North West Company

“ Leith, who manages the concerns of the North-West Company in Athabasca, has been so liberally supplied with men and goods that it will be almost wonderful if the opposition can make good a subsistence during the winter. Fort Chipewyan alone has an equipment of no less than seventy men, enough to crush their rivals." (Editor's note.—Another year saw Simpson Governor of the United Company.) ”

“ FUR TRADE. About two thousand men are employed by 329the North-west Company in their posts in the upper country. Those who are stationed at the remote trading posts lead a very savage life, but little better indeed than that of Indians: some of them remain far up in the country for four or five years together. The head clerk or principal agent generally marries an Indian girl, the daughter of some eminent chief, by which he gains in a peculiar manner the affections of the whole tribe, a matter of great importance. ”

“ Such a career seemed to their bold, energetic dispositions worthier of drapers' apprentices. It is said they counselled the Company not to think of establishing one or two trading posts and expect the Indians to come to them for trade, but to push on in the wilderness to the north and west, building new depots and stirring up the hunters to greater activity and more profitable results. Had this advice been followed, the exploration of the great North-West would not only have been anticipated by almost a century ”

“ Doubtless the North-West concern at the beginning of the century possessed a powerful advantage in the system of profits and deserved promotion, while the Company's servants, unstimulated by any hope of additional reward or certain promotion, was calculated to foster apathy, rather than zeal. ”

“ The Company still King in the North-West—Its Forts Described—Fort Garry—Fort Vancouver—Franklin—Walla Walla—Yukon—Kamloops—Samuel Black—Mountain House—Fort Pitt—Policy of the Great Company.
The Company, in yielding the sovereignty of the Great North-West to Canada, was still a king, though crown and sceptre had been taken from it. Its commercial ascendancy was no whit injured; it is still one of the greatest corporations and the greatest fur company in the world. But new interests have arisen ”

“ The ambition of the Company to extend their trading posts still farther and farther inland incited still more explorations into the unknown North-West. They builded better than they knew, for while their aim hardly went beyond that of increasing their own revenues, the results were inevitable factors in the development of the country. ”

“ It is understood that, in surrendering to Her Majesty all the rights, etc., of the Company in any part of British North America not comprised in Rupert's Land, Canada, or British Columbia, the Company are to retain the posts they actually occupy in the North­West Territory. ”

“ Its mind is turned to the development of its resources, to business, to enterprise, to education, to economic problems; it is marching with the North in the same purpose of wealth by industry. It is true that the railways, mines, and furnaces could not have been without enormous investments of Northern capital, but I was continually surprised to find so many and important local industries the result solely of home capital, made and saved since the war.
In this industrial change, in the growth of manufactures, the Southern people are necessarily divided on the national economic problems. ”

“ This outrage brought the most sensible portion of the traders to their senses, and they immediately made efforts to compromise their difficulties, and to join their interests into one. These efforts resulted in the formation of the Northwest Company, which soon became so rich and powerful that for a long time they were enabled to monopolize the northern fur trade, and cope with the most powerful and favored combinations which the capitalists of Great Britain could bring against them. ”

“ A small clique of capitalists who had bought control of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railway systems, each of eight thousand miles and more, desiring to operate them as one property or interest, formed a third corporation called the Northern Securities Company. ”

“ But in 1783, at the close of the Revolutionary War, the Northwest Company was organized, with headquarters at Montreal. The British still held possession of our Northwest long after the treaty with the United States was signed. ”

“ The younger men in the Northwest Company were fired with ambition and assured of an adequate reward for their services. While for many years their older rivals had slumbered, content with the limits of their territory, the more enterprising Northwest Company, with infinite toil and danger, extended their posts throughout the interior and western parts of Canada, and opened up a new and hitherto undeveloped country. ”

“ Until the beginning of the nineteenth century the fur trade of the Northwest was in the hands of the powerful Northwest Company of Montreal, a race of merchant princes about whose exploits such a true and brilliant sheen of romance has been thrown. But the United States Government was not content that Canadian princes alone should get possession of the wealth of the Northern forests, and as early as 1796 it [Pg 283] sent agents westward to meet the Indians and to erect trading-houses. ”

“ New Netherland had the distinction of being founded and governed by a great slave-trading corporation—the Dutch West India Company—which endeavored to extend the market for its human merchandise whithersoever its influence reached. ”

“ Whereas all the subjects of the High and Mighty Lords States General, who pursue their trade or commerce here in New Netherland, are bound to pay, before they can ship their goods, a duty of Ten per cent to the West India Company in Holland, which was granted said Company by their High Mightinesses in consideration of the great War which the Honble West India Company is carrying on and the heavy expense it has to bear ”

“ During the interval, the merchants of Montreal had put their heads together. Division and internecine warfare in the face of Indian hostility and the Hudson’s Bay traders steady advancement inland, were folly. The Montrealers must unite. The united traders were known as the Northwest Company. The Company had no capital. Montreal partners who were merchants outfitted the canoes with goods. Men experienced in the trade led the brigades westward. ”

“ After the cession of Canada, by conquest, to the British, in 1762, the French, not dislodged from the woods, still continued the fur-trade through the coureurs de bois. The English monopoly for a while slackened in its vigor. The prize at stake, however, was a tempting one. Individual and associated enterprise, involving fierce altercations and treacherous alliances with the Indians, were enlisted in the fur-traffic. In 1783 some merchants of Montreal entered into a partnership company, and in 1787 united with another, thus constituting the famous Northwest Company. ”

“ A great deal of the opposition between rival companies has been from their point of view an error, as they have subsequently discovered for themselves. When the Great Western Company first opened their station at Basingstoke there was war between them and the South-Western, who thought all their London West-End passengers would transfer themselves to the Great Western at Basingstoke in order to avoid a cab drive from Waterloo to Paddington. ”

“ Under the system proposed by Owen the instruments of production were to become the property, not of the whole community, but of the particular set of workers who used them. " There is no other alternative," he said, " than National Companies 'for each trade. . . . Thus all those trades which relate to clothing shall form a company such as tailors, shoemakers, hatters, milliners, and mantua-makers; and all the different manufacturers [i.e. operatives] shall be arranged in a similar way; com- munications shall pass from the various departments to the Grand National establishment in London." ”

“ About 1898 there opened a period of consolidation in which scores of short lines were united, mainly under the leadership of Northern capitalists, and new through service opened to the North and West. Thus Southern industries were given easy outlets to the markets of the nation and brought within the main currents of national business enterprise. ”