Page:Ralph Connor - The man from Glengarry.djvu/437

  this has an exceedingly depressing effect upon business."

"Then," interrupted a share-holder, "it is time the company should withdraw from that country and confine itself to a district where the market is sure and the future more stable."

"What about these fads, Colonel?" asked another share-holder; "these reading-rooms, libraries, etc? Do you think we pay a man to establish that sort of thing? To my mind they simply put a lot of nonsense into the heads of the working-men and are the chief cause of dissatisfaction." Upon this point the colonel did not feel competent to reply; consequently the feeling of the meeting became decidedly hostile to the present manager, and a resolution was offered demanding his resignation, It was also agreed that the board of directors should consider the advisability of withdrawing altogether from British Columbia, inasmuch as the future of that country seemed to be very uncertain. Thereupon Colonel Thorp rose and begged leave to withdraw his name from the directorate of the company. He thought it was unwise to abandon a country where they had spent large sums of money, without a thorough investigation of the situation, and he further desired to enter his protest against the injustice of making their manager suffer for a failure for which he had in no way been shown to be responsible. But the share-holders refused even to consider Colonel Thorp's request, and both the president and secretary exhausted their eloquence in eulogizing his value to the company. As a compromise