The monopolist tendencies of the waterway interests, the magnitude of the
profits secured, and the resort by traders to the building of railways as
an alternative thereto and as a means of meeting the transport requirements
of expanding industries, were factors in the development of the railway
system that operated as direct causes in the construction of other lines
besides the Liverpool and Manchester. From these particular points of view
the story of the Leicester and Swannington Railway is of special
significance.
In the closing years of the eighteenth century, when the Canal Era was in
full operation, the various new projects put forward included one for
constructing a canal, eleven miles in length, down the Erewash valley to
connect with the Trent, thus facilitating the transport of coal and other
products from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire to places served by that
river; and another for rendering the Soar navigable from its junction with
the Trent to Leicester, this being known as the Loughborough Navigation.
These two schemes were to form part of a network of important waterways,
the Soar Navigation joining the Leicester Navigation, and this, in turn,
communicating with the Leicestershire branch of the Grand Junction Canal,
thus eventually giving a direct route from Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and
Leicestershire to London.
The Leicestershire coalowners regarded these proposals with great
uneasiness. They were then supplying Leicester with coal conveyed there by
waggon or packhorse from the collieries on the other side of Charnwood
Forest, and they foresaw that the proposed navigations would give the
Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire coalowners a great advantage over them in
the Leicester market. They accordingly offered a strong opposition to the
schemes, and persisted until the projectors {243}of the Loughborough
Navigation undertook to make that Charnwood Forest Canal which, with its
edge-railway at each end (see page 220), would connect the Leicestershire
coal-fields at Coleorton and Moira with Leicester, and so allow of the
threatened competition from the north of the Trent being duly met.
The Loughborough Navigation and its Charnwood Forest extension were
completed in 1798; but in the succeeding winter the Charnwood Forest Canal
burst its banks, and the damage done was never repaired, the Loughborough
Navigation trustees (who, though forced to construct the canal, did not
consider themselves obliged to maintain it) finding it to their advantage,
from a traffic point of view, to enable the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire
coalowners to have a virtual monopoly on the Leicester market. It was under
these conditions that the Loughborough Navigation shares advanced, by 1824,
from their original value of £142 17s. each to no less a sum than £4700.
The local waterway interests maintained their supremacy and were, indeed,
complete masters of the situation for over thirty years; but the days of
their 200 per cent dividends were then numbered. Influenced by what the
traders of Liverpool and Manchester were doing to fight the canal and river
monopolists there, the Leicestershire coalowners got, in 1830, an Act of
Parliament authorising them to build a railway from Swannington to
Leicester. This line would give them the facilities they wanted for their
coal; but it was to be a "public," and not merely a private, railway. By
one of the clauses of the Act it was provided that "all persons shall have
free liberty to use with horses, cattle and carriages the said railway upon
payment of tolls." These tolls were arranged alike for passengers and for
goods and minerals, and they varied according to whether the travellers and
traders provided their own conveyances or used those of the railway
company. In the former case passengers were to pay twopence halfpenny each
per mile, and in the latter case threepence per mile, the tolls for goods
and minerals being in like proportion. In a later Act, however, passed in
1833, it was declared that "whereas the main line hath been constructed
with a view to locomotive steam engines being used, it might be very
injurious to the said railway and {244}inconvenient and dangerous if horses
or cattle were used," and the rights thus granted to the public under the
first Act were now withdrawn.
Opened in 1832, the Leicester and Swannington Railway restored to the
Leicestershire colliery-owners the advantage in the Leicester market of
which the canal companies had enabled their north-of-the-Trent competitors
to deprive them for so many years; and it was now the turn of the
Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire coalmasters to consider what they should do
to meet the new situation which had arisen. They first had conferences with
the directors of the Loughborough, Erewash and Leicester Navigations, and
sought to induce them to grant such reductions in tolls as would enable
them to compete with the Leicestershire coal, now that this was no longer
shut out from Leicester by the dry ditch in Charnwood Forest. But the only
concessions the canal companies would make were regarded as wholly
inadequate by the Nottinghamshire coalmasters, who, meeting at a little inn
at Eastwood, on August 16, 1832, resolved that "there remained no other
plan for their adoption" than to lay a railway from their collieries to the
town of Leicester. They formed a Midland Counties Railway Company, obtained
an Act, built their line, and so laid the foundations of the great system
now known to us as the Midland Railway. Into that system the Leicester and
Swannington was absorbed in 1846.
