The unblushing individual who inflated the first bubble prospectus in
the early days of Railway scheming must regard, if he be still in
existence (and we have good reason to believe that he lives, a
prosperous gentleman), with superlative amazement the last Report of Her
Majesty’s Railway Commissioners.
When in his dazzling document the preposterous “promoter” certified the
forthcoming goods transit at six times the amount his most sanguine
“traffic-taker” could conscientiously compute; when he quadrupled the
boldest calculations of the expected number of passengers—when, in
short, he projected his prognostics beyond the widest bounds of
probability, and then added a few cyphers at the end of each sum, to
make “round numbers”—he was not so mad as to believe that he lied in the
least like truth. Mad as he was _not_, he never could have supposed that
an after-time would come when his lying prospectus would be pronounced
as far short of, as his mendacious imagination endeavoured to make it
exceed, the Truth. But that time has arrived.
Let us suppose a friend of his, a far-seeing prophet, reading a proof of
the pet prospectus by the aid of magnifying glasses; let us figure the
statistical foreteller of future events assuring its author that, twenty
years thence, his immeasurable exaggerations would be out-exaggerated by
what should actually come to pass; that his brazen bait to catch
share-jobbers would shrink—when placed beside the Railway records of
eighteen-hundred-and-forty-nine—into a puny, minimised, understatement.
How he would have laughed! How immediately his mind would have reverted
from the sanguine seer to the terminus of flighty intellects known as
Bedlam. With what remarkable unction he would have said, “Phoo! Phoo! My
good fellow, you must be lapsing into lunacy. What! Do you mean to say I
have not laid it on thick enough? Why, look here!” and he turns to the
latest of the Stamp Office stage-coach returns: “Do you mean to tell
me—now that coach travelling has arrived at perfection, and that the
wonderful average of coach passengers is six millions a year—that,
instead of quadrupling the number of travellers who are likely to use my
line, I ought to multiply them by a hundred? Why, you may as well try to
persuade me that I ought to promise for our locomotives twenty, instead
of fifteen, miles an hour; which—Heaven forgive me—I have had the
courage to set down. Stuff! If I were to romance at that rate, we should
not sell a share.”
And our would-be Major Longbow would have had reason for the faith that
was in him. In his highest flights he dared not exceed too violently the
statistics of G. R. Porter, or have added too high a premium on the
expectations of George Stephenson. The former calculated that up to the
end of 1834, when not a hundred miles of Railway were open, the annual
average of persons who travelled by coach was about two millions, each
going over one hundred and eighty miles of ground in the year.[1]
Supposing each individual performed that distance in three journeys, the
whole number of _persons_ must have multiplied themselves into six
millions of _passengers_. As to speed, Mr. George Stephenson said at a
dinner-party given to him at Newcastle in 1844, that when he planned the
Liverpool and Manchester line, the directors entreated him, when they
went to Parliament, not to talk of going at a faster rate than ten miles
an hour, or he “would put a cross upon the concern.” Mr. George
Stephenson _did_ talk of fifteen miles an hour, and some of the
Committee asked if he were not mad! Mr. Nicholas Wood delivered himself
in a pamphlet as follows:— “It is far from my wish to promulgate to the
world that the ridiculous expectations, or rather _professions_, of the
_enthusiastic speculatist_ will be realised, and that we shall see
engines travelling at the rate of twelve, sixteen, eighteen, twenty
miles an hour. Nothing could do more harm towards their general adoption
and improvement than the promulgation of such NONSENSE!”
Footnote 1:
“Porter’s Progress of the Nation,” vol. ii. p. 22.
It would seem, then, that the Longbow of the aboriginal prospectuses was
actually modest in his estimate as to passengers and speed. But only a
few years must have made him utterly ashamed of his moderation and
modesty. How disgusted he must have felt with his timid prolusions, even
when 1843 arrived. For that year revealed travellers’ tales that
exceeded his early romances by what Major Longbow himself would have
called “an everlasting long chalk.” Within that year, seventy railroads,
constructed at an outlay of sixty millions sterling, conveyed
twenty-five millions of passengers three hundred and thirty millions of
miles, at an average cost of one penny and three quarters per mile, and
an average speed of twenty-four miles per hour, with but one fatal
accident.
