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Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at different reduction ratios Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre filmis A des taux de reduction diffd.'erits. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul clivh6, il est fiimd d partir de I'angle supdrieur gauche, de gauche k droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images n6cessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 THE VERT LATEST GfiAND TBUNK SCHEME. Do I sleei) ? Do I dieam ? Do I wonder and doubt ? Are things what they soein ? Or is visions about ? Is our civilization a faihi j / Or is the Caucasian played out ? Brel Uarte. lyOli/ytiZ^ flAie^-^-^ /^^irV^^^t^ M LONDON : ABBOTT, BARTON, & Co., 269, STRAND, 1873. Price Threepence. THE fcg f atfst 4xmiii tonK ^f^mt, From the first inauguration of the Grand Trunk Kailway Company in 1854 to the present clay, it has always had on its Direction in London a number of gentlemen whose rep\itation for commercial morality and financial ability was supposed to be of the very highest order; and yet, notwithstand- ing this manifest advantage, the Company has attained a notoriety for corruption, mismanagement, and consequent disastrous failure, i-arely equalled, and nev?r surpassed, by any railway in existence. The causes which have led it to this result have long been manifest to the mind of every intelligent man in Canada. We will not go fui-ther back into rhe history of the under- taking than to the close of the year 1860, which found the sheriffs in possession of the office furniture in London, and judgments entered up against the Company in Canada for about one million sterling, the Bondholders without tlieir interest, and the credit of the Company gone. The Directors w^ere under the necessity of calling a meeting of the proprietors to consider the unfortunate state of affiiirs, and endeavour to provide a remedy. It was admitted by the Directors at this meeting that the difficulties of the Company had been mainly brought about by the misrepresentations made by the Canadian manftgers to the Board of Directors in London, and, therefore, it especially behoved the Board to guard against misrepresentations from the same source in future. The lan- guage of some of the proprietors at the meeting upon these admissions of the Directors was " frequent, and painful, and free." The usual committee of investigation was appointed, and they propounded a plan for arranging the difficulties of the Company, which, at a subsequent meeting, met with the approval of the proprietors. The next important step was to find some able and experi- enced railway man, whose duty would be to proceed to Canada, remodel the administration there, and obtain the sanction of the Canadian legislature to the Arrangement Bill. The gentle- man selected to fill this important duty was Mr. Edward Watkin, the General Manager of the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway, and in the month of August, 1861, he sailed for Canada. Mr. "Watkin's first exercise of authority was to dispense with the services of Mr. Boss, the Canadian President, Mr. Blackwell, the Managing Director, and Mr. Walter Shanly, the General Superintendent ; and to appoint Mr. Brydges, of the Great Western of Canada, in their stead. In di8i)ensing with the services of Mr. Boss and Mr. Blackwell, Mr. Watkin no doubt exercised sound judgment ; but in parting with Mr. Shanly, the Company lost the most able and honest officer they have ever had in Canada ; and in appointing Mr. Brydges to succeed him, an equally unfortunate step was taken. What the Grand Trunk wanted was an economical, hard-working, plain matter-of-fact man, but Mi\ Brydges had lost the confidence of the Proprietors of the Great Western, owing to his extravagance and inordinate ambition for display. This was, substantially, all the work of Mr. Watkin on his first visit to Canada ; and in the month of October he returned with his ncAv j^i'otege, Mr. Brydges, to London. The next proceeding of the Directors was indeed a remarkable one, and has been the main cause of the Company's subsequent diffi- culties. Mr. Baring resigned the position of President of the Board in London, and Mr. Watkin was appointed President in /i his stead. A vacancy was also created on the Board for three of Mr. Watkin's nominees (one of whom was the present President, Mr. Potter), and for seven long yeara the affairs of the Grand Trunk were absolutely controlled by Mr. Watkin and his friends. A gi-ave error was committed by Messrs. Baring and Glyn at this period. The Company did not require to add to its financial