The Story of a Dark Plot Part 6

"Since the committal of the prisoners, Mr. Smith was dismissed by the C. P. R. Upon September 7th, he received a letter from the a.s.sistant Superintendent in which occurred these words: 'You must either quit temperance work or quit the Company. It makes no difference whether you are on duty or off duty, so far as this Company is concerned. They demand the whole and entire time of their men, and they are going to have it.' .............. This subject is broader than Mr. Smith or any individual. It is the question of the right of the citizen to enjoy and exercise the rights of a citizen while employed by such a corporation as the Canadian Pacific Railway. It is the old problem of slave or freeman. The Railway is undoubtedly ent.i.tled to the best service of its employees, while on duty; but, after hours, the citizens should be free to engage in those pleasures and pursuits which do not conflict with the welfare of society and the State, Mr. Smith should be free to partic.i.p.ate in the agitation to drive the criminal liquor traffic out of the country without being called upon to suffer the loss of income. The man who braved the liquor party, and nearly sealed his devotion to the temperance reform with his life blood, was not the man to abandon his convictions at the command of a railway manager.

"The course of the C. P. R., in dismissing Mr. Smith, has been warmly endorsed by the cowardly and murderous liquor gang in Brome, and is so open to the suspicion of being an attempt to coerce the conscience and abridge the liberties of the citizens to serve the liquor interests as to make it imperative that some member of the Commons, which has so largely subsidized that road, demand in the approaching session a public investigation. A whole army of men are in the service of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, scattered from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and the nation cannot afford to allow the despotic authority claimed by the Company over these men. If it can demand the entire time of their men on or off duty, may it not next demand the service of the men at the ballot box? An issue has been raised by this incident which demands the vigorous protest of the press of the country."

The opinion of the _Witness_ itself may be learned from the following article in the _Daily Witness_ of November 24th, 1894:

"We have received a number of letters from persons who have determined to give the preference of their railway patronage against the Canadian Pacific Railway, as a testimony against the att.i.tude of that Company towards the temperance reform, as manifested in the dismissal of Mr. W. W. Smith from his position as station agent at Sutton Junction, for his active advocacy of temperance and enforcement of prohibitory law. Is it right for us to publish these letters, which are evidently only the beginning of what is yet to come, for the feeling throughout the country is very bitter in many quarters where this challenge to the advocates of law and order has become known? The question amounts to this: Is it right for persons who condemn the course of the Company to punish it in this way, and is it right for them to make a public question of it by publishing their action? The reason given for the dismissal of Mr. Smith, as shown by the correspondence which was recently made public in these columns, was that he was making things uncomfortable for certain customers of the Company who were importing liquor into Brome County. As Brome is a prohibition county, those who import liquor for sale within its bounds are outlaws. In Mr. Smith's painful experience they are also a.s.sa.s.sins. As a matter of fact, according to Mr.

Smith's statement, no shipments of liquor pa.s.sed through his station, and he did not use his position as agent of the Company to bring the lawbreakers to justice. Why both the Company and its agents should not be ranged on the side of the law of the land, and why the Company should so protect its share in an unlawful business against any promoter of law and order, are questions not raised. Commercial corporations do not pretend to have souls or conscience. n.o.body expects them to have any, and consequently no one is angry when they show that they have not. Quite apart from all questions of morals, the money interests of the Company are those of the country, and the liquor business does not promote the business of the country. Moreover, it is in the interest of the railway, and eminently so of its customers, to have railway servants protected from drink, and the enforcement of the laws against liquor is the most direct way to protect them from drink.

This is all by the way, however; Companies are not abstract reasoners.

"But there is that in this action of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company which the public are inclined to resent even at the hands of a Company. In the first place the Company declares that it so values the custom of the liquor men of Brome, that it can afford for their sake to boycott the advocates of temperance and the enforcers of law. A station agent, or even a superior officer, might be long and notoriously a victim of these same liquor men, and still remain an officer of the Company, but if he becomes their active enemy, and the active friend of mankind, he is dismissed. This is and it is evidently accepted as being a challenge to all friends of law and order, who are in a position to make the Company suffer in its sensitive pockets, to show whether the custom of the friends of law cannot be made as powerful an engine for the defence of right as that of the enemies of law and order is for the defence of crime. This is what temperance men throughout the country seem to be turning over in their minds just now, and are likely to go on doing so, so long as the position taken by Mr. Brady towards Mr. Smith remains the approved action of the Company, and so long as one holding the intolerable views of Mr. Brady remains its approved agent.