But if our parent of railway proprietors were astonished at what
happened in 1843, with what inconceivable amazement he must peruse the
details of 1849! We should like to see the expression of his countenance
while conning the report of Her Majesty’s Commissioners of Railways for
last year. At the end of every sentence he would be sure to exclaim,
“Who _would_ have thought it?”
From this unimpeachable record of scarcely credible statistics, it
appears that at the end of 1849 there were, in Great Britain and
Ireland, five thousand five hundred and ninety-six miles of railway in
active operation; upwards of four thousand five hundred and fifty-six of
which are in England, eight hundred and forty-six in Scotland, and four
hundred and ninety-four in Ireland. Besides this, the number of miles
which have been authorised by Parliament, and still remain to be
finished is six thousand and thirty; so that, if all the lines were
completed, the three kingdoms would be intersected by a net-work of
railroad measuring twelve thousand miles: but of this there is only a
remote probability, the number of miles in course of active construction
being no more than one thousand five hundred, so that by the end of the
present year it is calculated that the length of finished and operative
railway may be about seven thousand four hundred miles, or as many as
lie between Great Britain and the Cape of Good Hope, with a thousand
miles to spare. The number of persons employed on the 30th of June,
1849, in the operative railways was fifty-four thousand; on the unopened
lines, one hundred and four thousand.
When the schemer of the infancy of the giant railway system turns to the
passenger-account for the year 1849, he declares he is fairly “knocked
over.” He finds that the railway passengers are put down at _sixty-three
million eight hundred thousand_; nearly three times the number returned
for 1843, and _a hundred times_ as many as took to the road in the days
of stage-coaches. The passengers of 1849 actually double the sum of the
entire population of the three kingdoms.
The statement of capital which the six thousand miles now being hourly
travelled over represents, will require the reader to draw a long
breath;—it is one hundred and ninety-seven and a half millions of pounds
sterling. Add to this the cash being disbursed for the lines in
progress, the total rises to two hundred and twenty millions! The
average cost of each mile of railway, including engines, carriages,
stations, &c., (technically called “plant,”) is thirty-three thousand
pounds.
Has this outlay proved remunerative? The Commissioners tell us, that the
gross receipts from all the railways in 1849 amounted to eleven
millions, eight hundred and six thousand pounds; from which, if the
working expenses be deducted at the rate of forty-three per cent. (being
about an average taken from the published statements of a number of the
principal companies), there remains a net available profit of about six
millions seven hundred and twenty-nine thousand four hundred and twenty
pounds to remunerate the holders of property to the amount of one
hundred and ninety-seven millions and a half; or at the rate, within a
fraction, of three and a half per cent. Here our parent of railway
prospectuses chuckles. _He_ promised twenty per cent. per annum.
In short, in everything except the dividends, our scheming friend finds
that recent fact has outstripped his early fictions. He told the nervous
old ladies and shaky “half-pays” on his projected line, that Railways
were quite as safe as stage-coaches. What say the grave records of 1849?
The lives of five passengers were lost during that year and those by one
accident—a cause, of course, beyond the control of the victims; eighteen
more casualties took place, for which the sufferers had themselves alone
to blame. Five lives lost by official mismanagement, out of sixty-four
millions of risks, is no very outrageous proportion; especially when we
reflect that, taking as a basis the calculations of 1843, the number of
miles travelled over per rail during last year, may be set down at eight
hundred and forty-five millions; or _nine times the distance between the
earth and the sun_.
Such are the Railway wonders of the year of grace, one thousand eight
hundred and forty-nine.
THE WATER-DROPS.
A FAIRY TALE.