Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/329

 Mr. Villard also received at St. Paul a deputation of officials of the Canadian province of Manitoba, with whose Government he had been in communication for some time regarding the breaking up of the Canadian Pacific's statutory monopoly of the through east-and-west business from the province. As, under Dominion law, in order to prevent American lines from being extended into the province, no railroad competing with the Canadian Pacific could be built within fifteen miles of the international boundary, a plan was adopted to build a Northern Pacific branch from the main line to the boundary and another from Winnipeg, the capital of the province, down to the forbidden belt, and to carry passengers and goods across the interval by ordinary vehicles. It proved an impracticable scheme, and had to be abandoned after the construction of the line to the boundary from the south had been commenced, and Mr. Villard regretted the mistake he had made in entering into it. The enterprise was sold to the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railroad Company, which was allied to the Canadian Pacific at that time.

The report of the chief engineer on the cost of the new part of the main line reached Mr. Villard soon after his return to New York late in June. It contained the startling admission that the actual requirements for the completion of the main line would exceed the estimates by more than fourteen millions of dollars. This revelation was a doubly staggering blow to him, because it discredited all his confident statements to his associates and followers based on the original estimates and confirmed time and again to him as true by the engineering department, that the cash resources in hand were ample for all wants, and because it imposed new financiering burdens on him. It was certain, too, to affect unfavorably the securities of his several companies. At this time, there became perceptible, indeed, the first signs of a reaction from the great rise in prices which had continued almost uninterruptedly, especially in railroad shares, since the