ability in London ; it had enough and to spare. What the Company wanted was honest servants and an able and efficient Manager in Canada. Mr, Watkin was eminently qualified to fill the latter post ; in fact, he should have been called upon to work out Iiis own proposed reforms personally on the spot, and if this course had been adopted, we believe the Grand Trunk at this day would have been a successful under- taking. We have the greatest confidence in Mr. Watkin as a railway administrator, that is, in the management of a staff of officials, and the development and working of railway traffic ; but as a railway financier, he is a man of surprises and expedients, somewhat resembling the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, who collects a quarter's revenue in advance, and then tells the public that he has provided for a large deficiency >vithout increasing the taxation of the countrj'. Emboldened by the abdication of Messrs. Baring and Glyn, Mr. Watkin's ambi- tion knew no bounds ; he bought and sold half the conti- nent of North America, and made a profit of one hundred thousand pounds by the transaction, which he put into his own posket ; he next sought and obtained a seat in the Imperial Parliament, and actually introduced a resolution ixi the House of Commons with the object of dictating to the Government and the Governor and Directors of the Bank of England a measure which would have caused a revolution in the currency of the country. When he entered the service of the Grand Trunk in 1861, he was plain Mr. Edward Watkin, the ma- nager of a second-i-ate provincial railway. When he retired from the Grand Trunk in 1869, he was Sir Edward Watkin, Kuight, M.P., chairman of two and director of three of the 6 fti' II greatest railways in the kingdom. But did the prosperity of the Grand Trunk Railway keep pace with its President? No ; but it ought to have done, for the " Arrangement Act " was sufficiently liberal in all conscience. It provided for the issue of £500,000 Equipment Mortgage Bonds, afterwards increased to £1,000,000. It capitalized the whole floating debt. It reduced the interest on the leased lines, and left it optional with the Di- rectors whether or not they should pay the interest in cash on the Preference Bonds of the Company for tea years. Not- withstanding all this, and a gross revenue of £1,200,000 a year, Sii Edward Watkin retired from the Grarxd Trunk Rail- way a wealthy man; but he left the undertaking which elevated him to power and wealth fully five millions sterling poorer than he found it. Now, no one who thoroughly knows Sir Edward Watkin for one moment doubts that he did not honestly labour to make the Grand Trunk Railway successful ; but the multiplicity of his engagements made him the tool and subsequently the victim to the extravagance and sophistry of Mr. Brydges — an extravagance and sophistry which imposed on Captain Tyler, Mr. Eborall, and Mr. Potter, and it was only on Mr. Potter's last return from Canada that he admitted that his eyes were at last open to the fearful condition to which the undertaking had been reduced. In 1869 Sir Edward Watkin resigned his presidency into the hands of his protege, Mr. Potter, and there is this remarkable coincidence, Mr. Potter had been chairman of the Great Western Railway of England, and it had depreciated under his adminis- tration almost in the same degree as that of the Great Western of Canada under Brydges. In fact, as a railway man. Potter is a failure ; for, upon his own admission, it has taken him ten years to ascertain the true position of the Grand Trunk. It cannot be denied that Mr. Brydgea possesses one quality in an eminent degree, -viz., that of hoodwinking the Board of Directors, for, notwithstanding all the able criticism to whicii his management has been subjected, he has been able to hold his position and retain the confidence of the Board in London (Mr. Potter declaring that they, the Proprietoi'S, should walk over his dead body before removing Brydges) in the face of a state of things unpai'alleled in any railway undertaking in the world. He left the Great Western of Canada in 1861, having by his ambition and extravagance reduced the dividend of that Company from 9 per cent, per annum to nothing. During the ten years of his management of the Grand Trunk Railway, exclusive of thecapitalizationof the floating debtjei,200,000,£l,000,000 of Equipment Mortgage Bonds have been created, and an accumu- lation of at least i£ 4,000,000 unpaid intei-est on the preference debt, and the line itself is so depreciated, that, at this day, it reqiiii'es an outlay of j£l, 500,000 to put it in a safe condition j