[One of the most accredited works upon this vital topic is _An
Historical and Practical Treatise upon Elemental Locomotion;_ by Mr.
Alexander Gordon, Civil Engineer. It shows the commercial, political,
and moral advantages; the means by which an elemental power is obtained;
the rise, progress, and description of steam-carriages; the roads upon
which they may be made to travel; and the ways and means for their
general introduction. This arrangement of the subject is exceedingly
well executed by Mr. Gordon, who has added a series of efficient
illustrations--from a diagram simplifying the high-pressure modification
of the steam-engine as applied to steam-carriages, to the last completed
Steam Drag and Carriage attached; while the most material points of Mr.
Gordon's views are fortified by a condensation of the evidence before
the select committee of the House of Commons. All this and much more is
accomplished within two hundred octavo pages, which a less economical
and therefore less praiseworthy editor would have expanded into a costly
quarto. Mr. Gordon's work has thus been planned and executed in the
right spirit: he maintains national benefits which must arise from the
adoption of steam carriages, and he seeks to place his views in the
hands of all who are immediately interested in the subject by means as
efficient as economical. We quote a few extracts, (the most interesting
to the general reader,) from the first chapter, which aims at a cursory
estimate of a few of the leading commercial, political, and moral
advantages which will accrue to the community by the substitution of
inanimate or steam power for animate or horse power, for locomotive
purposes; leaving its spirit of fairness to the just appreciation of
the reader.]
_Economy of Conveyance_.
In a great commercial country like ours, extending its ramifications to
every branch of natural and artificial produce, it is almost superfluous
to remark that a vast capital is sunk annually in the mere transport of
marketable commodities: and which is not only a loss to the seller as
being an unproductive outlay, but entails a heavy increase of expense
to the buyer also upon every article of daily consumption. Any means,
therefore, that will accelerate the conveyance, and at the same time
reduce materially the expense of carriage, bears upon its surface a
great public gain.
Expeditious locomotion, to the commercial world more particularly, in
every mercantile transaction, is equivalent to capital: and such is the
vast importance of economy of time here, that no extra expense is
considered as too great to accomplish the utmost speed. We have this
practically illustrated in the preference which society gives to a
complicated machinery put into motion at an enormous expense, to
travelling by the winds of heaven which cost nothing.
To the merchant time gained is equal to money: for time occupied in
travelling is just so much profitable employment lost. Time occupied
in the transport of goods is equivalent to so much interest of capital
spent: for a thousand pounds invested in merchandise is unproductive so
many days as the transport is tedious. That part of the capital of an
individual which is employed in the carrying of his goods to and from
market, is so much abstracted from his means of producing more of the
article in which he exerts his ingenuity and labour, whether it be in
agriculture or manufacture.
Easy communication lessens the time occupied in the transport; and a
saving of time lessens the distance, or our notion of distance. This
effects a saving of money: and a saving of money permits of a greater
employment of capital. The man who can only afford to keep one traveller
soliciting orders for his goods, will thus be enabled to keep two;
because the expense of travelling will be reduced a half. Or it may be,
he will find it more advantageous to employ the saving in the production
of a more delicate and desirable article in the way of his trade. The
increased traffic from place to place will give likewise an impulse to
business, which, in the present stagnant times, is most desirable. The
manufacturer in Scotland will find the London market more easily arrived
at: and the merchant in the metropolis will be able to get his orders
more rapidly given and executed. A conveyance which, in good management,
would be a weekly one, is, in bad management, a monthly one: and the
carrier is obliged to quadruple his charge for the transport. To meet
this charge the merchant has to add to the cost of the article, and so
on throughout the various gradations of mercantile transition, until the
consumer pays the necessarily increased price. Hence, whatever reduces
the price of transportation, reduces the price of the commodity
transported. Whatever reduces the traveller's time, reduces his claim
for compensation, and (competition being always at work) he is content
with a smaller profit upon his merchandise. If a scarcity of any article
occurs at one point of the kingdom, the monopolist there cannot continue
his increased price for any duration of time. Commerce may, in this
respect, be resembled to water, for, if not obstructed, it will always
circulate till it finds its level. An opening or channel being
furnished, an equalised supply will make its way wherever required.
Thus we see that the strength, wealth, and happiness of a nation, depend
very much upon facility of communication. The ill-defended spot in the
empire is alive to the reality, that subsidies having bad roads or a
tedious navigation to pass may arrive too late to present an effectual
resistance to a plundering enemy. The hard-working emigrant of a remote
settlement, distant from a market, feels the difficulty and loss he
sustains in bringing produce to the spot where merchants and dealers
meet for the purposes of exchange. A spot uncommunicated with may be
visited by the honors of famine, and no channel exist for conveying
thither the food required. A grievous pestilence may sweep off an
isolated people before the aid of the physician can arrive to arrest
its progress.