The position to-day of the waterways which for thirty years controlled more
or less the transport conditions of the three counties in question, brought
great wealth to their owners, and, by their sole regard for their own
interests, forced the traders to resort to railways, is shown by the Fourth
or Final Report of the Royal Commission on Canals and Waterways. From this
one may learn that the Loughborough and Leicester Navigations, which follow
the course of the Soar, are liable to floods and are, also, sometimes short
of water, in consequence of the want of control over the supply of water to
mills; and although, with the Grand Junction Canal, they offer "the most
direct inland water route" to London for the traffic of Derby, Nottingham
and Leicester and of the large coal districts, they serve at present, adds
the Report, but an insignificant part of the traffic which travels by this
route.
{245}In effect, the very efforts made by the canal companies to preserve
the monopoly they had so long and so profitably enjoyed were only a direct
means of encouraging railway expansion; though few great institutions,
destined to lead to a great social and economic revolution, have
established their position in the face of more prejudice, greater
difficulties, and less sympathetic support from "the powers that be" than
was the case with the railways.
The traders of the country were naturally favourable to them, since the
need for improved means of communication, following on the ever-expanding
trade and industry of the land, was becoming almost daily more and more
acute. But the vested interests, as represented alike by holders of canal
shares, by turnpike road trustees and investors, and by the coaching
interests, were against the railways; the Press of the country was to a
great extent against them; leaders in the literary and the social worlds
either ignored or condemned them; landowners first opposed and then
blackmailed them; Governments sought to control and to tax rather than to
assist them; and then, when the railways had proved that they were less
objectionable than prejudiced critics had assumed, and were likely even to
be a source of profitable investment, they were boomed by speculators into
a popularity that led both to successive "railway manias" and to the whole
railway system being still further burdened with an excessive capital
expenditure which has been more or less to its prejudice ever since.
Some of the early denunciations by those who would have considered
themselves, in their day, to be leaders of public opinion, if not of light
and learning, afford interesting examples of the hostility which railways,
in common with every innovation that seeks to alter established habits and
customs, had to encounter.
In the article published in the "Quarterly Review" for March, 1825, in
which proposals for making railways general throughout the country are
condemned as "visionary schemes unworthy of notice," it is further said in
reference to the Woolwich Railway:--
"It is certainly some consolation to those who are to be whirled at the
rate of eighteen or twenty miles an hour, by means of a high pressure
engine, to be told that they are in {246}no danger of being sea-sick while
on shore, that they are not to be scalded to death, nor drowned by the
bursting of the boiler; and that they need not fear being shot by the
scattered fragments, or dashed in pieces by the flying off or the breaking
of a wheel. But, with all these assurances we should as soon expect the
people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of
Congreve's ricochet rockets as trust themselves to the mercy of such a
machine, going at such a rate. Their property they may, perhaps, trust; but
while one of the finest navigable rivers in the world runs parallel to the
proposed railroad, we consider the other twenty per cent which the
subscribers are to receive for the conveyance of heavy goods almost as
problematical as that to be derived from the passengers. We will back old
Father Thames against the Woolwich Railway for any sum."