creating altogether a preference of £7,700,000. In the face of this unheard-of state of things, Mr. Brydges is retained in office, and the British public are shortly to be invited to sub- scribe for an additional issue of £10,000,000 of common stock at a pnce to be dictated to the Boai'd by Alexander McEwen and Albert Grunt & Co., the proceeds arising therefrom to the Compeny, £1,900,000, to be dispensed mainly by tho lavish hand of Mr. Brydges. The only parallel to this new proposal of the Grand Trunk is that issued by the Government of Honduras last year, via., £15,000,000 to build an Jnter-oceanic Ship Railway. For 40 years the Government of Honduras failed to pay the interest due on a debt of £92,000 contracted in England. In 1867 they compounded this debt by the issue of £50,000 in 5 per cent. Bonds, and a few months later asked for a loan erf £1,000,000 to build an Inter-oceanic Railway, and they ob- tained it. They said the sum was quite sufficient to complete ' the undertaking, but in 1870 they asked for a further sum of £2,500,000, which they also obtained ; the whole of which has not been sufficient to build the first section. Emboldened by this success, they asked last year for a loan of £15,000,000 to build a ship milway side by side with the lesser undertaking, but they did not succeed in obtaining the money, so that it does appear that there is a limit to the childlike faith of the Brit ihU public. We think tliat in the (.irniul Truuk Kaihvay, us in tliu Huuduras Kuilway, the limit huis ulsu been reached. ' • But they will tell you the new issue of ten millions has lM;en sanctioned by the Pailiament of the Dominion of Canada. V^ery true, because tl\e Company have jietitioned them to au- thorize tlio issue so as to enable the Company to expend the ]troeeeds in putting the lino in a safe condition ; but if such a Bill had ]>een presented to the English Parliament, the endoinaenient of Lord Redestlale on the back of tiie Bill would have been, "This Company is insolvent, and ought to be wound up." t'' ; ', In assenting to the very remarkable scheme of McEwen it Co., to which we will shortly refer in detail, the Directors of tlic Grand Trunk Railway Company are incurring a veiy grave responsibility, for on Mr. Pottoi-'a late return from Canada, he gave expression to his opinions on the state of the undertaking in no ambiguous language. He said that upwards of GOi) miles of the lino was in a most dangerous condition, worse than he had ever seen it — that 250 miles of the line did not pay work- ing expenses — that the positioii of the Company in eveiy way was moat critical — and that after the most mature deliberation of the Boai'd, and after consultation with the largest proprie- tors, they liad unanimously come to the conclusion that there was but one remedy, viz., the creation of .£600,000 additional Equipment Moi-tgage Bonds, the re-issue of .£410,000 Atlantic and St. Lawrence Guaranteed Stock, and the extension of tluj Arrangement Act of 18G2 for a further peiiod of three years so as to enable the Directors to use the nett revenue, estimated at X475,000, belonging to the Ist and 2nd Preference Bond- holders, the whole of this money to be applied to pi iting the line in a safe condition. He said that Mr. Baring . nd Lord Wolverton had fought hard for keeping faith with the 1st and 2nd Preference Bondholders, but they had been obliged to succumb, inasmuch as the only alternative to the proposal was bankruptcy. We record this stand taken by Mr. P'>nng and Lord Woheiton, iunsiiiuch as it reHectH lionour upon tliem, for, ulthougli they may have comiuittod errorn of jvulguient iu lulyiug too implicitly upon tho representations niado to them by their suboixlinateH, they havo alwayH acted with princely liberality to tho Grand Trunk Hallway Compan)^. The Proi)rictor8 responded to tho proposal of Iho Directors, as propounded by Mr. Potter, with an unanimity wliich forcibly ilhistratcB the loyalty of the British public to the manafifers of uuderlakings under the most adverse circumstances j but we feel confident that tho day is not far distant when the Directors will bitterly regi-et that they did not adlicrc to their original scheme. On the 27th February last, Mr. Alexander McEwcu addressed a letter to Mr. Potter, the President, in which he proposed to reverse the order of i)i'oceeding as pro- posed by the Directoi-s and approved by the Proprietors at the meeting held in November last, by creating a security which bhould follow instead of precede the Preferences, viz., the issue of ^10,000,000 of common Htock at a discount of £80 per cent., this Stock to rank jjciri pasnu with the existing