To say that the railways have revolutionised trade and industries would be
simply to repeat one of the commonplaces of modern economic history. Taking
the general statement for granted, I would invite the reader to look a
little more closely at some of the actual results that railways have, or
have not, brought about.
In the first place it would be going too far to say that the Railway Age
inaugurated the Industrial Era. The invention of, or the improvements in,
machinery which gave so immense an impetus to our national industries
preceded the opening of the particular lines of railway--the Stockton and
Darlington and the Liverpool and Manchester--that were more especially to
lead to the great development of the railway system on present-day lines.
All the same, it was the railways that, by offering a far more effective
means of transport than was already afforded by canals, rivers or roads,
made it possible for the industries then already started, or for those
following thereon, to attain to their present proportions.
For the creation of what is known as the factory system, with its teeming
industrial populations aggregated into busy urban centres, the railways are
certainly far more responsible than the earlier modes of transport. The
merits or the drawbacks of that system, from the point of view of general
interests, are matters that need not be discussed here. Suffice it to say
that as soon as the railways had allowed of great quantities of raw
material being conveyed, at especially low rates, to particular localities;
of machinery being set up there, also at lower cost than before; of labour
from the rural districts being brought in and concentrated in the same
localities, and of an efficient distribution, again at lower rates, of
commodities produced on a large scale under the most economical
conditions;--it was inevitable that factories should supplant home
{386}industries, that manufacturers should succeed small masters, and that
great towns should grow up in proportion as rural centres declined.
In helping to bring about these results--results that so materially
accelerated the "economic revolution" already proceeding--railway transport
also supplied a ready means for providing these urban communities with the
necessaries of life.
It is only with the help of the railways that the provisioning of such vast
collections of humanity as are to be found in London, Manchester,
Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow and other centres is rendered possible. As
compared with the earlier conditions of life, when households were mainly
self-supporting, each providing for its own needs from its own fields,
pasture or garden, the average urban family to-day is dependent on the
trader for practically all domestic necessaries, and the same is mostly the
case in suburban or even in country districts except, it may be, in regard
to vegetables, eggs and table poultry. It is doubtful if London or any
other of these great centres ever has more than, at the outside, a
fortnight's supplies on hand. The complete stoppage of the railway system
for any such period would thus be a national disaster. Food might still
come to the ports in the same quantities as before; but without the
railways there would be no adequate means for its distribution, and the
large inland towns would more especially be at a disadvantage. The mere
possibility of such an eventuality may help one to realise the extent of
our dependence to-day on rail transport from the point of view, not alone
of trade, industry and commerce, but of our daily life and sustenance.
While it is true that many rural centres suffered a decline in population
when the railways led indirectly to so many agricultural workers leaving
the fields for the attractions and the supposed advantages of urban life,
it is no less true that the expansion of the towns gave to those who
remained in the rural centres greater markets for the sale there of such
produce--and especially for such market-garden produce, eggs and
poultry--as they could supply to advantage. The railways may not have
annihilated distance, but they were engaged in curtailing distances; and
such curtailment became still more effective when the achievements of the
locomotive were {387}followed by the adoption of the sliding-scale
principle under which the rates per ton per mile decreased in proportion as
consignments were sent for a greater distance than twenty miles.
The towns and the industrial centres expanded further as rail transport
afforded increased facilities for the conveyance of raw materials to works
which, thanks to the steam-engine, could be set up in any part of the
country, regardless of the once indispensable water power; and the
procuring of these raw materials not only gave a further great expansion to
national wealth, but led to the opening up to industrial activity of many a
district previously isolated and undeveloped.
Increased congestion in the towns was thus none the less supplemented by a
widespread development of the interior resources of the country; and in
this respect the railways accomplished results that could not have been
attained by the most complete system either of canals or of turnpike roads.
There certainly were losses, besides those in the rural districts, and this
was notably the case in some of the county, market, or smaller towns which
no longer command the same distinction in the social and economic world as
before; but the balance as between gains and losses was in favour of an
industrial expansion, a commercial development, and an unexampled increase
in general prosperity.
On the general trade of the country the railway was to produce results no
less striking than those that related to individual industries.
When the facilities for distributing domestic and other necessaries
throughout the inland districts, and even in the most remote parts of the
country, were so greatly increased, the reason for the fairs which had for
many centuries played so all-important a part in English trade and commerce
no longer existed, and the country hastened to deserve Napoleon's sarcasm
by becoming "a nation of shopkeepers."
