is the poles. It will take 118,000 poles,

The World's Highway

The eastern ports of the Grand Trunk Pacific will be St. John and Halifax. These ports are connected with Moncton -the eastern terminus proper-by the Intercolonial Railroad, a government institution. These ports are open the year round. For six months of the year, ocean-going vessels will connect with the railroad at Quebec and Montreal. The Pacific port will be nearer the Far East by several hundred miles than Van

couver.

From Liverpool to Yokohoma by the Suez canal is 11,250 miles. Between the same points by way of Berlin, Moscow, and the Trans-Siberian Railroad, it is 9,650 miles. From Liverpool to Quebec it is 2,632 miles; from Quebec to Port

-as the Canadian Pacific has proved-a factor of incalculable importance in the development of a virile national life and sentiment in Canada. The Dominion is already claiming the twentieth century as its own, and the prediction of a population of eighty millions before the cycle is completed may not be born of overenthusiasm. Certainly there is room on this great continent for two great countries. The one to the south has had the advantage of an early start, and has developed an energy, a national impulse, an institutional system, a type of life, and a magnitude of attainment peculiarly its own. The future holds out substantially similar promise for the kindred community on the north. What their ultimate mutual relations will be, none can say.

C

ALIFORNIA air condensed into liquid state and packed for export, is the latest-product of the Golden State to appear upon the market. It is now possible to eat California oranges which have never left California air in their long journey across the continent, and indeed they may be served at one's table with a sauce of the breezes which blow over their native groves.

A comprehensive plant for the manufacture of liquid air and of oxygen has been erected in the city of Los Angeles, which is the only plant in the country. manufacturing these products on a commercial scale, with the exception of a New York plant whose output is confined to surgical and metallurgical uses. The plant will presently have a capacity of 450 gallons of liquid air or 50,000 cubic feet of oxygen per day of ten

hours. With an unlimited supply of raw material and an output limited solely by the capacity of the compressor, there remains only the question of finding a market, and present indications point to a growing demand for these novel wares.

Situated in the heart of a warm, fruitgrowing country, without natural ice, and separated from its chief markets by tremendous stretches of hot country, the question of refrigeration of fruit cars is one of the most important which the Californian has to consider. If, as is hoped, the product of the Los Angeles factory can be used as a successful substitute for manufactured ice, the market is at hand, and the new industry is ideally located. Fruit-growers, car-builders, merchants, shipping agents, and packers await with interest the extended trials which are now being instituted.