The Caledonian was a large railway, as railways ranked in a country the extremest length of which is only as far as Sudbury is from Toronto, which could be tucked into Lake Superior, and no spot in which is fifty miles from salt water. There were, of course many promotions in the Caledonian service; but it didn’t take very long for a young fellow who was looking a little farther ahead than Saturday night to learn that a clerk outside the head office stood mighty little chance of developing from a weekly wage-earner into a salaried official. Perhaps, if I had remained in Glasgow I might have become station master at Stobcross, and been regarded as quite a fortunate officer.
Because a country youth working in the city went home every night and was, in the main, devoted to his native heath, it must not be supposed that he gave no heed to city affairs. Democracy had a mighty hold on Scottish young manhood in the seventies and eighties. The ten-pound householder was a Liberal, and though I wasn’t a ten-pound householder, I was a Liberal too, and took enough interest in statesmanship to help the party in the 1880 election, and to help myself to as much of the first-class oratory as was available before the polling.
The Reform Act of 1867 gave Glasgow three members, all representing the same constituency. But, by one of the machinations devised by old-fashioned politicians, who loved not democracy, the elector could only vote for two. In a way, I suppose, this was a device for obtaining proportional representation; by very good luck it might win the minority something more. The party which believed itself to be the stronger--in those days anything more than two parties would have seemed an absurdity, if not a crime--would run three candidates, hoping to elect all. The weaker would run only two, hoping to elect at least one.
In 1880 the Glasgow Liberals were in a great majority, and put up three candidates: Dr. Charles Cameron, proprietor of the “Glasgow Daily Mail”; Mr. Charles Middleton, of Caldwell & Middleton, and Mr. George Anderson. All three were big men physically, and were collectively dubbed “Eighteen feet of Liberalism”. The Conservatives nominated two candidates. It was the Liberals’ business to distribute their votes scientifically. This could only be done by an efficient ward organization, which would know all the Liberal voters, and instruct them to vote in the right proportions for Cameron and Middleton, for Cameron and Anderson, and for Middleton and Anderson.