To the country trader the railway gave new opportunities. There was no
longer any need either for his going to one of the periodical fairs or for
his awaiting a call from a travelling middleman with his troop of
packhorses in order to obtain supplies. Nor was it now necessary for him to
purchase comparatively substantial quantities of wares at a time. Thanks to
the railway, he could generally have goods sent to him {388}direct from the
manufacturer or the warehouseman in London, Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow
or elsewhere, and those goods, sent for one day and delivered the next,
could be ordered by him in exactly such quantities as would suit his
immediate requirements. In this way he was enabled to keep smaller stocks
of a greater variety of articles, trade with less, or with better
distributed, capital and anticipate a much larger turnover. The advantage
of these facilities became greater still in proportion as the post, the
telegraph and the telephone gave the retailer greater opportunities for
communicating his wants to the wholesale trader who supplied them.
In these circumstances village stores are to be found to-day in rural
districts where shops had been non-existent down to the Railway Age, while
the conditions of retail trade in probably every country town have no less
changed, and have altered to a proportionate extent the conditions, also,
of wholesale trade.
On the other hand, the same transport facilities which gave these
opportunities to the small trader are now, to a certain extent, operating
to his disadvantage, since there is an increasing tendency for retail trade
to be done by the large houses which are to-day more and more dealing
direct with the public, consigning to retail customers either by rail or by
parcel post. In this way many of the small traders are sharing the fate of
the small masters who had already been suppressed by the factory system.
The movement here in question is, of course, only a development of the dual
tendency now prevalent throughout the commercial world for (1) the
substitution of large or associated undertakings for numerous small and
independent ones; and (2) the abolition of middlemen; yet such a movement
could hardly have been carried out to its present actual extent but for the
opportunities offered by the railway for the regular, speedy and economical
transport of commodities under just such conditions as will alone allow of
this further transition in trade being brought about.
So far as the railways themselves are concerned, these various developments
have not been an unmixed blessing, since they have increased the tendency
for the general merchandise traffic to travel in small or comparatively
small consignments or parcels, involving a greater amount of {389}handling
and of clerical work, and, therefore, an increase in working expenses,
without a proportionate gain in revenue.
The vast majority of traders in the country seem content to live "from hand
to mouth," ordering only just what they want from day to day or from week
to week, and depending implicitly on prompt delivery by the railway
whenever they need fresh supplies. Thus we get such conditions of trade in
respect to general merchandise (distinct from minerals and raw materials)
as are suggested by the following table, showing the total tonnage of
traffic dealt with, and the average weight per package handled, at the
goods depôts mentioned:--
AVERAGE WEIGHT
DEPOTS. TOTAL OF TONS NO. OF PER PACKAGE.
HANDLED. PACKAGES. Qrs. lbs.
Broad Street, London 906 23,067 3 4
Curzon Street, Birmingham 1615 51,114 2 14
Liverpool Stations 3895 79,513 3 26
London Road, Manchester 1341 28,277 3 22
How this small-parcel-at-frequent-intervals arrangement, so convenient for
a large number of traders, increases the work of the companies in a greater
ratio than it increases their receipts is shown by the following typical
figures, worked out by a leading railway company in respect to the
comparative increases in traffic receipts and number of invoice entries
respectively at four large stations on their system:--
INCREASE IN
INCREASE IN NO. OF INVOICE
STATION. YEARS COMPARED. TRAFFIC RECEIPTS. ENTRIES.
A. 1899 and 1906 2.93 40.0
B. 1903 " 1907 5.74 28.46
C. 1902 " 1905 10.36 22.0
D. 1902 " 1905 14.33 24.3
The tendencies in the direction of repeat orders for small consignments are
no less prevalent in the case of raw materials and bulky commodities than
in that of general merchandise. The cotton-spinner has frequent
consignments of cotton, in quantities sufficient to meet immediate needs,
rather than less frequent consignments in greater bulk. The average builder
saves yard expenses and cartage by ordering from time to time {390}the
exact quantities of timber or the precise number of bricks he wants for the
particular work, or for a certain stage of the work, on which he is
engaged. The coal merchant orders forward from day to day, or at intervals
according to the state of business, only the particular quantities of coal
he requires for present or prospective early needs, since the railway
arrangements generally render it unnecessary for him to provide for more
than a few days' supply at a time. So it goes on through almost every
department of present-day trade.