ordinary Stock. Now, lien we draw upon our imagination for our facts, we are enabled to produce the most brilliant results upon ^;t/^>er. Mr. McEwen is manifestly an artist in this kind of work. He says the capital of the Company, as settled by the schctue of Mr. Potter, consists of — Rentals, small mortgages, equipment mortgages, and other prior charges, capitalized £6,600,000 Preference capital, with the! addition of ^ three years' interest 13,500,000 £20,000,000 OpenStock 3,500,000 Mr. McEwen says, " / omit tJie Government loan, as being too remote for consideration ;'^ but Mr. Potter, in his speech at the meeting in November, rcfen'ed to this loan being BO domjerously near as to bo one of the main inducements 10 4\ why tlie proposal of the Directors should at once be ^adopted, and, therefore, wo add that sum, £3,111,500, to the capital of tl\o Cojnpany, making the gross sum £26,711,500. He tl.'en says, " My proposition is, to issue £10,000,000 of ordiuary stock at the price of £20, raising £2,000,'^00, and making the capital thus : — First charge capital £18,300,000 Open St^ck 13,500,000" and then he says : — *' Figures that are more in accordance with those of sound r.iilway imdertakings," What ? " a single line o£ railway saddled with a capital account of £22,000 per mile, which for 12 yeai"s has never honestly paid working expenses," in accordance with figures of sound railway iiudeitakings ! It will be observed that he omits the Government loan from his last figures also, and it is very probable that the Canadian Government may consent to this loan ranking after the new issue of stock, but ordy on the condition that the Grand Trunk Mortgage Act of 1857 remains in farce ; bu*; the iwwei-s of this Act are so great and so stringent, it would be much safer to obtain its repeal, even at the cost of letting the amount of the Government Loan rank^rtvi j^crssw with the coramcn stock. This sum added would biing the capital to £25,000 per mile for single line of i-ailway, a cost veiy nearly approaching that of some of the best double lines of railway in the United L..iifdom. Mr. McEwen proposes that, in consideration of this £2,000,000 being raised on common stock and expended on the line, the Preference Bond rnd Stockholders should consent to such a reduction on their rate as would leave an annual chaige of only £843,353. And " now " (says he) :is to the main question of the prac- ticability of raising £2,000,000 by the sale of £lC,oi00,000 ordinary stock at 20 per cent. We concur with Mr. McE\ven in the opinion that this is the 11 main quesijion^ and we go further, and say that the practica- bility of it depends upon the credulity of the Biitieh jmblic. He quotes by way of illustrating the practicability of raising the money, the London, Chatham, and Dover and the Metropolitan District E<*ilwaj8, omitting the fact that there are a large number of original holders of the common stock in these two undertakings who will not sell at anything like the present prices, who prefer to wait and see the effect of the marvellous development of the metropolis of the world. It is altogether a different thing from that of the public going in and purchasing the common stock of an undertaking which was originally issued at par, and subsequently fallen to a discount of 70 or 80 per cent., to that of going in to subscribe for a recent issue of common stock at a similar rate of discount in an undertaking that had exhausted nearly every other means of raising money. He next proceeds to draw a picture of tlie prospects of a dividend on the common stock by stating that the gross traflBc for 1873 will i-each X2, 000,000, which he says, worked at 60 per 'cent., as estimated by the Grand Trunk oflScers and con- firmed by Mr, All])ort and the experience of the Great Westein of Canada, will suffice, when the steel railing and ballasting are completed, to yield £800,000, a profit sufficient to cover all the preferences. The appeal to the estimate of .