"There is another aspect of the Company's action through Mr.

Brady which is rankling in the minds of the wage-earning population. Mr. Brady told Mr. Smith that the Company wanted all his time, and was going to have it, and that whether on duty or off it would not allow him to give temperance lectures. It is not sufficient to answer that this is not the position of the Company; that its employees, as a rule, are allowed to go to what church they think best, to take part in Christian Endeavor, or football, or whatever they may prefer as the occupation of their leisure. The fact remains that the Company has, through Mr.

Brady, announced its right to check a man, if it chooses, in the exercise of his ordinary rights and duties as a citizen and as a Christian, and has, by sanctioning Mr. Smith's dismissal for temperance lecturing, formally approved Mr. Brady's att.i.tude. The Company may summon to its defence any other reasons for Mr.

Smith's dismissal that it chooses. It cannot alter the fact that the reason given in Mr. Brady's letters is the one which was given to him, and which was the real cause of his act. This claim of a soulless Company to own its employees, body and soul, is one of the most daring and intolerable enunciations of what is in the language of our day termed wage slavery that we have seen, and one for which the great public will probably call it to account.

The Canadian Pacific Railway is a national inst.i.tution, constructed at the public expense, and a ruling influence in the land, and its att.i.tude towards the liquor question and the rights of employees is a matter of national interest, open to free discussion in the newspapers and in the parliament, and if there are citizens who, for the purpose of making it feel in its only sensitive spot how it has outraged public sentiment and done a public wrong, are willing to sink their private advantage and convenience in the public good, by going out of their way to patronize another road, we think it is nothing but right that the railway should be plainly seized of all the facts."

The comments of another Canadian paper, the Toronto Star, are thus quoted in _The Templar_:

"It is a most regrettable condition of affairs when a corporation like the Canadian Pacific will dismiss an employee because he is active in the cause of prohibition, yet that is the case of a Mr.

Smith, who lost his position as agent at Sutton Junction, Quebec, because the liquor dealers whom he opposed had sufficient influence to secure his dismissal.

"No charge of neglect of duty could be made against Mr. Smith, and the only justification the Company offered was the plea that the agent should give his whole time to the Company, and do nothing to antagonize the interests of the Company. There is in this no claim that Mr. Smith had ever neglected his duty, and the whole thing narrows down to the fact that he had incurred the enmity of the liquor dealers, who induced the Company to dismiss him. This action of the Company may please the men who hired a thug to a.s.sault Mr. Smith, and nearly batter his life out, but it is a poor way to make friends of peaceful citizens. It speaks poorly for personal liberty when a man is dismissed from a railway because he opposes the liquor traffic,--a traffic which the Company itself acknowledges to be wrong when it requires its employees not to touch liquor while on duty."

In _The Templar_ of November 23d appeared these remarks with reference to one paper which upheld the C. P. R.:

"The dismissal of Mr. W. W. Smith from the services of the C. P.

R., because he was obnoxious to illicit whiskey sellers in Brome County, has evoked strong expression of disapproval from not a few of the papers of the Dominion.

"Others have preserved a silence, or feebly and unfairly stated the case, not daring to rebuke the C. P. R. So far as we know, the Hamilton _Spectator_ alone has had the courage to defend the gross injustice done a fellow-citizen, and its defence is peculiar.

"Would _The Spectator_ permit us to clear the issue? _The Templar_, in giving the C. P. R.-Smith correspondence to the public, pointed out the danger to the country involved in suffering the C. P. R. contention to prevail. If that corporation can justly dismiss a man because he employs a portion of his time off duty to demand respect for the law of the land, on the ground that he is antagonizing the interests of the Company, may it not logically demand, under pain of dismissal, that he shall vote as the Company judges to be in its interests? What right has the citizen that the Canadian Pacific Railway may not require him to give up to serve its ends? Is _The Spectator_ prepared to defend such tyranny, and, yes, we will say it--treason to the State?"