The advantages for the trader himself are enormous, and the railways have
encouraged him in the tendency here in question by giving, for 2-ton or
4-ton lots, minimum special or exceptional rates which on the State
railways of the Continent would be available only for 5-ton, 10-ton or
still higher quantities. Yet when a trader has delivery made to him in
several consignments rather than one, it is evident that, whatever the
convenience to himself, the company must do more work for their money and
incur the risk, also, of having to run two or more partly-filled waggons on
separate days in place, it may be, of one full one. Hence a further problem
in the railway world of recent years has been how to adjust traffic
arrangements to commercial conditions based on the now established
requirements of the British trader for small consignments at frequent
intervals, and yet secure for the railways themselves the advantage of
economical loading. Much has been done in this direction by the leading
companies in the setting up of transhipping depôts and otherwise, and
substantial economies have been effected thereby.
Another respect in which railway facilities have influenced the course of
trade lies in the fact that the large warehouses, provided by the railway
companies at certain of their goods depôts enable a large number of
merchants, agents or other traders to dispense with warehouses of their own
and carry on their business from a city office, whence they send their
instructions to the railway companies as to the destination of particular
consignments when these are to be despatched to the purchaser. The railway
companies are thus relied on to (1) collect the goods, (2) load them into
the railway waggons, (3) transport them from one town to another, (4)
unload them, (5) remove them to the railway warehouse, (6) store them there
until they are wanted, (7) pick out, as and when required, {391}a
particular bale or parcel from a possible pyramid of bales or parcels
warehoused for the same trader; and (8) deliver it to a given address.
In some instances all these services are included in the railway rate, a
certain period of free warehousing being then allowed. In other instances,
or when the free period is exceeded, a charge is made for rent; but the
trader still saves considerably as compared with what he would have to pay
for a separate warehouse for himself, with rates, taxes and cost of cartage
in addition.
At the autumnal meeting, on October 3, 1906, of the Executive Council of
the National Chamber of Trade, held at Bradford, it was declared, in
reference to the inequality in assessments for local rates, that there were
in Bradford certain large concerns whose business turnover amounted to more
than £40,000 a year, while the rental of the premises they occupied was not
more than £100. Some exceptionally large and commodious railway warehouses
in Bradford are certainly made use of by local traders under precisely such
conditions as those here in question; and it is, probably, because of these
railway warehouses that the concerns alluded to are able to carry on a
£40,000 business in £100 premises.
Even when the traders own extensive mills or factories they often find it
convenient to allow the railway company to warehouse most of their raw
material for them, sending on supplies to them as needed, a saving thus
being effected in respect alike to capital outlay on land and buildings for
store rooms and to rates and taxes thereon. In other instances goods are
sent, as ready, to the railway warehouses at the port to await shipment,
the manufacturers once more saving in not having to provide extra
accommodation on their own premises for the storing of goods until a large
order has been completed or until a vessel is due to leave.
The extent of this railway warehouse accommodation will be better
understood if I mention that two sets of premises which constitute the
Broad Street goods depôt of the London and North-Western Railway Company,
in the heart of the City of London, have a total floor space of 29,500
square yards; that the same company have at Liverpool a series of
warehouses with a total of about 30,500 square yards of floor space; that
the Great Northern Railway Company have at Bradford one {392}wool-warehouse
which can accommodate from 50,000 to 60,000 bales, and another that has a
storage capacity of 150,000 bales; and that an exceptionally large goods
depôt and warehouse in Manchester, with floor space equal to one and a
quarter acres, cost the Great Northern Railway Company no less a sum than
£1,000,000.
To illustrate the nature of the accommodation offered by, and the work
carried on, in these great goods stations and warehouses, I offer a few
details respecting the Bishopsgate Goods Station of the Great Eastern
Railway Company.
Situate in the midst of one of the busiest of London's commercial centres
and in the immediate proximity of docks, wharves, markets and warehouses
carrying on, in the aggregate, an enormous business, the Bishopsgate Goods
Station is a hive of activity of so extensive and varied a type that the
working bees employed form a staff of no fewer than 2000 persons.
The premises, which have nine exits and entrances, are divided into three
levels, known as the basement level, the rail level and the warehouse
level. The total area covered by the goods station, including railway
lines, yard and buildings, is twenty-one acres.