^he Company's officei-s in Canada i$ alone su^cient to condemn the scheme. These esti- mates have acted as a " mockery, a delusion, and a snare," as the proprietor of the Grand Trunk know to t^eir bitter cost ; and as to the opinion of Mr. AllpoH, highly as we esteem that gentleman as an English railway manager, were we the proprietors of a Canadian Bailway, we would prefer to take an intelligent American youth fr^sh from any of tho great railway establishments there, and put him in charge of the undertaking in preference to Mr. AllpoH. for the simple reason that it would be much oasi 3r for the youth to acquire a perfect competency in Canadian railway management ISi K than for Mr. Allport to imleani a great deal of his Englisli experience befoi'e he was fitted for the office. If Mr. McEwen could have quoted the opinion of such men as Mr. Vanderbilt, of the New York Central, or Mr. Thomas Scott, of the Pennsylvania Central, competing lines with the Grand Trunk for through traffic, in illustration of 60 per cent, for working expenses, it would give him a powerful argument in support of his estimate. But the experience of these gentle- men would have told him that, perfect as their lines are in every way, commanding a large local traffic, excellent permanent way, shortness of route, for through traffic, as [compared with the Grand Trunk, and equal distribution of traffic going and coming, they have never been able to Avork those lines at any- thing like 60 per cent, on the gross receipts. Mr. McEwen's reference to the experience of the Great Western of Canada illustrates the truth of the saying, "That comparisons are odious." The Great Western Railway of Canada is a short link in the direct line of communication between Ne^v York, Chicago, and San Francisco. It connects at each end with two of the very best tnanaged railways in America, and over which the traffic is very nearly equal both ways, and, consequently, cames the [smallest amount of dead weight. The line is in excellent condition, and runs throMgh the " Garden of Canada," from which it receives a lai'ge and very profitable local traffic, but in com- l>eting for through traffic between Chicago and New York, by >vay of Montreal, the Grand Trunk has the disadvantage cf 355 miles extra distance, and nearly equal to the entire length of the Great Western and all its branches, and the Grand Trunk has comparatively no return freight. Can anything more un- promising as to the chances of profit in through traffic be imagined than the fact of having to haul empty cars from Port- land to Detroit (861 miles) ] Why, the entire distance be- tween New York and Chicago is only 900 miles by the Penn- sylvania Central, while, by the shortest route of the Grand Trunk vid Monti-eal, it is 1,310. In fact, the Grand Trunk m cannot carry through tiufHc profitably unless they receive double the rate of freight received by competing lines. The physical condition of the line and the climate over a great distance is much against the Grand Trunk, so much so that Mr. Potter stated that, owing to the severity of the climate, it would have been more profitable to the Company to have closed a great portion of the Railway during the past winter ; in fact, any experienced American manager knows that the Crreat Western of Canada can and does carry a large through traffic at rates which leav^j a good profit, but which, if carried by the Grand Trunk at the same rates, would entail a heavy loss. In competing for the through" traffic between Detroit and the Niagara River, the Grand Trunk I '\8 the disadvantage of some 40 miles, in a total distance of 230, as compared with the Great Western. But another competitor for this portion of the traffic — the Canada Southern — will be in the field, during the present year, with a shorter and a better line than either tho Great Western or the Grand Trunk. Basing his estimates upon the fallacies which We have ex- posed, Ml'. McEwen says that a traffic of .£3,000,000 is within the grasp of the Grand Trunk in two years, and is to be worked at 60 per cent, and leave a nett profit of £1,200,000 a year ; butj in all these gi*and flights of his imagination, Mr. McEwen has not ventured to allude to the direct line of railway now being constructed and nearly complete between Portland and the Niagara River by way of Oswego, which will shorten the distance between Portland and Detroit, as com- pared with the Grand Trunk, 20O miles. Neither has he imitated the candour of Mr. Potter in referring to the North Shore Railway, now being constructed between Quebec and Montreal, nor to the Canada Central between Montreal and Toronto vid Ottawa ; and yet Mi*. McEwen was :iiot igno- rant of these facts, for Mr. Potter had openly declared a deadly feud against them. But the Canadian people have set their hearts on the completion of these undertakings, and they have u manfully put their shoulders to the wheel, and have demon- strated by their large surplus revenues, and the munificent aids granted to the Canadian Pacific and Narrow Gauge Railways, that what they have the courage to dare they have the power and will to dc. The Canada Southern is built. It is the nearest approach to a straight level line of any railway in America. It has a double track, and is laid with steel rails. It is a shorter line than the Grand Trunk between Detroit