Not only the journals of the Canadian Interior, but those of the Maritime Provinces as well, showed their interest in this affair, which had so aroused the temperance people of Quebec and Ontario. The following, published in _The Templar_, is taken from _The Intelligencer_, Fredericton, New Brunswick:

"We have set out the facts of the case at some length, because it involves much more than the position and prospects of the dismissed official. His case is certainly a hard one. It is not denied that for fifteen years he served the Railway Company faithfully. No charge of neglect of duty is made against him.

Even the charge of the rumsellers, that he used information obtained as the Company's officer to aid in their prosecution, is not proven. He denies it, and the a.s.sistant Superintendent admits that he has failed to find proof of it.

"But in spite of this, the Company, yielding to the clamorings of the rum gang, dismiss an officer against whom it has not been possible to make any charge of neglect, and not even to substantiate the complaints of those who were bent upon his dismissal. Mr. Smith's offense was that he was too good a citizen to suit the views of the outlaws who are engaged in the illicit rum-traffic. They sought to take his life, hiring one of their own brutal gang to commit the murder. The attempt was made, but failing to kill him, they renewed their efforts to have him dismissed. And in this they were more successful. It is scarcely possible that the outlawed rumsellers of Brome County had sufficient influence alone, to accomplish Mr. Smith's discharge.

They were probably backed by the traffic in Montreal and elsewhere. And this goes to show that the traffic is one; that distillers, brewers, wholesalers and saloon and hotel keepers are united; that licensed and illicit sellers make common cause, and that they use their awful power not only to defy all laws and regulations which hamper them, but are ready to rob of their means of livelihood, and their good name, and even to murder such men as they think stand in their way. These are things which might be expected of the traffic. But it is quite amazing that a great corporation like the C. P. R. should become its ally. Most employers would stand by an employee who had suffered at the hands of murderous ruffians, because of his sympathy with law enforcement, and the promotion of the moral welfare of his community. But the a.s.sistant Superintendent of the C. P. R., under whom Mr. Smith worked, was not moved by such consideration, a mere sentimental consideration he would probably call it. He preferred to cooperate with the rum traffic--to become its tool.

"We find it difficult to believe that the General Manager or the Directors can approve the dismissal of an employee for the reason stated in this case. If they do, then men interested in temperance reform can no longer have a place in the employ of the Company. And further, the Company declares its willingness to be known not only as the ally of the legalized rum traffic, but as the friend and helper of the outlaws and would-be murderers of the traffic.

"This case should not be allowed to fade out of the memory of the people. It a.s.serts the right of an employer, not only to the time of the employee, but to his conscience, his sense of the duties of good citizenship, and his self-respect. If permitted, unrebuked and uncorrected, it helps to establish the right of capital to do any unjust and tyrannical thing, either of its own will or at the dictation of the conscienceless rum traffic, or of other organized evil.

"There ought, certainly, be some way of getting redress for what on the face of it appears to be an act of cruel injustice, done at the behest of the rum traffic, legal and illicit.

"Not those alone who are interested in temperance, but every man who believes that men are other than serfs, and who would have established beyond question the right of a man to have his own conscience in matters which relate to himself and the community, should be concerned to make impossible such tyrannical exercise of power."

Not only the Canadian, but some of the American papers also, took up the cry of tyranny, as is shown by the following, which was published in the _Presbyterian Observer_, Philadelphia, and repeated in the Montreal _Witness_:

"A Canadian Railway Company has been guilty of a piece of mean persecution against one of its agents on account of his temperance activity. The station master at Sutton Junction, of the Canadian Pacific Railway, in the Province of Quebec, was recently notified that he 'must quit temperance work, or quit the Company.' The letter further states the ground upon which this action is based. 'It makes no difference whether you are on duty or off duty, so far as this Company is concerned. They demand the whole and entire time of their men, and they are going to have it.' Short, sharp, peremptory this, but is also a high-handed proceeding--an infringement upon personal rights. It does not appear that this man had been derelict in duty to his employers, or that he took the time that belonged to them in promoting the cause of temperance. His only offence was that, while conscientious in daily work, he thought of others, and labored for their welfare in his spare moments. For that he incurred official reprobation, and was given the choice of quitting temperance work or the Company.

