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RICHARD POTTER. /9 7 ^ t I f I f 1 III \\ *-^ ■Umi li l ll MWlW WHW^WW^PI^W .<"-*■ *»W,v l-TI Ik, i Montreal, Uth August, 1875, Mr. Potter, the President of the Grand Trunk Co., at the meeting of the Shareholders of his Company in Eng- land on the 29th April last, made an unprovoked attach upon me, when I was not there to defend myself. In consequence of this, a correspondence has passed between us, which in justice to myself I have printed in the following pages. It is not the first instance, in the history of Canadian Railway Companies, of all credit being taken in England for any success that arises, and of all blame, when any difficulty occurs, being thrown upon the executive in Canada. It is so easy to attack the absent, when they have no ^opportunity for immediate reply. C. J. BRYDGES. ;>^' -vAiit^^ij^ «i ■k No. I. Montreal, 28^^ May, 1875. My dear Sir, ^' I daly received your letter of the 14th ult, in which jou were good enough to »y that you heartily thrked m. "for the good turn which you did „, arot" g-viug evidence before the lutemational Bridge Com m.ttee Under actual circumstances it wouU not be" becoming to say more, but I trust I may have the iTrnplvLTtH 7 "^-'P™-""? youfhinte s : 1 simply did in that matter what I shaU alwavs b» .^.dy cheerfully to do if the opportunity oflerTut I con ess to being somewhat surprised, afte^^ the recefpt of your letter, m reading the report in the papers of vour rLr f l\ ^ *^"°P''"y ""'* ^erefore a revised report of what you said. 'eviseu I find at page 10 you stated that, when you dealt with the question of the cost of change of gauge ZIZZ, under the impression that the coft woSTJmo OW wh.oh was the estimate you received from me 'Ij eshmate proved to be less than the actual fact, Zk that tZt C d^""'"* " "■"''■"' *» ^^"^ aboitTin m^ wMe blaC f T '"**'"' 1'"''"'''^' *» ^hrow the ro^lde« Lf *'"r '"""""' ™'' "P»" "y '"'«mt Shoulders. Later m the meeting you appear to have , 3 Ir *;! S'St^"' regretted having made this attack upon me in my absence, and therefore unable to defend myself. I must now remind you of the real facts of the case. The change of gauge first made was that between Buffalo and Detroit, and the estimates for it were made by you, with myself and Mr. Grant in Montreal, with the officers of the Company all present and fully dis- cussing the question. At the same time, and with the same parties present, the cost of the changing the gauge to Portland was also discussed very fiilly. It was proposed to do it in three operations, the first to Belleville, the next to Montreal, and the third to Portland. , The figures for this were settled upon, and agreed to by you, by myself and all the officers, and a memorandum drawn up, dated 11th Oct., 1872, covering the question of change of gauge, and the sums necessary to complete the steeling of the line, provide further rolling stock, &c. You took that paper containing the detailed statements of the different departments, with you to England, and then had it revised and printed. Half of it you pub- lished to the Shareholders, but the other part you can- celled, because, as you informed me, you could not get the Board to face the outlay for changing the gaugp further east than Stratford. The matter dropped, but in the meantime it was discovered that an error had been made in adding some of the figures, which escaped your •observation, mine, and that of all the officers on both sides of the Atlantic, but, as the matter was for the time abandoned, nothing was done about revising the figures. A few months afterwards Mr. McEwen's scheme was launched suddenly, and almost as suddenly adopted by the Board and Shareholders. It proposed to do by one operation what it had previously been designed to do in \V three or four, and required a totally different mode and amore expensive one, of doing the work. In the iiite'rval also, the price of engines, cars, &c., had materially ad- vanced. As soon as this new plan reached me, I called the responsible officers together, and fuUy discussed with them the process to be adopted in the new and rapid plan They gave me their views and figures, which I embodied into a general statement, and forwarded to you bv the eariiest possible mail. It reached you about the time of the meeting of the 22nd March, 1873, at which Mr. McEwen's proposal was adopted. But, with the knowledge that an error had been made in adding up the total cost, and that the changed and quickened plan would involve a larger cost than had been supposed, you told the Shareholders that the cost would be at the figure settled by yourself at the council of officers in Montreal, in Oct., 1872, andtaken by you to London and fully revised and discussed there I must ask you to refer for proof of what I say to your own revised speech at the meeting on the 28th Nov 1872, where you said that you and Mr. AUport had agreed that it was necessary to change the gauge to Montreal, and "after a good de.: f elaborate care as to the whole cost of that, we found it would amount to nearly .