In "John Bull" for November 15, 1835, railways are spoken of as
"new-fangled absurdities," and it is declared that "those people who judge
by the success of the Manchester and Liverpool Railroad, and take it as a
criterion for similar speculations, are dunces and blockheads." In the case
of that particular railway, the writer argues, the distance was short, the
passengers were numerous, the "thing" was new and the traffic was
great--above all the distance was short; but it did not follow that
railways were going to succeed elsewhere. He continues:--
"Does anybody mean to say that decent people, passengers who would use
their own carriages, and are accustomed to their own comforts, would
consent to be hurried along through the air upon a railroad, from which,
had a lazy schoolboy left a marble, or a wicked one a stone, they would be
pitched off their perilous track, into the valley beneath; or is it to be
imagined that women, who may like the fun of being whirled away on a party
of pleasure for an hour to see a sight, would endure the fatigue, and
misery, and danger, not only to themselves, but their children and
families, of being dragged through the air at the rate of twenty miles an
hour, all their lives being at the mercy of a tin pipe, or a copper boiler,
or the accidental dropping of a pebble on the line of way?
"We denounce the _mania_ as destructive of the country in a thousand
particulars--the whole face of the Kingdom is to be tattooed with these
odious deformities; huge mounds are {247}to intersect our beautiful
valleys; the noise and stench of locomotive steam-engines are to disturb
the quietude of the peasant, the farmer and the gentleman; and the roaring
of bullocks, the bleating of sheep and the grunting of pigs to keep up one
continual uproar through the night along the lines of these most dangerous
and disfiguring abominations....
"Railroads ... will in their efforts to gain ground do incalculable
mischief. If they succeed they will give an unnatural impetus to society,
destroy all the relations which exist between man and man, overthrow all
mercantile regulations, overturn the metropolitan markets, drain the
provinces of all their resources, and create, at the peril of life, all
sorts of confusion and distress. If they fail nothing will be left but the
hideous memorials of public folly."
In "Gore's Liverpool Advertiser" for December 20, 1824, mention is made of
some of the objections then being raised against railways, these being
described as "exceedingly trifling and puerile." "Elderly gentlemen," it is
said, "are of opinion that they shall not be able to cross the rail-roads
without the certainty of being run over; young gentlemen are naturally
fearful that the pleasant comforts and conveniencies of their foxes and
pheasants may not have been sufficiently consulted. Ladies think that cows
will not graze within view of locomotive engines, and that the sudden and
formidable appearance of them may be attended with _premature_ consequences
to bipeds as well as quadrupeds. Farmers are quite agreed that the race of
horses must at once be extinguished, and that oats and hay will no longer
be marketable produce."
Other alarmist stories were that a great and a scandalous attack was being
made on private property; that there was not a field which would not be
split up and divided; that springs would dry up, meadows become sterile and
vegetation cease; that cows would give no milk, horses become extinct,
agricultural operations be suspended, and houses be crushed by the railway
embankments; that ruin would fall alike on landowners, farmers, market
gardeners and innkeepers; that manufacturers' stocks would be destroyed by
sparks from the locomotives; that hundreds of thousands of people,
including those who had invested in canals, would be beggared in the
interests of a few; and that (as an anti-climax to all {248}these
predictions of national disaster) the locomotive, after all, would never be
got to work because, although its wheels might turn, it would remain on the
lines by reason of its own weight--a theory which, long pondered over by
men of science, led to early projects of "general" railways being based on
the rack-and-pinion principle of operation, and was only abandoned when
someone had the happy idea of making experiments which proved that the
surmise in question was a complete delusion.
I reproduce these puerilities of the early part of the nineteenth century,
not simply for the entertainment of the reader, but because it is a matter
of serious consideration how far they affected the cost of providing the
country with railways. and whether, indeed, the traders who smile at them
to-day may not still be paying, in one way or another, for the consequences
they involved.
The keener the prejudice, the greater the hostility and the more bitter the
denunciations when railways were struggling into existence, the more
vigorous became the antagonism of landowners, the higher were the prices
demanded for land, the more costly, by reason of the opposition, were the
proceedings before Parliamentary Committees, and the heavier grew that
capital expenditure the interest on which would have to be met out of such
rates and charges as the railways, when made, would impose.