"The railway magnates claimed entire control over all his time, whether on duty or off duty, demanding in their tautological language, 'The whole and entire time' of their men, and bluffly adding that 'they are going to have it.' They would leave no room for doubt, parley or protest. Accordingly, nothing was left a man of conscience but to retire and seek employment where he could exercise a little personal liberty. It is no new thing for men to give up railway positions on conscientious grounds, when compelled to work on the Sabbath, but this is the first instance we have known where a Railway Company has forced a person out of its employ because of his temperance principles. In our country, other things being equal, total abstainers are preferred by railway men. This Canadian Company is away behind the age."

An affair like this must indeed be very widely discussed, and awaken considerable interest, when the general opinion in any place with regard to it is published in the local news from that vicinity, yet the following paragraph appeared among other items in the _Witness_ of November 24th, as Danville news:

"Railways have a right to all the time of employees in hours of duty, but many are grieved at the action of the Canadian Pacific Railway in demanding of Mr. W. W. Smith, whom they dismissed for activity in the temperance cause, that he must not give any of his time to it when off duty, as such demand is un-British and strongly in the direction of serfdom. Many spirited people are going to resent the injustice."

Various a.s.sociations discussed this dismissal in their meetings, and pa.s.sed resolutions concerning it. The following is an extract from a report, which appeared in the _Witness_ of November 20th, of a meeting of the Quebec Evangelical Alliance, held in the city of Quebec just previous:

"It was also voted that the following resolution be placed on record, and a copy furnished to the press for publication:

"'That this Alliance voice its sympathy through the press with the different moral and religious organizations of the Province, which have taken action condemnatory of the arbitrary procedure of the management of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the dismissal of Mr. Smith, their station agent at Sutton Junction, for no other offence than that of being deeply interested in the moral and religious welfare of the people of his own district.

"'And further, that this Alliance regrets that the Canadian Pacific Railway, as a Company subsidized by the Government of Canada, should see fit to interfere with the civil and religious rights of its employees, and ally itself with those who are evading established law, and doing their utmost to destroy social order in this country.

"'And this Alliance is of the opinion that if the Canadian Pacific Railway management seriously desires to retain the sympathy and support of the best element in the community in building up their business as public carriers, they will, at the earliest possible moment, do full justice to their late agent, Mr. Smith.'"

The following, also published in the _Witness_, is from a report of the meeting of a temperance society in one of the sister Provinces:

"PRESCOTT, Ont., Dec. 5th.--The forty-fifth session of the Grand Division of the Sons of Temperance was held here to-day. The question of the discharge of Mr. W. W. Smith, of Sutton Junction, by the Canadian Pacific Railway, for his loyalty to the temperance cause, was brought up, the following report of a special committee on the subject being unanimously adopted: WHEREAS, Mr. W. W. Smith of Sutton Junction, President of the Brome County Alliance, in the Province of Quebec, whose attempted a.s.sa.s.sination for his fidelity to law and order is a public fact, has been summarily dismissed from his position as agent of the Canadian Pacific Railway, for the express reason of his advocacy of the cause of temperance, this Grand Division desires to express the view that this action of the Railway Company is a distinct violation of the rights of citizenship, and deserves strong condemnation as being tyrannical and unjust in the extreme, and is calculated, if not redressed, to destroy public spirit and inflict deep injury to the civil rights of the people."

We will now look at some of the opinions of individuals, as expressed in letters sent by them to the temperance papers.

The following communication was sent to the _Witness_ before the publication of Mr. Brady's letters. Doubtless, the writer of this article may, after reading those letters, have entertained some doubts as to the infallibility of the opinions here expressed, but they show, at least, how impossible it seemed to some citizens that such a corporation as the Canadian Pacific Railway could oppose temperance activity on the part of its employees. The letter, addressed to the Editor of the _Witness_, is as follows:

"SIR,--In your issue of October 9th, a statement occurs which suggests the necessity of a word of caution. The following is the sentence: 'Some astonishing revelations may be expected, as the temperance people are intensely indignant that the Company should have yielded to the demands of the liquor party, and removed from its service one who has been for years a trusted servant and faithful officer.' From a personal acquaintance with several gentlemen who control the appointment of officials of this and similar grades of office in connection with the Canadian Pacific Railway, I wait an explanation of this act of executive power which will present it in an altogether different light from that in which it now appears. I cannot believe that officers of any Company, transacting business with, and dependent upon, the public, as the Canadian Pacific Railway is, would descend to an act as described in the case in hand. What the explanation will be, I will not conjecture, but I can easily conceive it is susceptible of an explanation which will remove all cause of censure from the Company. In more than one instance, I have known the officials of this Company to firmly support an employee in the maintenance of moral principle, even at a financial loss to the Company. But, apart from all loyalty to right principle, on the part of the officiary of the Company, it is to me simply inconceivable that shrewd business men as these officials are known to be would be guilty of an act which from a purely business point of view would be a stupidly suicidal one. It taxes one's credulity to too great a degree to ask one to believe that, in view of the recent plebiscite taken in several Provinces, that any officer, possessed of mental qualifications sufficient to secure a position of power in the Company, would ally himself with a coterie of lawbreakers in a secluded village, and perpetrate an act which would be resented by thousands of business men and tens of thousands of the travelling public in our Dominion, and attach a stain to the name of the Company which would challenge contempt for years future. The facilities afforded by other competing lines at so many points in our Dominion for such as would resent an act of this character are too great to permit a Company that is hungering for freight and pa.s.senger traffic to yield to such inconsiderable and immoral influences as the liquor men of Sutton Junction and their sympathizers could command. The Company knows well how slight a matter often creates a prejudice for or against a railway which affects its dividends for years, and they know well also that when an act of this kind is actually done and unearthed, that it appeals to principles held as sacred by the public of our Dominion. They also know that, however the temperance ballot holders may be divided in their political allegiances, in a matter of this kind, when no political ties bind them, they would be practically a unit in resenting an act not only tyrannical, but under the circ.u.mstances cowardly and immoral. One cannot believe that this shrewd Company of high-minded and acute business gentlemen would be guilty of the folly attributed to them. Their effort is in every way honorable to attract their own line, and it is past belief that they should play into the hands of the Grand Trunk and other competing lines in any such manner as the accusation, if proved, would mean. Give them time and opportunity for an explanation before any expression of indignation manifests itself, and especially before any hasty and inconsiderate act of discrimination against the Company is made."

SPECTATOR.

The publication of the correspondence between Messrs. Brady and Smith brought a flood of letters from the public to the Editor's offices. It would be scarcely possible in this place to give all the letters which appeared in the various papers, but we quote a few. The following is from the _Witness_ of November 23d:

"SIR,--I read with much pleasure the letter from 'A Total Abstainer' in your issue of November 4th, and his purpose not to travel by the C. P. R. in future, when he has the privilege of another route. I would like to a.s.sure him that he does not stand alone, that there are many others who feel just as strongly. It was only to-day that I learned of two persons who, at some inconvenience to themselves, took pa.s.sage by the Grand Trunk Railway in preference to the Canadian Pacific Railway, on account of the way in which the Company has played so miserably into the hands of the liquor dealers; and I know of other travellers who are resolved to use the C. P. R. only when it cannot be avoided.

I am informed that some of the temperance organizations to which he refers are not going to let the matter rest where it now is, but will manifest their indignation in their own way and time.

"It is almost beyond belief that a Company like this should treat a servant with such inhumanity.

"After being almost murdered when on duty by an employed agent of the liquor party, and when about recovered from his wounds, he is dismissed from the service for taking part in temperance work in his own time. These are the facts as stated in the published correspondence, and they need only to be stated to call forth the indignation and condemnation of all honorable men.

"ANOTHER TOTAL ABSTAINER."

Another letter, published in the _Witness_ of December 29th, and signed "Disinterested," is given below. The allusion to the queries of the Alliance and the replies of the a.s.sistant General Manager will be more fully explained in the next chapter.

"To the Editor of the _Witness_:

"SIR,--I am usually of moderate temperament and seldom take extreme views or measures on any subject, but if I understand rightly the present state of the controversy between the Dominion Alliance and the Canadian Pacific Railway, unless the latter has a secret compact with the brewers, distillers and liquor venders of this county, to warrant their taking the present stand, they are adopting the most extraordinary course of any corporation seeking public patronage I have ever known. The following is, as I understand it, the present position of the affair: