With the new Parliament that came into power the names of Liberal and
Conservative began to supplant those of Whig and Tory (S479), for it
was felt that a new political era needed new party names. Again, the
passage of the Reform Bill (S582) changed the policy of both these
great political parties. It made Liberals and Conservatives bid
against each other for the support of the large number of new voters
(S582 (4)), and it acted as an entering wedge to prepare the way for
the further extension of suffrage in 1867 and 1884 (S534),
representing the Commons, had gained a most significant victory; and
further reforms were accordingly carried against the strenuous
opposition of the King.
Buxton, Wilberforce, Brougham, and other noted philanthropists secured
the passage through Parliament of a bill, 1833, for which they, with
the younger Pitt, had labored in vain for half a century. By this act
all negro slaves in the British West India colonies, numbering about
eight hundred thousand, were set free, and the sum of 20,000,000
pounds was appropriated to compensate the owners.
It was a grand deed grandly done. Could America have followed that
noble example, she might thereby have saved a million of human lives
and many thousand millions of dollars which were cast into the gulf of
civil war, while the corrupting influence of five years of waste and
discord would have been avoided.
But negro slaves were not the only slaves in those days. There were
white slaves as well,--women and children born in England, but
condemned by their necessities to work underground in the coal mines,
or to exhaust their strength in the cotton mills. They were driven by
brutal masters who cared as little for the welfare of those under them
as the overseer of a West India plantation did for his gangs of black
toilers in the sugar-cane fields. On investigation it was found that
children only six and seven years of age were compelled to labor for
twelve and thirteen hours continuously in the factories. In the coal
mines their case was even worse. All day long these poor creatures
sat in absolute darkness, opening and shutting doors for the passage
of coal cars. If, overcome with fatigue, they fell asleep, they were
cruelly beaten with a strap.[1]
[1] See Gibbin's "Industrial History of England," E.F. Cheyney's
"Industrial History of England," and Mrs. E. B. Browning's poem,
"The Cry of the Children."
Parliament at length turned its attention to these abuses, and passed
acts, 1833, forbidding the employment of women and young children in
such work; a later act put an end to the barbarous practice of forcing
children to sweep chimneys.
584. The First Steam Railway, 1830; the Railway Craze; the Friction
Match, 1834.
Ever since the application of steam to machinery, the inventors had
been discussing plans for placing the steam engine on wheels and using
it as a propelling power in place of horses. Macadam, a Scotch
surveyor, had constructed a number of very superior roads made of
gravel and broken stone in the south of England, which soon made the
name of "macadamized turnpike" celebrated.
The question then arose, Might not a still further advance be made by
employing steam to draw cars on these roads, or, better still, on iron
rails? The first locomotives built were used in hauling coal at the
mines in the North of England. Puffing Billy, the pioneer machine
(1813), worked for many years near Newcastle. At length George
Stephenson, an inventor and engineer, together with certain
capitalists, succeeded in getting Parliament to pass an act for
constructing a passenger railway between Liverpool and Manchester, a
distance of about thirty miles.
When the line was completed by Stephenson, he had great difficulty in
getting permission to use an engine instead of horse power on it.
Finally, Stephenson's new locomotive, The Rocket,--which first
introduced the tubular boiler, and employed the exhaust, or escaping,
steam to increase the draft of the fire,--was tried with entire
success.[1]
[1] Stephenson's Rocket and Watt's stationary steam engine (S563) are
both preserved in the South Kensington Museum, London. The boiler of
the Rocket was traversed by a number of tubes communicating with the
smoke pipe. The steam, after it hada done its work in the cylinders
of the engine, escaped with great force through the smoke pipe and so
created a very powerful draft. Without these two important
improvements the locomotive would probably never have made an average
speed of more than six or seven miles an hour.
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was formally opened in the autumn
of 1830, and the Duke of Wellington, then Prime Minister, was one of
the few passengers who ventured on the trial trip. The growth of this
new mode of transportation was so rapid that in five years from that
time London and the principal seaports were connected with the great
manufacturing towns, while local steam navigation had also nearly
doubled its vessels and its tonnage.
Later on (1844-1847), Stephenson might easily have made himself "rich
beyond the dreams of avarice,"--or at least of the avarice of that
day. All he had to do was to lend the use of his name to new and
doubtful railway projects; but he refused on the ground that he did
not care "to make money without labor or honor." Meanwhile the whole
country became involved in a speculative craze for building railways.
Scores of millions of pounds were invested; for a time Hudson, the
so-called "Railway King," ruled supreme, and Dukes and Duchesses, and
members of Parliament generally, did homage to the man whose schemes
promised to cover the whole island with a network of iron roads, every
one of which was expected to be as profitable as a gold mine. These
projects ended in a panic, second only to that of the South Sea Bubble
(S536), and thousands found that steam could destroy fortunes even
faster than it made them.
Toward the close of William's reign (1834-1835) a humble invention was
perfected of which little was said at the time, but which contributed
in no small degree to the comfort and convenience of every one. Up to
this date two of the most important of all civilizing agents--fire and
light--could be produced only with much difficulty and at considerable
expense.
Various deviced had been contrived to obtain them, but the common
method continued to be the primitive one of striking a bit of flint
and steel sharply together until a falling spark ignited a piece of
tinder or half-burned rag, which, when it caught, had, with no little
expense of breath, to be blown into a flame. The progress of
chemistry suggested the use of phosphorus, and after years of
experiments the friction match was invented by an English apothecary,
who thus gave to the world what is now the commonest, and perhaps at
the same time the most useful, domestic article in existence.