£430,000 to change the gauge in two years-the " first section from Stratford to Belleville in 1873 or '74 " and the second from Belleville to Montreal in '74 or '75 The cost of changing to Portland was, I think, put down at a further ^200,000, and it was in that, that the error in addition was made, wliich none of us, yourself included, after a " good deal of elaborate care " found out for some time. You have, therefore, in my absence, and when yoU knew that I was not present to reply, thought it rigth to u make an unnecessary attack upon me — to ignore the knowledge which you had of the real figures, but which you wrote me at the time, you were afraid to divulge, lest it should shipwreck your plans— to pander to what you thought would be palatable to some of the Shareholders and to unsay all that you had publicly stated as your opi- nion of me during the previous 5 or 6 years, and to gain a little temporary popularity by attacking an absent man. I regret, after the years which we worked together with cordiality, that you should adopt this singular method of " reciprocating " what you called the '-'good turn " I did your Company. I am, My dear sir, Yours very truly, (Signed,) C. J. BRYDGES. Richard Potter, Esq, President G. T. R. Co. London. No. 2. Offices op the Grand Trunk Railway Com- pany OP Canada, 21 Old Broad Street, London, E. C., June ISth, 1875. My dear Sir, Your letter of the 28th May reached me in due course about ten days ago. Pressure of business and somewhat feeble health have delayed my reply. « Though I regretted at the time, and do now regret, that the necessities of our position with our Shareholders / forced me at the last meeting to explain the circumstances under which the change of gauge miscalculation had ansen, I am bound to tell you tlmt my recollec'tion of those circumstances differs materially from yours, and fully supports in all respects the statement I made at the meeting. In the programme, as settled at Montreal in the month and ttoffi ' ff' '^ "/^'^'' ^^"' ^^- Hickson and the officers, before we u\idertook our Intercolonial trip, there was no question and there was no calculation as to the cost of changing the gauge from Stratford to Montreal and Portland. When you and I parted at Portland after our Inter- colonial journey, it was agreed between us that you should supplement our programme and bring with you to New York a calculation estimating the cost of L change of gauge from Stratford to Portland. To what extent you discussed with Mr. Hick«on and your officers the detaUs of that memorandum, I cannot «peak with absolute confidence, only what I do know positively IS that the figures were to some extent based upon a letter addressed to you by Mr. Eaton, the Locomotrve Superintendent, and both Mr. Hicksoi and Mr. Walhs have told.me since that there was no dis- cussion with them upon Mr. Eaton's figures I took your report and calculation with me to London rdlr/rt^**'' programme we had discussed ani adopted together m September, at Montreal, but as an addi ion and supplement to that programme, which it would be worth while for us, in London, to' consider dependent of course upon our financial ability to tackle 1 after my return. A very short consultation was sufficient to satisfy us that it was entirely beyond our £nancial power to add the further change of gauge n - JLt'" ' '"PUP" i w 8 between Stratford, Montreal, and Portland to the programme agreed upon in council with yourself and other officers at Montreal before our Intercolonial trip. This resolution of the Board was communicated to you immediately after the discussion and determination of the Board. After you received our determination you urged in various letters throughout the months of December January and February t^e absolute necessity of our tackling the change of gauge as far as Portland ; in truth you gave us to understand that the expense and loss consequent upon the break of gauge at Stratford was all but intolerable. ♦ In one of these lettets written in the early part of the year 1873, some time before Mr. McEwen produced his scheme, you urged in very