B. Co., "I want to be reasonably assured of what
every man-Jack of my people is doing all the time. I want to know what
he reads, and if he treats his wife well, and how his last baby is
getting along--you see, he's a working-partner of mine."
There came out of Northern British Columbia last year the Indian wife
and half-breed daughters of an H.B. Co. Factor. They were bound for
Montreal and it was their first trip "outside." The Commissioner at
Winnipeg contradicts the old saw, and surely has "a soul above a
beaver-skin"; like Mulvaney, too, he "has bowels." Quickly went forward
a letter to a tactful woman in the border-town through which the
visiting ladies must pass--"Meet them, and see that they get the proper
things to wear in society circles in Montreal. I don't want them to feel
ill at ease when they get there." Stories like these give us glimpses of
the kind of paternalism exercised by the Ancient Company, the one trust
that has never ground the faces of the poor, and in whose people to-day
appears the "constant service of the Old World."
The big books of The Company a year or two ago in unmistakable
round-hand declared that one Running Rabbit, lawful widow of Blueskin,
was entitled to draw from the coffers clear-side bacon and a modicum of
flour.
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