and Bufialo by 50 miles. The Grand Trunk have built the International Bridge practically for the benefit of the Canada Southern, illustrating the proverb that " fools build houses for wise men to live in." The direct line from Portknd will be opened as soon as the Inter-colonial Railway, and what the Grand Trimk gain on the improvement of the River du Loop branch will be more than lost on the Portland branch ; and on the opening cf the North Shore line between Quebec and Montreal, the Quebec and Richmond line and Three Rivers branch — 131 miles — will become compara- tively useless. The line from Montreal to Toronto — 333 miles — v/ill always be a valuable property, but it will be sandwiched between the Lake and River Navigation on the south and the Canada Centi-al on the north. From Toronto to Detroit the Grand Trunk has to compete with the Great Western, a shorter and better line. Subjected to all this manifestly powerful compe- tition, the Grand Trunk is saddled with a Preference debt, even at the reduced rate provided in Mr. McEwen's scheme of no less than £14,000 per mile over its entii-e length of 1,377 miles, requiring a net annual revenue of X843,363 to pay the interest on the Preference debt before the Common Stock and Govern- ment Loan, amounting together to j£16,61 1,500, can receive anything. The entire capital of the Great Western of Canada Bonds and Stock is only £5,589,000, or £15,000 per mile on 366 miles, illustratiog the fact that, whenever an American Railway can pay anything like a remunerative dividend on a capital of £15,000 per mile, one or two new lines of i-ailway are cerUdn to 1^ establisLed alongside of it, as we have witnessed in 16 the Canada Southern, and the Great Western of Canada Air Line. At the meeting held at the Cannon Street Hotel on the 2l8t March last, for the purpose of approving the agrf^ment which the Directors had entered into with Mr. MoEwen, Mr. Potter had the candour to state that the Directors could have not had the courage to submit such a proposition on their own responsibility, as they did not believe they could haTe carried it out. He asked those present to sign on small slips of paper their assent or dissent to the agreement, and we venture fearlessly to say that, notwithstanding the wonderful unanimity of the meeting, had he also asked the propiietors present to sign on other small slips, of paper the amount in tiio new issue of Stock which they were prepared to take at the price to be dictated by Mr. McEwen, there would not have been a bond fide total subscription for ^5,000. We may rest assured that when men like Lord Wolverton, Mr. Thomas Baring, Mr. Kirkman Hodgson, and Mi. ilobeii; Gillespie, suppoi'ted by all the practical knowledge and ability of such men as Mr. Newmarsh, Captain Tyler, Mr. Hodgkijison, an'i Mr. Potter, admit their inability to place £10,000,000 of common Stock at a price which will only bring the Company £1,900,000, and, therefore, depute that office to such men as Mr. Alexander McEwen and Mr. Albert Grant, — "A child might understand. The de'il had busineaa on his hand." In this business we consider that the Directoi'S of the Grand Trunk have shown no higher instinct than that of the ostrich, and they may rest assured of this, that although they may hide their bill, the body will not escape observation and comment. This pamphlet is not written for the benefit of the Bond and Stockholders of the Grand Trunk, but for the protection of the British public, inasmuch as the Boai'd of Directors and pro- prietors of that Company have given f^heir sanction to this scheme of a ring of speculators, whose object is to corner the said British public ia a gigantic stock-jobbing operation, and 16 saddle them -with this XI 0,000,000 of very commnn stocky upon •which not one shilling of interest can ever be paid, but at a price which will leave the ring a profit of one million sterling mor& or less. If proof were required that the object waflf a stock-jobbing operation, it will be manifest in the fact that here is a railway, with an existing common Stock of J3, 500,000, requiring £1,500,000 to put the undertaking in good order. This sum could have been obtained on Preference Bonds at an annual charge for interest of £90,000 ; but instead of adopting this course, it has been determined to issue to Alexander MoEwen, Grant & Co., £10,000,000 of common Stock, to rank pari pasm with the existing Stock, McEwen and Co. or their nominees paying the Company altogether £1,900,000, the Directors being bound to issue the Stock at such a price as McEwen 6s Co. may dictate ; and yet, in the face of this issue, the common Stock has not fallen in