powerful language the necessity of our attempting to change the gauge and preparing for it, and you stated that to make the change throughout at one move instead of by sections, as in your scheme and calculation, would cheapen the process and lessen the cost. When I settled the terms of the sale of the new issue with Baron Grant and Mr. McEwen the situation was as I have described it, and I did not receive the corrected estimates, showing an excess of expenditure of about ^350,000 over the figures which you brought with you in print from Montreal and gave me at New York, till it was too late to change our programme of the new issue. We had sold the stock to Grant and McEwen, although the Shareholders had not approved the contract at the time I received the revised estimates from you. But I could not in the first instance bring myself to believe that your first calculation was so unreliable. d to the- )ur8elf and nial trip. ited to you tion of the urged in December, ity of our rtland; in pense and Stratford )art of the )duced his ;uage the auge and he change as in your rocess and new issue ion was as corrected of about with you ^ork, till the new , although act at the u. But I ilieve that Some of my letters addressed to you at the time con- vey a strong feeling of surprise, vexation and rebuke for the error of miscalculation. I am under the impression, which your letter of the 28th ult. has not in any way shaken, that my statement at the meeting the other day was entirely justified in every respect by the facts as they occurred, but again I say to you that I regret much that the occasion made it absolutely flecessary to make that statement. Sincerely yours, ^' (Signed,) RICHARD POTTER. C. J. Brydges, Esq. My dear Sir, No. 3. Montreal, 9//« July, 1875. I am in receipt of your letter of the 18th ult.,, in reply to the one which I addressed to you on the 28th May. I regret to hear that you have been so unwell. You state that you "regretted at the time, and do now regret that the necessities of (your) position with your Shareholders, forced you at the last meeting to explam the circumstances under which the change of gauge miscalculation had arisen, &c." I understand this to mean that you endeavoured to meet an attack upon yourself by throwing blame upon an absent man, who was not present to defend himself. I should have been very sorry to have acted towards you in any such manner I entirely disagree with your recollection of the fiicts, and repeat distinctly every thing I said in my former letter. But you, yourself supply a perfect answer to your If * J*.t^ if ^ M » ' 10 own unprovoked attack upon me' in your speech on the 29th April last. That attack was based upon the statement that I had made up estimates without consulting the officers of the Company, and that, if I had done so, mistakes would not have occurred. You now state that in finally settling the matters that had been under discussion, we had before us a statement of the cost of changing the cars, based, (using your own language), upon a letter addressed to me by Mr Eaton the Locomotive Superintendent. This, therefore, entirely disproves your statement at the meeting, that I prepared figures for you without consulting the responsible officers of the Company. Your own letter, now before me,distinct- ly states that I supplied you with an official opinion from the head of the Department responsible for the work To luive asked Mr. Wallis, Mr. Eaton's subordinate, to revise the figures of his chief, would have been an extra- ordmary proceeding. That I also gave you Mr. Hannaford's, the Chief engmeer, statement of the cost of his part of the work I am sure you will not deny. I treated Mr. Hannaford precisely as I did Mr. Eaton— I did not ask their subordinates to revise the official figures as given by the chiefs of each Department. That all these statements were fully discussed between you and I, whilst you were in this country, does not aduiit of any doubt, confirmed as it is by what you say in your letter now before me. But I repeat again that all those statements were based upon a gradual change, by slow degrees, allowing ot the trucks of all the cars to be changed gradually, and at a small cost, comparatively. That Mr. McEwen's scheme, so suddenly adopted, changed the whole plan— ^ 11 that to carry it out a very large number of new trucks had to be purchased, at a heavy cost-that his plan required all the cost to be charged to capital at'once, instead of, as Mr. Eaton proposed, doing a large part of the work at the cost of revenue-that as soon as his plan reached this country, a