The basement level consists of a series of arches on which the lines
leading into the goods station have been built. Originally the arches were
designed by the railway company to serve the purposes of a general fruit,
vegetable and fish market, and this market was opened in 1882; but the
lessee of the Spitalfields market claimed certain monopoly rights under an
ancient charter, and the Bishopsgate market had to be closed; though the
railway company continued to carry on a market they had previously opened
at Stratford, E., subject to the payment of certain tolls to the aforesaid
lessee in respect to his rights. The Stratford market, located immediately
alongside lines of railway bringing produce from the most important
agricultural districts of the Eastern Counties, has conferred great
advantages alike on traders and on residents in the East of London. The
basement arches at Bishopsgate are to-day let mainly to potato salesmen and
others, who find them of the greatest convenience because loaded trucks
arriving on the rail level can be lowered into the basement, there to be
moved by hydraulic power to the particular arch for which the consignment
is destined.
{393}The rail level is the goods station proper. It has eleven sets of
rails and five loading or unloading platforms, or "banks," while two
shunting engines are constantly employed in taking loaded or empty trucks
in or out. In 1910 the business done gave a daily average of 725 trucks
inwards traffic, and 632 outwards traffic, a total daily average of 1,357
trucks. About eighty goods trains leave or arrive at the station during the
twenty-four hours. These include two which are fitted with the vacuum
brake, and give the traders and inhabitants of Lincoln and towns beyond all
the advantages of an express goods service at ordinary rates--a service,
that is, equivalent to what, in Germany, traders would have to pay double
or treble their own ordinary rates for if they wished to ensure a
corresponding speed.
Of potatoes from the fenland districts of the Eastern Counties the total
quantity received at Bishopsgate during 1910 was 100,000 tons. Of green
peas from Essex as many as 1000 tons have been received in a single day.
Fish from Lowestoft and Yarmouth runs into an annual total of many
thousands of tons.
Passengers' luggage in advance is also dealt with at Bishopsgate. This
system, saving the traveller much trouble, and greatly facilitating the
working of passenger traffic at the stations, is evidently advancing in
favour, the packages handled at Bishopsgate having increased from 18,617 in
1900 to 87,129 in 1910.
In the matter of general merchandise, the experiences of the other railway
depôts already mentioned are confirmed by those at Bishopsgate, the taking
there of the number and weight of all consignments of merchandise forwarded
on a particular day having shown the following results:--
Number of consignments 7,932
Average weight per consignment 3 cwt. 2 qrs. 25 lbs.
Number weighing less than 3 cwts 6,056
The total "carriage paid" entries on outwards goods traffic in 1910
numbered over 970,000. For the month of November alone the total was
87,659.
A large proportion of the commodious and well-lighted warehouse level on
the top storey is let off to individual traders in what are known as "fixed
spaces," the demand for {394}which is always in excess of the supply. Goods
of great variety and of great value are stored here. The warehouse is found
especially useful in connection with the extensive goods traffic carried by
the Great Eastern Railway Company between England and the Continent.
Mention might also be made of the fact that the cartage work done at
Bishopsgate requires a stud of about 1100 horses and 850 road vehicles, and
gives employment to nearly 800 carmen and van-guards; that nine
weighbridges have been provided; that a large staff of railway police is
always on duty to regulate the traffic in or out of the station and to
protect property; that the station has its own steam fire-engine and fire
brigade (the company likewise undertaking the fire insurance of goods
warehoused); and that the general arrangements include a complete ambulance
equipment for the rendering of first aid in the event of accidents to the
workers.[58]
Apart from the provision of depôts and warehouses, the railway companies
facilitate the operations of traders by giving them certain free periods in
respect to the unloading of coal, potatoes, hay, straw and various other
commodities from the railway trucks, which serve the purposes of warehouses
on wheels and involve the trader in no further cost, in addition to the
railway rate, provided he can find a customer and arrange for the unloading
to be done within the free period allowed to him, thus escaping the
alternative charge for demurrage. Other conveniences afforded by the
English railway companies to traders include the provision--for hire at
cheap rates--of grain sacks, meat hampers and meat cloths. The Great
Eastern Railway, for instance, who serve a district mainly agricultural,
keep on hand, for the convenience of traders, from 700,000 to 750,000
sacks, 1200 meat hampers, and between 4000 and 5000 meat cloths.