To a certain extent one may sympathise with landowners who feared that the
amenities of their estates might be prejudiced by an innovation of which so
much evil was being said; but, as a rule (to which there were some very
honourable exceptions) it was found that their scruples in regard alike to
their own interests and to the national welfare eventually resolved
themselves into a question of how much money could be got out of the
companies. Thus the extortionate prices paid for land often had no relation
to the actual value of the land itself. They were simply the highest amount
the railway company were prepared to pay the landowner for the withdrawal
of his threatened opposition. If the company resisted the exorbitant
demands made upon them, and would not give a sufficiently high bribe, they
were so strongly opposed that they generally lost their Bill when they
first applied for it to Parliament. Thereupon they would {249}yield, or
effect a compromise on, the terms asked for, announce that they had made
amicable arrangements with the opposition, re-introduce their Bill in the
following Session, and then succeed in getting it passed.
It might happen, even then, that the companies obtained their powers
subject only to a variety of hampering or vexatious restrictions which the
landed gentry or others were able to enforce in order that due respect
should be shown to their fears or their prejudices. In some of the earlier
railway Acts the companies were forbidden to use any "locomotives or
moveable engines" without the written consent of the owners or occupiers of
the land through which their lines passed. One of the clauses of the
Liverpool and Manchester Act provided that "no steam engine shall be set up
in the township of Burtonwood or Winwick, and no locomotive shall be
allowed to pass along the line within those townships which shall be
considered by Thomas Lord Lilford or by the Rector of Winwick to be a
nuisance or annoyance to them from the noise or smoke thereof." The same
two individuals secured insertion of a clause in the Warrington and Newton
Railway Act to the effect that every locomotive used within the parishes
mentioned should be "constructed on best principles for enabling it to
consume its own smoke and preventing noise in the machinery or motion
thereof," and should use "no coal, but only coke or other such fuel" as his
lordship and the rector might approve.
The story of the London and Birmingham Railway is especially significant of
the general conditions under which the English railway system came into
being.
Industrial expansion had brought about great developments in the Birmingham
and Black Country districts, the population in Birmingham alone having
increased from about 50,000 in 1751 to 110,000 in 1830. Wide possibilities
of increasing trade and commerce were being opened up, but these were
seriously hampered by the disadvantages experienced in the matter of
transport. Small parcels of manufactured goods could be sent by coach, and
a good deal of wrought iron--in small quantities per coach--was also
distributed in the same way during the course of the year. For bulky goods
or raw materials the only means of transport between Birmingham and London
was by canal, and this meant a three-days' {250}journey. Over 1000 tons a
week were then going from Birmingham to London by water; but there was
great need for a means of communication at once more speedy and more
trustworthy. Goods were delayed in transit even beyond the three days; they
were rejected by the shippers because they did not arrive in proper time;
they were sometimes held up by frost on the canal between Birmingham and
London and lost their chance of getting to the Baltic before the spring;
while, alternatively, they might be pilfered or lost on the canal journey,
and so not get even as far as London. There was often much difficulty,
also, in obtaining raw materials.
In the result manufacturers had to refuse orders because they could not
execute them in time, and the local industries were not making anything
like the advance of which, with better transport facilities, they would
have been capable. The business that Birmingham manufacturers should have
been doing with Italy, with Spain, or with Portugal was found to be
drifting more and more into the hands of Continental competitors who had
greater advantages both in obtaining raw materials on the spot and in
distributing their manufactured goods. It was further argued that in view
of the struggle then proceeding between this country and Continental
countries for commercial supremacy, the improvement of the means of
transport, even as regarded Birmingham and London, was a matter of
national, and not simply of local, concern.
It might well be assumed that such considerations as these would have
appealed to the patriotic instincts of the English people, and especially
to those of the landed gentry. Yet the issue, in January, 1832, of the
first prospectus of the London and Birmingham Railway Company, and the
introduction of their Bill in February of the same year, led to opposition,
to extortion and to actual blackmail of the most determined and most
merciless description.