statement of the cost of carrymg it out was prepared by the officers of each de- partment and sent to you by me_andthat having subse- quently carefully examined into the matter yourself with Mr Slater in this country, you reported to the Shareholders, on your return, that the work had all been well done, and at the smallest possible cost Before you met the Shareholders, when the McEvven scheme was adopted, you were aware of this clerical error you spoke of, but, as you wrote me at the time you were afraid to say that the cost would be any ILT'/JT^ '\ ''^""^^ shipwreck the whole sclieme. With full knowledge of the focts, you suppressed them from the Shareholders at the time, and subsequently endeavored to throw blame upon an absent man I content myself with this statement of facts, without any comment, reserving to myself the right to make any use of the correspondence that I may think desirable or necessary. I am, Yours very truly, (Signed,) C. J. BRYDGES. Richard Potter, Esq. I I s .b.. '^v, iljt! 12 No. 4. Offices of the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada. My Dear Sir, 21 Old Broad street, London, E. C, July 2Ui, IS/o. Your favour of the 7th July reached me this morning. I note that you - entirely disagree with my recoUec^ tion of the facts, and repeat distinctly evervthini? you said in your former letter." ' My recollection, however, is supported by Mr. Hick- son s and by the correspondence. The error was not " clerical " but inherent and deep- seated m the calculation. Three months after you made the miscalculation, you urged upon me that it would cost less to make the change of gauge all atonceto Montreal than tonmke it irraduaDv by slow degrees and by stages. " I never saw Mr. Eaton's letter to you until 12 months afterwards, and though this letter contained a palpable misapprehension in the working out of the details,_in the emergency of the change,-which a little examination and discussion with Mr. Hickson and Mr. Hannaford, the Chief Engineer would have exposed, you appear to have taken a surface view of the subject. When I received the first intimation of the error it was some time after the arrangements for the new issue had been completed, and the stock sold to Messrs. Grant and McEwen. I could not, and did not, altogether trust the accuracy of the revised estimates in the face of your October calculation and your repeated representation that th. mode of effecting the change at once, as proposed by the r Candida. !et, St, 1S7-5. his morning, my recoUec- Jrything you y Mr. Hick- it and deep- ulation, you i the change it gradually 1 12 months 3 a palpable ails, — in the lination and 'd, the Chief have taken error it was V issue had Grant and le accuracy ir October >n that tho 3sed by the 13 McEwen scheme, would cost the Company less than the mode proposed by yourself in October. I wrote you asking for further examination. - • It certainly does not lie with you to reproach me for behevmgm your own deliberate and reiterated state- ments. Yours faithfully, (Signed,) RICHARD POTTER. C. J. Brydges, Esq., Montreal, Canada. No. 5. Montreal, 13//* August, 1875 My dear Sir, I received in due course your letter of the 21st uit., m reply to mine of the 7th ult.. I regi-et the necessity for this correspondence, but as you made an uncalled-for and' unjust attack upon me in my absence, when you knew I could not answer you at the moment, I have no option but to defend myself. You are continually shifting your defence ^ At themeetingin London, on the 29th April last, you made a distmct statement that a miscalculation had been made m the cost of changing the gauge, and that the error arose from my making up the cost myself, without consultation with the other officers of the Company In my letter to you of the 28th May last I exposed the iitterfalsity of this statement,-showed that the calcula- tions were all based upon the reports of the heads of departments ; that these reports were discussed at Council meetings, at which you were present, and that you were just as responsible as I was for the figures. n ■■■ V m 14 I further reminded you that you received from me at a later date, when the question was revived, estimates of cost to carry out Mr. McEwen's altered or new scheme all such estimates being based upon detailed reports made by the head of each department. I also reminded you that when you received these statements you wrote to me to say that you were afraid to make use of them lest it^ould shipwreck your plans And yet you did not hesitate to make an unfounded attack upon me to gain a little temporary