Railways, as developed in England, have thus done more than increase the
facilities and decrease the cost of actual transport. They have, in various
ways, increased the facilities for, and decreased the cost of the exchange
of, commodities, since there is many a trader in the country who conducts
his business much more with the help of a railway company's {395}capital
than he does with his own. It is not alone that trade and industry have
vastly increased in volume as the result of railway operation. Trade and
industry have, also, completely changed in method, while thousands of men
can carry on a business of their own to-day who, in the pre-railway epoch,
must have been content to be little more than hewers of wood and drawers of
water.
The economy in time, also, due to the speed at which the general
merchandise traffic of the country is carried, has been of no less
importance than the economy in cost of transport. Of these two elements
speed in delivery may often be by far the more important. Slowness in
transport, as is the case on canals, may cause no inconvenience where time
is immaterial and large, or comparatively large, stocks can be kept on
hand; but these considerations do not apply to the great bulk of English
trading and industrial enterprises as carried on under present-day
conditions. Hence to the direct saving in the cost of transport, and to the
greater advantages in the exchange and distribution of commodities brought
about by railways, must be added a fair allowance for gains secured
indirectly through this further saving of time. So far back as 1838, and
long, therefore, before goods trains were run at an equivalent to express
speed, Nicholas Wood wrote in the third edition of his "Practical Treatise
on Rail-roads," in comparing rail and canal transport:--
"In our comparison of the two systems of transit, we must not lose sight of
the very important consequences, resulting to the commerce of the country,
by the rapidity of communication effected by the railways, which far
outweighs any trifling balance of economy in favour of canals, even if such
do exist; and, therefore, we presume, whenever the balance between the two
modes in any degree approach each other, a preference will be given to
railway communication."
Against the various advantages that improved means of transport have thus
brought to the British trader must, nevertheless, in his case, be set
certain disadvantages. If he can forward his commodities with greater ease,
at lower rates, and in less time, to the leading markets of the country
than his grandfather before him could do, he finds that, in practice, the
foreigner can do the same. Where the foreigner produces at lower cost, gets
the lowest available rates by reason of size {396}of consignment, style of
packing, etc., has the benefit of an earlier season and so on, he may well
be able, under a system of free imports, to compete with the home producer
on his own markets; though the cost of transport to the foreigner has
naturally to be reckoned from the place of origin, and not simply from the
English port through which his consignments pass.
The general effect of rail transport on the trade and industry of the
country was thus described by Sir John Hawkshaw in his presidential address
at the Bristol meeting of the British Association in 1875:--
"Railways add enormously to the national wealth. More than twenty-five
years ago it was proved to the satisfaction of the House of Commons, from
facts and figures which I then adduced, that the Lancashire and Yorkshire
railway, of which I was the engineer, and which then formed the principal
railway connection between the populous towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire,
effected a saving to the public using the railway of more than the whole
amount of the dividend which was received by the proprietors. These
calculations were based solely on the amount of traffic carried by the
railways and on the difference between the railway rate of charge and the
charges by the modes of conveyance anterior to the railways. No credit
whatever was taken for the saving of time, though in England pre-eminently
time is money. Considering that railway charges on many items have been
considerably reduced since that day, it may be safely assumed that the
railways in the British Isles now produce, or, rather, save to the nation,
a much larger sum annually than the gross amount of all the dividends
payable to the proprietors, without at all taking into account the benefit
arising from the saving of time. The benefits under that head defy
calculation, and cannot with any accuracy be put into money; but it would
not be at all over-estimating this question to say that in time and money
the nation gains at least what is equivalent to 10 per cent on all the
capital expended on railways."
Sir John Hawkshaw, it will be seen, arrived at this result on the basis of
the saving in rates and charges and in speed; but one must further allow
for those various supplementary services on which the railways enable the
traders to effect savings in the carrying on of their business.
{397}Nor have the political and social results of the railway system been
in any degree less remarkable than the economic.
Politically, the railway has been a factor in the rise of Democracy.
The construction of railways, by giving employment to large numbers of
navvies in various parts of the country, to which they moved freely as
occasion required, did much to break down the restrictions to which the
labouring classes had so long been subjected under laws of settlement now
found to be no longer operative; and this greater freedom of movement,
combined with the wider opportunities opened out to them, had effects on
the workers far beyond the results accruing to them from an industrial
standpoint alone.
Under, again, the influences following on the spread of railways throughout
the country, England ceased to be simply a collection of isolated
communities, and attained to a greater degree of national life. Better
communication helped to make men better acquainted with one another, to
broaden their sympathies, to spread a better knowledge of public events at
home and abroad and to establish closer links between town life and country
life.