Such facts are obvious to even the most indifferent observers of human
society. Yet, nevertheless, there have been, and are, short-sighted
individuals, in every gradation of it, with minds and views so warped
and distorted by an ignorant selfishness, that they have opposed
every improvement which tended to make the least change in their
long-established habits. Such persons were they, who, during the last
century, promoted petitions from counties in the neighbourhood of
London, praying Parliament not to extend the turnpike-roads into remoter
parts of the country, lest these remote districts, by means of a less
expensive labour, should be able to sell their agricultural products
in the London markets at a cheaper rate than themselves!--and such in
our own day are the attempts made to put down steam conveyance. How
short-sighted we are! Did we consult our own advantage we should see
that those facilities of communication, against which we oppose
ourselves, are the growing sinews of a greater fabric of wealth and
prosperity.
Such are the numerous and important advantages, in a commercial point of
view, which will result to society from the substitution of elementary
for physical power. But even these, great though they be, are of
trifling consideration when compared with the immense benefits which
will result from the substitution when brought into operation as an
economic principle.
_Substitution of Steam for Horse Power_.
[Mr. Gordon then refers to the conclusion of political economists "that
the grand source of all our evils is _redundancy_ of population; or in
other words, an increase of animated life _beyond_ the nourishment
adequate to support it."]
The substitution of inanimate for animate power, if not the panacea which
is to cure all the evils of our condition, is at least one that comes
recommended as a matter of fact--easy of operation, and effectual in its
result. If want of food, or, in other words, redundancy of population
be the bane of the country, it does not propose to meet that evil by a
visionary project, tending in its operation to unhinge society--tedious in
its process, and ending at length in bitter disappointment--but it meets
the evil directly, substantially, and effectually, by the substitution of
food.
And how are all these immense advantages to be effected?--By the
substitution of inanimate for animate power. At present, the animate
power employed in the commercial transportations of this great kingdom is
estimated to amount to two millions of horses: each horse consumes as much
food as is necessary for the support of eight men. Hence the conversion of
its consumption to purposes of human existence would, if carried to this
practical extent, amount to a quantity of food equal to support sixteen
millions of people.
Where the product is so enormous--so vastly beyond our immediate
necessities--it is not requisite to go into any minutiae of detail. To
calculate all the gains we will leave to the political economist, as also
to bring the matter out in its fair proportions; but to establish the
matter clearly within the bounds of a safe, an easy, and practical issue,
we have merely to state, that a conversion of food from a physical to a
moral purpose, adequate to the supply of one-fourth part of the above
aggregate estimate, that is to say, to four millions, is amply sufficient
to relieve us at the present moment from that pressure of pauperism which
sits like an incubus upon the energies of the nation, and which will
precipitate us, if not timely avoided, into speedy and irretrievable ruin.
Now the suppression of the stage-horses upon our principal thoroughfares,
and of the dray-horses in the great commercial towns, may be calculated
to economize a saving of food equivalent to the supply of the above number
of human beings.
It is, perhaps, not superfluous to remark, that the amount of food,
equal to the supply of the said four millions, is not the produce of an
extended agriculture and proportionate outlay, but is just _that part_
of the annual produce of the country, subtracted from the whole, which
is at present required for the mere purpose of _transportation_--i.e. to
feed the animals used for draught,--and is consequently a dead loss as
unproductive capital.
In addition to the evil arising from such a consumption of unproductive
food, is also to be considered the very great loss consequent upon the
heavy capital sunk in _horse_ purchase. Were this viewed, as properly it
ought, as money withheld from other purposes of trade, and which might
be more advantageously invested, our capitalists and men of science
would not oppose the substitution of inanimate for animate power in the
way they have done. Neither, did the landed interest maturely weigh the
varied benefits it will produce in agriculture, would they view it in
the light of an invasion upon their respective interests. They do not
give a _quid_ without receiving a _quo_ every way as valuable. The
reduction of farm consumption--the bugbear of the project--will be
met and compensated by a steady and proportionate demand from other
quarters. Whilst in the United Kingdom, the 8,100,000 acres of land now
required to feed the horses, together with the capital sunk in their
purchase, will, when both applied to other and general purposes, amply
compensate for the exchange.
In order more readily to show one effect, let the horses be considered
only 1,000; a smaller number may not make the argument so difficult. Let
us reduce _this_ number, and the farmer may then turn his oat-ground
into wheat-ground; and instead of so much land being employed to furnish
food for a thousand horses, the same land, when turned into tillage fit
to sow wheat upon, will produce sufficient bread-corn to feed two
thousand poor families.
Again, if instead of 20,000 horses, we keep 30,000 fat oxen, butchers'
meat will be always cheap to the operative classes, whilst the quantity
of tallow will of course make candles cheap: and so many hides lower the
price of leather, and of shoes and all other articles made of leather.
Or the same quantity of land may then keep thirty thousand cows, the
milk of which will make both butter and cheese cheaper to the poor,
as well as the labouring manufacturer; all which articles are very
considerable, and of material moment in the prices of our manufacturers,
as they, in a great measure, work their trade to rise and fall in price,
according to the cheapness of their materials and the necessaries of
life. The same may be said in favour of more sheep and woollen cloths.
(_To be concluded in our next_.)
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