The Bill passed in the Commons, but it was thrown out in the Lords. Its
rejection there was attributed to the landowners, who, it was declared, had
"tried to smother the company by the high price they demanded for their
property." The inevitable negotiations followed. Six months after the
defeat of the Bill the directors announced that the {251}"measures" they
had taken with a view to removing "that opposition of dissentient
landowners and proprietors which was the sole cause of their failure ...
had been successful to a greater extent than they had ventured to
anticipate. The most active and formidable had been conciliated," and the
Bill would be introduced afresh in the following Session. This was done,
and the Bill became an Act, receiving the Royal assent on May 6, 1833.
The nature of the "measures" which had succeeded in overcoming the
opposition may be judged from some facts mentioned by John Francis, who
says that land estimated in value at £250,000 cost the company three times
that amount. One landowner, in addition to getting £3000 for a certain
plot, extorted £10,000 for what he called "consequential damages"; though,
instead of injuring the remainder of his property, the line increased its
value by twenty per cent. For land used only as agricultural holdings the
company is said to have had to pay at the rate of £350 an acre.
But this was not all. There was the opposition of towns as well as the
greed of individuals to be taken into account. According to Robert
Stephenson's original survey, the London and Birmingham Railway was to pass
through Northampton, where, also, it was proposed to establish the
company's locomotive and carriage works. The opposition in Northampton,
however, was so great that in order to meet it the company altered their
plans and arranged for the line to pass at a distance from that town. They
further undertook to start their locomotive works at Wolverton, and thus
not interfere with the amenities of Northampton.
How much the town and trade of Northampton lost as the result of its
scruples could hardly be told; but the consequences to the railway company
of this enforced alteration of route were as serious as any of the
extortions practised by the landowners. The line had now to pass through a
tunnel at Kilsby, five miles distant from Northampton, and a contractor
undertook to cut this tunnel for £90,000. But, while engaged on the task,
he came upon a quicksand which reduced him to despair and led to his
throwing up the contract. Robert Stephenson thereupon took the work in hand
and he had to have 1250 men, 200 horses and thirteen steam-engines at work
raising 1800 gallons of water per minute night and day {252}for the greater
part of eight months before the difficulty was overcome. By the time the
tunnel was completed the cost of construction had risen from the original
estimate of £90,000 to over £300,000, this enormous expenditure having been
incurred, not because it was necessary for the line, as first designed, but
to meet the opposition and spare the feelings of the then short-sighted
dwellers in the town of Northampton.
The London and Birmingham Railway, with its terminus at Euston, was
eventually opened for traffic throughout in September, 1838. It was, of
course, one of the lines subsequently amalgamated to form the London and
North-Western Railway.
The first Bill of the Great Western Railway, applied for in 1834, was
strenuously opposed and defeated. The second Bill, brought forward in the
following session, was less strenuously opposed, and was duly passed. In
the interval the opposition of the dissentient landowners had been
"conciliated"; and, commenting thereon (in 1851), John Francis says:--
"The mode by which the opposition of landholders was met bears the same sad
character as with other railways. Every passenger who goes by the Great
Western pays an additional fare to meet the interest on this most unjust
charge; and every shareholder in this, as in other lines, receives a less
dividend than he is entitled to from the same cause. Nor does the blame
rest with the conductors of the railway. They were the agents of the
shareholders and were bound to forward their interests. The principle of
the case to them was nothing. They were bound to get the Act at the
cheapest possible rate, and if the law gave their rich opponents the power
of practically stopping the progress of the line, and those opponents chose
to avail themselves of the law, the shame rests with the proprietor of the
soil, and not with the promoter of the railway. Fancy prices were given for
fancy prospects, in proportion to the power of the landowner. Noblemen were
persuaded to allow their castles to be desecrated for a consideration.