Then the railways which rendered this closer communication possible proved
to be among the greatest of social levellers. The claims of the third-class
passenger were recognised in course of time, in spite of the unwillingness
of the pioneer companies to make them due acknowledgment; and the day was
to come when the artisan would go by the same express train as the noble
lord, arrive at his destination just as soon, and, though not having quite
so luxurious a seat, be afforded facilities of travel greater far than
those that could once be commanded even by kings and princes. Cheap
excursion trains gave to artisan and agriculturist the opportunity of
visiting great towns or pleasure resorts to which, in the old coaching
days, the well-to-do would alone have thought of travelling. In the same
way the advantages of a concentration of life, of thought and of movement
in the capital were spread by the easier means of communication to country
districts, and brought the population in general into closer touch with the
leaders of public opinion. The railways were the greatest disseminators of
intelligence through the newspapers or books carried by train or by the
post, itself no less dependent, in turn, {398}on the railway for the
facilities it conferred on the country. Without the railway a cheap and
widely distributed newspaper press, such as exists to-day, would have been
impossible.
So the tendency of the railway was not only to advance trade, travel and
transport, but to open men's minds, to broaden the intellectual outlook of
the artisan and the labourer, to place them more on a level with their
social superiors, and to make them better fitted for the exercise of
greater political powers.
Socially, too, the railway system constitutes a paramount factor in the
national life.
Thanks to the greater facilities the railways afforded for the distribution
of commodities, and thanks, also, to the greater division of labour
following on the changed economic conditions, there was no need in the
Railway Age for householders to practise the same domestic arts that had
been more or less obligatory in the case of their forefathers. There was no
longer the same necessity for each family to brew its own ale, to bake its
own bread and make its own cloth, or to provide stores of salt beef and
other supplies in the autumn as if for a winter siege. When the railway
enabled the village shopkeeper to satisfy promptly all local requirements,
in winter as readily as in summer, the whole conditions of rural life were
changed.
In towns, as in villages, the railways allowed not alone of a better
distribution of domestic necessaries but of distribution at lower prices.
The distance at which a commodity was produced or from which it came had,
as a rule, comparatively little effect on the actual selling price. The
large towns, especially, had the entire country open to them as their
sources of supply, and were no longer limited to the produce--and the
prices--of, say, a fifteen or a twenty-mile radius.
Following closely on the necessaries came the luxuries, the cheapening of
which, mainly owing to the lower cost of transport, gave even to artisans'
families alternative food supplies of a kind beyond the reach even of the
wealthiest in the land a century ago.
The greater consumption of fruit and vegetables, sold at the lowest
possible prices, must have been of incalculable advantage to the health of
the community; though this advantage would not have been possible but for
the facilities {399}afforded by the railway in the bringing of huge
quantities at a low rate from even the most distant corners of the three
kingdoms.[59]
If, again, the railways had to share with invention and industrial
expansion the responsibility for the great increase in town life, and for
the overcrowding of many an urban centre, they have, on the other hand,
helped the towns to spread out into healthy suburbs, or have otherwise
relieved them of much of their overcrowding by providing workmen's trains
for the conveyance of artisans and labourers between their place of labour
and entirely new centres of population in what once were country districts.
As for the town workers who can afford to live at greater distances, the
issue of cheap season tickets and the running of business trains morning
and evening have greatly extended the suburbs of London, so that City men
now have their homes as far away as Brighton, Folkestone and Southend.
The encouragement thus offered by the railways to the setting up of country
or even seaside homes for town workers has further tended to the
improvement of the public health, in addition to effecting a complete
revolution in social conditions as compared with the days when the merchant
or the tradesman lived over his place of business in the very heart of the
City of London.
What shall be said, also, of the effect on the national life of that
"travel habit" which received its greatest development from the railways,
though further encouraged in recent years by the bicycle and the motor-car?
Under the combined influences of fast trains, corridor carriages, dining,
luncheon and sleeping cars and cheap fares, whether for day excursions,
short-date or long-date periods, tours at home or abroad, or any other of
the various combinations for which facilities are offered, the making of
pleasure trips has entered so thoroughly into the habits and customs of all
grades of society that the social and domestic conditions of to-day offer a
complete contrast from those that prevailed in the pre-railway period. It
is now only the poorest of families that fail to have an annual holiday at
a seaside resort or in the country, and even in their {400}case the
children may be provided for by one of the philanthropic organisations
established for this purpose.