popularity and to carry you over a troublesome meeting ! In your letter to me of the 18th June you showed that you had discovered you were in an untenable position, and you completely changed your ground. Your oral statement on the 29th April was that I had made a mistake, and that it arose from my making all the calculations myself, and without obtaining reports from the responsible officers of each department. In your letter of the 18th June you abandon that ground, and admit that the figures were based upon statements furnished me by Mr. Eaton, the then head of the Locomo- tive Department. I reminded you, which you do not deny, in my letter of the 9th July, that I also submitted to you the report and estimate of Mr. I annaford, the Engineer. So that you now distinctly admit that you had no grounds upon which your statement at the meeting on the 29th April could be founded; the facts being that detailed report;* were submitted to you from the heads of the two depart- ments in which the work had to be done ; and these re> ports were all considered at Council meetings at which you were present. I must also remind you that in the cost of change of gauge, as settled upon in Mr. McEwen's plan, was includ- mma 16 ed a sum of nearly ^200,000 for additional cars, which were not provided for in the first estimate of cost This reduced the difference you spoke of by more than^ne- half. You know perfectly well that in making up the first estimate, you desired to see at how small a cost the change could be made, the resources of the Company bemg so limited. ^ ^ It was then proposed to effect the change, by a slow and halting process, charging as little as possible to capital, and making revenue bear a large share of the cost. Mr. McEwen subsequently proposed his plan of rais- ing large amounts of new capital to change the gauge quickly, and to supply large additional quantities of roll- ing stock. To carry out that scheme, I gave you estimates of cost which you wrote me you were afraid to make use of when you got them, but which you afterwards reported to the Shareholders, after personal enquiry on the spot had been well carried out, at the smaUest possible cost. The estimates for the McEwen plan were all before you prior to the work being ordered; they have not been practically varied from, and they were authorized and adopted by yourself and the Board oefore the expendi- ture was incurred. They therefore were the only estimates which were acted upon, and they of course cancelled as you perfectly weU knew, all the estimates previously made for doing the work in a different way. Ihe last page of your letter of the 21st ult. obliges me to recall to your recollection that in the Jreport of March, 1874, signed by you as President, the following passage occurs in reference to my resignation • " Mr. Brydges has telegraphed to the Board his resig- 16 " nation of the office of Managing-Director, which the " Board have accepted with deep regret, remembering " his long, arduous, and devoted^services to the Company '' in times of extraordinary difficulty and danger." And I must further remind you that at your Board meeting, held on the 15th April, 1874, the Minutes of which were sent to me officially, the following resolu- tion was adopted : " Sesolvedj—Th&l the Directors of the Grand Trunk Railway " Company of Canada desire, in recording the resignation of their " late colleague, Mr. C. J. Brydges, to reiterate the remarks made by " the President at the late Shareholders' Meeting, of deep regret for " the separation, and of warm thanks for the valuable aid, &c., &c., " to the Executive in Canada, and they beg of Mr. Brydges' accep- " tance of the sum of £4000 as a testimony of their personal regard " and an acknowledgmeht of past services in times of difficulty, " Ac, Ac." If you will refer to your own letters written to me about the same time, you will find in them expressions of even greater strength and warmth. Why, after all this, and the facts as they really exist, you should have thought it consistent with your position as President of the Company to make an unjust and ungenerous attack upon an absent man, will appear to most people as incomprehensible, unnecessary, and 4inwise as it does to me. I am, My dear Sir, Yours very truly, (Signed,) C. J. BRYDGES. Richard Potter, Esq. MS which the smembering e Company ger." ronr Board Minutes of ing resolu- unk Railway ation of their arks made hj eep regret for aid, &c., &c., ydgea' accep- rsonal regard of difficulty, itten to me expressions eally exist, •ur position unjust and i appear to ssary, and ^DGES.