price, but actually risen about 60 per cent. Shakespeare said, that " the time was when the life was out of a man he would die," but this order of things has for the present been reversed as regards the Grand Trunk by the ling having bought up all the floating Stock in the market before making their scheme public, and the conse-' quence is, that the non-speculative holders will not sell at present prices in the hope that the Stock will go higher. The scheme is certainly a bold one, and is said to have been so far successful to the ring, that they could afford to forfeit the £100,000 deposit paid to the Company, and still retire with a large profit. Whether or not the ring will fulfil their agi cement with the Company, will probably depend upon the Bank rate of interest and the credulity of the British public. But should the next instalment due on the 17tli instant be paid, making in all a deposit of £200,000, it must be borne ^n mind that the ring have got the control for stock-jobbing purposes of an undertaking in which about £25,000,000 has been expended, and that, if it is necessary to inflate the traflfic receipts for the purposes of sending up the Bonds and Stock, they will ])e in- I i If flated, and thaf, if it is necessary to depress them, they will be dei)ressed, the whole aim and object of the ring being to make the largest profit possible, utterly regardless of the future welfare of the Grand Trunk Eailway. An attempt will probably be made to put this Stock off on the public at prices ranging from £25 to £30 per cent. We would recommend the public to invest their money in other railway securities instead, say Pennsylvania Central, Phila- delphia and Reading, ClevekT>d and Pittsburg, or New York Central. £25 invested in the common Stock of any of these undertakings, and the interest allowed to accumulate in the same investments, would reach £100 in about 14 yean^■■-a period we fearlessly assert at which the Grand Trunk wih ot have arrived at the means of paying 1 per cent, on its 4th Preference Stock. This pamphlet would scarcely be complete without a brief reference to some of the previous operations of the av.thora of this " Very Latest Grand Trunk Scheme." Many per.son8 have no doubt asked the question. Who is Mr. McEwen? Mr. Alexander McEwen is a Scotchman, who has read Professor Aytoun's story of "The Glenmutckin Railway," and has endeavoured to profit by it ; for, in attempt- ing to imitate the inimitable Mr. Dunrhunner and Mr. McCorkin- dale, Mr. McEwen formed a ring in, 1863 for the purpose of " cornering " the British public by putting up Grand Trunk Railway Stock on the London and Provincial Stock Ex- changes. Messrs. Baring and Glyn, being appealed to, honour- ably came to the rescue of the British public by putting a quantity of Grand Trunk Stock on the market, and l)foke the ring. In the autumn of 1869 James Fisk and Jay Gould formed a ring in New York for the purpose of puttiiig up gold, and " cornering " the American public. Mr. Boutwell., the Secretary of the Treasury, on being appealed to, acted in a like honourable manner to M( ssrs. Baring and Glyn, by putting a quantity of gold on the market, and broke the ring, and Messi-s. Fisk and Gould adopted the American expedient w of getting out of a difficulty by "repudiating." Now, we consider it very inconsistent in Messrs. Baring and Glyn to give their sanction to a scheme which is, in all its essential particulars, the formation of another ring. Many persons no doubt ask the question, Who is Baron Grant 1 Why, he is Mr. Albert Grant, the promoter of the Maraeilles Land Company, the Credit Mobilier, and Credit Poncier Companies, and other kindred undertakings, which proved so disastrous to the Shareholders in 1866. After arranging his afiaira with the several official liquidators of the defunct Companies of 1866, he rose like a Phoenix from the ashes, and the British public have subsequently felt the effects of his fertile ingenuity in such schemes as the Mineril Hill and Emma Silver Mining Companies. i;) *v " Facta are indeed stranger than fiction." ^q We have faithfully traced the history of the manipulators of the Grand Trunk Railway for the past ten years ; wo have shown the fatal repults of the abdication of Mr. Baring in favour of Mr. Watkiu, and of Mr. Watkin in favour of Mr. Potter, and lastly of Potter in favour of McEwen, Grant, & Co., and the conclusion we have come to is, that if any man of ordi- nary intelligence, with these facts before him, chooses to invest his money in this new issue of Grand Tiiink Railway Stock, he will be undeserving of the slightest sympathy if he loses it. '.V. London, \5th May, 1873.