Nor does the annual summer or autumn holiday now suffice in a vast number
of British households. There are supplementary holidays at Easter and
Whitsuntide; there are the trips taken on the other bank holidays besides;
and, lest all these opportunities may not suffice, the railway companies
now enable their patrons to take a little holiday, at reduced fares, every
week-end. Thanks, in fact, to the ever-expanding facilities for travel,
holiday-making--a former innovation now developed into an established
national institution--is no longer confined to a regular holiday season.
Winter holidays, also, are coming rapidly into vogue.
The question might well be asked if indulgence in the holiday habit is not
often carried too far, especially when trips unduly long for the time at
the tripper's disposal leave it doubtful whether the holiday-maker should
not have a second holiday in which to rest after the fatigues of the first;
though if English people are indeed giving themselves up far too much to
pleasure, sport and recreation, the railways must certainly share the
responsibility for what is happening.
Leaving medical authorities and social reformers to decide on the questions
just raised, one may, at least, safely affirm that the railway has been a
great promoter of friendship and family life, since visits can now readily
be exchanged between those resident in distant parts of the country, and
ties can thus be maintained that, at one time, would have been in danger of
complete severance by the difficulties or the undue cost of journeys by
road.
In addition to doing so much to re-establish our industries, our trade and
our social life and manners on the new bases here indicated, the railway
companies have also sought to play their part in the great and responsible
question of national defence. The gravity of the issues that, in case of
invasion, would depend on the railways being able to arrange for the rapid
and safe movement of troops, of war material and of supplies from one part
of the country to another is self-evident. It is equally clear that the
necessary plans should be carefully prepared long in advance by those most
competent to make them.
Happily the requisite provisions to this end exist in an {401}organisation
known as the "Engineer and Railway Staff Corps," concerning which Mr C. H.
Jeune says in the "Great Eastern Railway Magazine" for June, 1911, in an
article accompanying a portrait (in uniform) of the general manager of the
Great Eastern, Mr W. H. Hyde, who is a Lieutenant-Colonel of the corps in
question:--
"In the case of the great Continental powers, with their system of
compulsory military service and the State ownership of railways,
immediately war is declared practically the whole of the efficient male
population, including the railway staff, is ready to place itself under
military discipline; the effect being that the transport or railway
department, like the infantry or artillery, becomes an integral part of the
armed forces of the country. But in England the transport arrangements must
of necessity be largely carried out by the railway companies with the aid
of their civilian employés. As a link between the army and the companies
there is an organisation, the existence of which is not widely known,
designated the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps. One of the peculiar
features of this body is that it consists of officers only, many of whom we
dare to say have no practical knowledge of the goose step. It never drills,
no band of music heralds its approach, yet its members are men of high
technical ability, and the duties it performs are of great value in the
schemes of national defence.
"The corps was formed in 1864 by the patriotic exertions of Charles Manby,
F.R.S., an eminent civil engineer, who held the post of adjutant with the
rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the corps. It is composed of civil engineers
and contractors, also general managers and other officers of railway and
dock companies. At present there are, in addition to the Commandant, one
honorary Colonel, thirty Lieutenant-Colonels, and twenty-four majors. Their
function is to advise on the transport of troops by rail and the
construction of defensive works; to direct the application of skilled
labour and of railway transport to the purposes of national defence, and to
prepare in time of peace a system on which such duties should be
conducted."
Selected members of the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps join with
representatives of the Admiralty and the War Office in forming the War
Railway Council, which {402}deals with transport and other arrangements for
mobilisation.
Before leaving this branch of the subject I may, perhaps, be excused if I
look still further afield, and turn, for a moment, from what railways have
done for the nation to a few examples of what they are doing for the
Empire.
In Australia the railways allowed of settlements established on the
coast-line of a continent (covering three million square miles) gradually
stretching far inland, utilising for agricultural purposes great areas of
land that must otherwise have remained little better than barren wastes.
Canada, as we know it to-day, owes her existence to the railways. "Without
them," said Mr E. T. Powell, in a paper read before the Royal Colonial
Institute on February 14, 1911, "the vast dominion which we are proud to
call the Canadian Empire would have remained a loose aggregate of scattered
agricultural communities. Quebec and Alberta must have known as much of
each other as do Donegal and Kamschatka.... A few thousand miles of steel
rail ... have saved Canada for the Empire.... Every year they draw the
Dominion into closer cohesion as a self-governing unit, while at the same
time they cement it more firmly into the Imperial fabric."
