Fielding, Laurier and Cartwright came home profoundly disappointed men;
and--as stated before--old Sir John may have turned over in his grave
with a sardonic grin.

When Sir John had launched the Canadian Pacific Railroad to link Nova
Scotia with British Columbia, when his government to huge land grants
had added cash loans, when he had offered bonuses for factories and
subsidies for steamships--no one had sent home such bitter shafts of
criticism as these old-guard Liberals hungry for office. Why give away
public lands? Why push railroads in advance of settlement? Why build
railroads when there were no terminals, and terminals when there were
no steamships? Why subsidize steamships, when there were no markets?
Was it not more natural to trade with neighbors a handshake across the
way than with strange nations across the ocean? I have heard these
barbed interrogations launched by Liberals at Conservatives with such
bitterness that the wives of Conservative members would not bow to the
wives of Liberal members met in the corridors of Parliament.

Now mark what happened when the free-trade Liberals found they could
obtain no tariff concessions from the United States! They had gibed
Sir John for committing the country to one transcontinental railroad.
They now launched two more transcontinental railroads--east and west,
not north and south. Subsidies were poured into the lap of steamship
companies to attract them to Canadian ports; and thirty-eight millions
in all were spent improving navigation in the St. Lawrence. Wherever
Clifford Sifton sent agents to drum up settlers trade agents were sent
to drum up markets. Then--as Sir Richard Cartwright acknowledged--the
Liberals were traveling in the most tremendous luck. An era of almost
opulent prosperity seemed to come over the whole world. Gold was
discovered in Klondike. Germany opened unexpected markets for copper