The Prey of the Strongest

Excerpt: “MY DEAR BAKER, Of all the men I worked with on the Canadian Pacific Railroad in the Kicking Horse Pass and on the Shushwap, when you and men like you were hustling to put it through, I am not, nowadays, in touch with one. They are, doubtless, distinguished or have gone under. Some of them, perhaps, lie in obscure graves beside the track of other roads, which, in their parlance, "broke out" when the C.P.R. was finished: when End of Track joined End of Track: when the very bottom of their world fell out because two Worlds, East and West, were united by our labour, yours and theirs and even mine. Others of them are perhaps famous. They may have some mighty mountains and a way station named after them, as you may have, for all I know: they may even be Managers! And what so great as a Manager of a Through Continental Road, after all? There are Ministers and Monarchs and other men of note, but to my mind the Managers top them all. That is by the way, and you shall not take it as flattery: the humble worker with the pick and shovel and hammer and drill and bar, like myself, cannot but think with awe of the cold clear heights in which they dwell."