In South Africa the railways have rendered invaluable service from the
point of view alike of trade, of commerce, of colonial expansion, and of
Imperial policy. Rhodesia, especially, will have been indebted to her
railways for much of the future greatness to which she hopes to attain; and
no one would yet venture to limit the possible results of the Cape-to-Cairo
line, when that bold undertaking shall at last have been completed.
Less generally known, perhaps, is the story of what the railway is doing
both for the Empire and for civilisation on the West Coast of Africa.
Little more than a dozen years ago no railways at all had been constructed
there, and most of the colonies were in a more or less disturbed condition,
even if they had not been the scene of successive massacres, of sanguinary
wars, of much expenditure thereon, and of human sacrifices in districts
steeped in slavery, barbarism and superstition.
This was especially the case on the Gold Coast, where the {403}Ashantis
waged wars against us in 1875, 1896 and 1901. Two years after the last of
these wars the Gold Coast main line of railway was taken up to Coomassie,
the capital of Ashanti. To-day the Ashantis carry on strife with us no
longer. They work in the gold mines instead; and the railway that brings
the gold down to the coast has paid a five-per-cent dividend from the day
it was opened.[60]
Of "Sierra Leone and Its Commercial Expansion" Mr T. J. Alldridge said, in
a paper he read before the Royal Colonial Institute on March 21, 1911
(reported in "United Empire," May, 1911):--
"The extraordinary increase in the revenue of Sierra Leone during the last
few years fills one who knows the circumstances of the Colony with
amazement. It could never have been achieved had communication by railway
into oil-palm belts, formerly quite unworked, not been introduced by the
Government. The results have been extraordinary, although as yet hardly
more than the fringe of these rich forests has been reached.... Only since
the putting down of railways into our Protectorate has the Colony of Sierra
Leone made such noticeable or commercial progress. The extension in the
volume of imported merchandise, the expansion in its export products, and
the greatly increased revenue, stand out to-day as an extraordinary
revelation of what railway communication is capable of effecting in places
that were not long since un-get-at-able, but which Nature has lavishly
filled with a never-failing store of indigenous wealth."
Southern Nigeria and Northern Nigeria--the former having an area of 77,000
square miles and a population of 6,500,000 Africans, and the latter an area
of 256,400 square miles and an estimated population of 8,000,000--are both
of them countries of enormous natural resources which are being steadily
developed by railways already built or in course of construction. A writer
in "United Empire" for July, 1911, says of South Nigeria: "The trade
returns of 1910 have surpassed even the most optimistic expectations, but
there is good reason to look forward to further considerable increases in
view of railway developments, harbour improvements, road {404}construction,
river clearing," etc., while of Northern Nigeria he says: "When we remember
that a densely-populated area, twice as large as the United Kingdom, and
little more than a decade removed from the horrors of slavery, savage
warfare and wholesale human sacrifices, is run by about 300 Europeans on
£500,000 a year, and is rapidly arriving at conditions favourable to a
great development of commerce"--such conditions including the fact that a
trader can now travel from Lagos to Zaria in three days by rail, instead of
taking three weeks, as before--"it is, perhaps, a record in the annals of
British expansion."
As for the civilising effects of railways in West Africa, Mr P. A. Renner,
an educated native, said at a Royal Colonial Institute meeting on May 24,
1910: "In the few years I have lived on the coast I have seen an
improvement which has so astonished us as to make us almost worship the
white man. Previously to the introduction of railways the clan feeling and
tribal strifes and feuds were very rife, and the people of one village
would scarcely visit those of another. Now all this is changed."
When one looks back from the work the railway is doing to-day, in all these
different directions, to those very primitive beginnings of which I have
told in earlier chapters, the whole story appears to be far more suggestive
of romance than of sober fact and reality. From the colliery rail-way along
which John Buddie's "waggon-man" led his horse, encouraging it to greater
exertion with a handful of hay, to the railway that conveys, not only
passengers, but goods, at express speed, that has revolutionised our
industrial, our commercial and our social conditions, and is now
consolidating our Imperial interests and effecting the civilisation of once
barbarian lands, it is, indeed, a far cry; yet the sequence of events can
readily be traced, while all has been done within a century and a half of
the world's history.
{405}CHAPTER XXVIII