The Munsey, September 1911

Munsey's Magazine, September 1911: "Mackenzie and Mann" This issue of Munsey's features a biographical article by Isaac F. Marcosson on William Mackenzie and Donald D. Mann, the Canadian railroad magnates who built and own the Canadian Northern Railway system. The article traces Mann's rise from a farm boy in Ontario to a lumber-jack and ultimately a major railroad constructor. Beginning in Michigan's lumber camps in the 1870s, Mann worked as a timber cruiser and logging foreman before contracting timber work for the Canadian Pacific. Mackenzie's background is sketched more briefly: born near Toronto in poverty, he worked as a schoolteacher and shopkeeper before entering the lumber business in the 1880s. The article emphasizes their partnership as empire-builders whose fourteen-year effort to construct the Canadian Northern—averaging one mile of new track daily—represents an unprecedented achievement in that a railroad's actual builders remain its owners. Accompanying photographs show their homes, railway terminals, stations, and prairie settlements established along their line. Interspersed is a Pears' Soap advertisement emphasizing beauty treatments.