There can be no doubt--it was, indeed, all but demonstrated--that offers
were made to and accepted by influential parties to withdraw their
opposition to a Bill which they had declared would ruin them, while the
smaller and more numerous complainants were {253}paid such prices as should
actually buy off a series of long and tedious litigants."
The promoters of that most unfortunate of lines, the Eastern
Counties--predecessor of the Great Eastern Railway of to-day--found
themselves faced with serious opposition in the Lords after they had got
their Bill through the Commons; "but," says the first report, "the
directors, by meeting the parties with the same promptness and in the same
fair spirit which had carried them successfully through their previous
negotiations, effected amicable arrangements with them," and the company
was incorporated in 1836. The negotiations must, however, have been carried
through with greater promptness than discretion, for, to save the fate of
their Bill, the directors undertook to pay one influential landowner
£120,000 for some purely agricultural land which was said to be then worth
not more than £5000. After they had secured their Bill they made persistent
attempts to get out of paying the £120,000; and, altogether, they so
shocked John Herapath that in successive monthly issues of his "Railway
Magazine" all references to the Eastern Counties Railway Company were
encircled by a black border.
In another instance a company proposed to meet the opposition of certain
landowners by carrying the line through a tunnel, which would enable them
to avoid the property in question. The tunnel would have cost £50,000, and
the landowners said, "Give us the price of that tunnel and we will withdraw
our opposition." The company offered £30,000, and the landowners agreed to
be "conciliated" on this basis. They still came off better than the
objector who began by demanding £8000 and finally accepted £80. John
Francis, too, relates the following story: "The estate of a nobleman was
near a proposed line. He was proud of his park and great was his
resentment. In vain was it proved that the new road would not come within
six miles of his house, that the highway lay between, that a tunnel would
hide the inelegance. He resisted all overture on the plea of his feelings,
until £30,000 was offered. The route was, however, afterwards changed. A
new line was marked out which would not even approach his domain; and,
enraged at the prospect of losing the £30,000, he resisted it as
strenuously as the other."
There were some honourable exceptions to the general {254}tendency to
extort as much as possible from the railway companies. Among these may be
mentioned the voluntary return by the Duke of Bedford of a sum of £150,000
paid to him as compensation, his Grace explaining that the railway had
benefitted instead of injuring his property; and by Lord Taunton of £15,000
out of £35,000 because his property had not suffered so much as had been
anticipated. Exceptions such as these do not, however, alter the fact that,
as stated by Francis in 1851, the London and Birmingham Company had had to
pay for land and compensation an average of £6300 per mile, the Great
Western £6696, the London and South Western £4000 and the Brighton Company
£8000 per mile.
One argument, at least, which can be advanced in favour of State
railways--as applying, however, to a country beginning the creation of a
railway system, or building new railways, rather than to one taking over an
existing system--is that extortions in respect to land could not be
practised on the State in the same way as they have been practised on
English railway companies left by their Government to make the best terms
they could with those who were in a position to drive the hardest of
bargains with them. In Prussia, for example, the securing of land for any
new lines wanted for the State railway system is a comparatively simple
matter. If the landowner and the responsible officials cannot agree to
terms, the matter is referred to arbitration, though with every probability
that the landowner will get no more than a fair sum, and will not be able
to extort fancy figures under the head of consequential damages or as the
"price" of his withdrawing any opposition he might otherwise offer.
Apart from other considerations, and taking only the one item of land, the
State lines of Continental countries may well have cost less to construct
than the English lines, while both in the United States and in Canada the
pioneer railway companies had great stretches of land given to them, by
State or Federal Government, not alone for their lines, but as a further
means of assisting them financially.
