Mr Childers gave to the Three per Cent investors. There was a rush made out of Consols into Corporation stocks, Colonial Government Bonds, and the best class of railway debentures, preference shares, &c. The latter especially show a marked rise on the prices of 1883. Nearly every railway debenture quoted in London gained in value, the aggregate appreciation having been over 6½ millions sterling. The stocks of guaranteed lines gained in value nearly 3½ millions, leased lines about half a million, and preference stocks close on 2¾ millions. On railway preference and debenture stocks generally, the rise for the year was over 13 millions, but unfortunately there is another side to the picture. Railway ordinary stocks lost fully more than the preferences and debentures gained. They were worth less by 14½ millions sterling at the end of the year than they had been at the end of 1883. Taking the home railway market all over, it lost from 1½ to 2 millions sterling in 1884. That was a trifle, however, to the shrinkage of the colonial lines, which mean practically Grand Trunks and Canadian Pacifies, with a few particularly sweet things like Montreal and Sorel thrown in. Canadian Pacifics dropped from 56½ to 46, a depreciation of more than 1½ million sterling on the stock listed. Grand Trunks performed one of their long drops in the early part of the year, and, roughly speaking, twice the quantity of them could have been bought with the same money at the end of December as at the beginning of January. Their aggregate shrinkage exceeded 5 millions sterling, raising the total loss in the Colonial railway market to not far from 7 millions.
Canadians are a stepping-stone to Americans. A long course of Grand Trunks prepared us for the ne plus ultra of gambling stocks – Erie and Wabash. When we approach the American market, our arithmetical ideas have to be enlarged to suit the climate. Thousands, and even hundreds of thousands, sound small in the vernacular of the Vanderbilts and Jay Gould. Sometimes millions are a hardly adequate gauge of the high stakes that the American railway kings play for among themselves, or with the public when the public is in a mood for being fleeced. There have been many pyrotechnical displays in the American market, but the experiences of 1884 eclipsed them all. It was a year of historic scandals, defaults, liquidations, receiverships, railway wars, and general embezzlement. Big operators making their own game and throwing their loaded dice with unblushing frankness, had fleeced the last of the lambs, and now fell to fleecing each other. But in this instance the proverb has not held true, that when rogues fall out honest men get their own. The rogues have fallen out, but the honest men have got little of their money back yet. One rotten railway after another has burst up: first, dividends were stopped, then fixed charges ceased to be earned, and now apparently only a few steps more have to be taken to land even the old Trunk lines in bankruptcy. Twelve months ago it would have sounded as incredible that Lake Shore would "pass" a dividend, as that New York Central may have to do it before the current year is out. Bad as the outlook was at the beginning of 1884, he would have been silenced as a croaker who predicted that Louisville and Nashvilles would sink into the twenties, Pennsylvania and Ohios into the thirties, St Pauls into the sixties,