When one finds how the cost of creating the railway system in our own
country was swollen, under the conditions here stated, to far greater
proportions than should have been the case, and when one remembers that the
excessive capital {255}expenditure involved in meeting extortionate demands
had either to remain unremunerative or be made good out of the payments of
travellers and traders, it is evident that comparisons between English and
foreign railway rates and fares may be carried to unreasonable lengths if
they ignore conditions of origin by which the operation of the lines
concerned must necessarily have been more or less influenced. Francis
himself says on this point, while confessing that "every line in England
has cost more than it ought":--
"The reader may learn to moderate his intense indignation when,
anathematising railways, he remembers with what unjust demands and impure
claims they had to deal, and with what sad and selfish treatment it was
their lot to meet. They owe nothing to the country; they owe nothing to the
aristocracy. They were wronged by the former; they were contumaciously
treated by the latter."
Another factor, apart from cost of land, in swelling the construction
capital of British railways to abnormal proportions has been the cost of
Parliamentary proceedings; and here, again, State railways have had the
advantage. In Prussia the obtaining of sanction for the building of an
additional line by the State railways administration is little more than a
matter of official routine; whereas in England the expenses incurred by
railway companies in obtaining their Acts have often amounted to a
prodigious sum--to be added, of course, to the capital outlay which the
users of the railway will be expected to recoup, or, at least, to pay
interest on.
An especially striking example was that of the Blackwall Railway, now
leased to the Great Eastern Railway Company. The cost of obtaining the Act
for this line, which is only five miles and a quarter in length, worked out
at no less a sum than £14,414 per mile, the total cost being thus £75,673.
The amounts paid by certain other companies in securing their Parliamentary
powers are given as follows by G. R. Porter in his "Progress of the Nation"
(1846):--
Birmingham and Gloucester £22,618
Bristol and Gloucester £25,589
Bristol and Exeter £18,592
Eastern Counties £39,171
Great Western £89,197
Great North of England £20,526 {256}
Grand Junction £22,757
Glasgow, Paisley and Greenock £23,481
London and Birmingham £72,868
London and South Western £41,467
Manchester and Leeds £49,166
Midland Counties £28,776
North Midland £41,349
Northern and Eastern £74,166
Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester £31,473
South-Eastern £82,292
In some cases, Porter explains, the sums here given contain the expenses of
surveying and other disbursements which necessarily precede the obtaining
of an Act of incorporation. On the other hand, they include only the costs
defrayed by the proprietors of the railway, and not the expenses incurred
by parties opposing the Bills. Nor do they include the expenses incurred in
connection either with rival schemes or with schemes that failed
altogether; though, in these instances, of course, there would be no chance
of recouping the outlay out of rates and fares. No fewer than five
different companies, for instance, sought for powers to construct a line
from London to Brighton, and the amounts they expended are given by John
Francis as follows:--
Rennie's line £72,000
Stephenson's £53,750
Cundy's £16,500
Gibb's £26,325
South-Eastern £25,000
-------
Total £193,575
Another company, the name of which is not given by Francis, had so vigorous
a fight that they spent nearly £500,000 before they got their Act; but
still worse than this was the fate of the Stone and Rugby Railway, whose
promoters spent £146,000 on attempts made in two successive sessions to get
an Act (the Committee on the first Bill sitting {257}on 66 days) and then
failed. In another instance the promoters expended £100,000 with a like
result.
After the early companies had got their Acts and obtained their land they
still, as railway pioneers, had to bear the expense of some very costly
experiments, of which railways constructed at a later date had the
advantage. The idea that the locomotive would be able to haul trains only
on the level involved much unnecessary expenditure on engineering works,
while the battle of the gauges led to a prodigious waste of money alike in
Parliamentary proceedings and in the provision of lines, embankments,
cuttings, bridges and viaducts adapted to a broad gauge eventually
abandoned in favour of the narrower gauges now in general use.
The facts here mentioned will have given the reader some idea of the
conditions under which the railways so greatly needed in the interests of
our national industries were handicapped from the very outset by an unduly
heavy expenditure; but there were still other influences and considerations
which materially affected the general position, more especially as regards
questions and consequences of State policy towards the railway system in
general.
{258}CHAPTER XXI