RAILWAY RECEIPTS, WORKING EXPENSES, AND PROFITS IN THE UNITED
KINGDOM—DELAYS AND ACCIDENTS.
However vastly the United Kingdom has been benefited by railways, we
shall show presently that it is far otherwise with those who have
invested their money in their construction. Those first opened in
England were, no doubt, profitable to their shareholders, because they
were great arterial lines that connected the leading places of the
Kingdom together. Along such lines there always had been large traffic,
and it was no doubt greatly stimulated by the facilities which the new
mode of locomotion afforded for its expansion. But as fresh railways
were completed, and as the capital invested in them increased, the
profits receded. Even at the present time, with larger receipts per
mile than have ever been taken, the position of railway investment is
almost from every point of view, unsatisfactory.
The tide of the early prosperity of railways began to turn in 1840.
Proceeding at once to the middle of 1843, we learn that at that date
the amount of capital invested was £76,280,000, and the gross traffic
receipts were only £4,535,189. If 45 per cent. be deducted for working
expenses, the amount for division among investors was only £2,494,358.
If one-third of the capital invested be considered debenture capital
bearing an interest of not more than 4 per cent., it leaves only
£1,391,360 for dividend upon £51,000,000, or a little more than 2½ per
cent.
In 1848 the capital invested in British railways was £152,640,000,
the gross traffic receipts were £9,933,552. Deducting 45 per cent.
for working expenses—amount £4,660,097,—a balance of £5,273,455 is
available for division among investors. Taking one-third of the capital
paid up as debenture capital, bearing interest at only 4 per cent., it
leaves £3,021,455 for dividend upon £100,760,000 of share capital, or
at the rate of less than 3 per cent.
At the end of 1853, the capital paid up was £273,324,514 and the
traffic receipts had risen to £18,035,879. The working expenses, at
45 per cent. of the receipts, were £8,116,151, leaving £9,919,728
available for division, but between 1848 and 1853 the rate of interest
upon debentures rose to fully 5 per cent. Taking, as before, one-third
of the capital paid up, as debenture capital, it leaves £5,364,320 for
dividend upon £182,216,343 of share capital, or at the rate of a little
less than 3 per cent.
Five years later—at the end of 1858—the capital paid up was
£325,375,507; the traffic receipts were £23,956,749; the working
expenses, £11,668,225. Taking the debenture capital as one-third of
the whole, it leaves £6,245,310 for dividend upon £216,917,205 share
capital—or a very little less than 3 per cent. But as by 1858, fully 25
per cent. of the share capital was preferential, and bore a dividend on
the average of 5 per cent., there remains, after payment of a dividend
upon this capital of £2,711,450, only £3,533,860 for division upon the
£162,687,905 “ordinary” or unguaranteed share capital, that was then
invested in railways—not quite 2¼ per cent.
On the 31st December, 1863, the capital paid up was £404,215,802; the
traffic receipts were £31,156,397; the working expenses, £15,027,234.
The amount of debenture capital, taken as usual at a third of the
total capital, was £134,738,600, the interest upon it, at 5 per
cent., £6,736,930. Deducted from £16,129,163, the amount of the total
net receipts, £9,392,233 remains for dividend upon £269,477,202 share
capital, or nearly 3½ per cent. This would be satisfactory, as compared
with the amount divisible upon share capital in previous years; but,
unfortunately, the amount of preferential, in proportion to total share
capital, had not only increased considerably between 1853 and 1863, but
the rate of dividend had also advanced. The London and North-Western
issued some at 5, the Lancashire and Yorkshire at 6; so also the
London, Brighton and South Coast, then one of the most highly thought
of companies for investment; and the London and South-Western, a
company established, apparently, upon a very solid basis, had to issue
preference capital at as high as 7 per cent. Nevertheless, although for
present calculation, and for that of 1865, next to follow, one-third
of the share capital is considered as preference capital, the rate is
taken as not raised higher than 5½ per cent. £4,940,414 must therefore
be deducted as dividend on preference capital, leaving only £4,451,819
for division upon £179,651,468, or at the rate of just under 2½ per
cent. But as several of the companies—many of them large ones—paid
dividends of 4, 5, 5½, 6, 6½, and some few as high as 7 per cent., a
considerable portion of ordinary share capital received at the rate of
1 and 1½ per cent., and an equally large portion did not receive, as is
well known, any dividend at all.
We close our recapitulations with the year 1865, the latest to which
the published returns of the Board of Trade extend. On the 31st of
December of that year the total capital paid up was £455,478,143;
the traffic receipts[53] were £35,890,113; the working expenses,
£17,149,073; the amount of the debenture capital, taken, as before,
at a third of the whole, was £151,826,044, the interest upon it, at
five per cent. was £7,591,302. Deducted from £18,602,582 the amount
of the total net receipts, £11,011,280 remains for dividend upon the
total share capital, which amounted to £303,652,099, equal to £3.
13s. per hundred pounds.[54] But deducting £5,566,900, dividend upon
£101,218,000 as preference share capital, 5½ per cent., there remain
only £5,444,380 for dividend upon £192,434,000, or at the rate of £2.
16s. 10d. for each £100 invested. What was stated at the conclusion of
the calculations of 1863 applies with at least equal force to 1865,
very small dividends for a very considerable portion of railway share
capital, and none at all for at least an equal amount.
On the 31st of March, 1866, the National Debt of the United Kingdom
was composed as follows: funded, £773,313,219; the estimated capital
of terminable annuities £23,351,043; unfunded, £7,956,800; total,
£804,842,949,[55] or only £349,364,806 more than the total of railway
investments at that period. The “interest and management” of the
national debt in the year ending the 31st March, 1866, was £26,233,288;
but as the Banks of England, of Ireland, and of Scotland, are the chief
managers of the debt, in exchange for privileges accorded to them,
the item for management cannot be great—not sufficient to reduce the
average rate of interest below £3. 5s. per £100 invested. The case,
therefore, stands thus, if viewed as between the creditors of the
British nation and the investors (apart from debenture and preference
shareholders) in the railway capital of the United Kingdom: the former
receive interest guaranteed on the faith, credit, and honour of the
most powerful nation—at all events commercially—in the world, eight
shillings per cent. per annum more than those who have embarked their
money in commercial enterprises that, in our opinion at all events,
have been second only to Free Trade[56] in achieving the present
commercial grandeur of England.
There is not an article of commerce that the railway cannot move—does
not move; there is not an article of commerce that the railway does not
move at speed never less than eight and generally ten times as great as
it was by canal, until competition stimulated the pace of the latter.
To what extent? From the once normal rate of two to that of three miles
an hour—no more. But now, the merchant of London, who a few years ago
could not have what he required from the manufacturing towns of the
north in less than ten days, receives in the morning, goods that were
in the warehouses of Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, or any other of
such-like towns in the north of England on the previous afternoon.
The important consumers of timber, 150 to 180 miles from London attend
sales there, in preference to places nearer home, and purchase largely,
with such advantage that the difference of price pays the difference
of railway carriage three and four times over. We once saw chests of
tea, that on a fluctuation of markets to the extent of a half-penny a
pound, passed twice from Liverpool to London and twice back again.
They were enabled to be moved about in this way because collection,
carriage and delivery cost £1. 10s. a ton, or at the rate of a fourth
of a half-penny a pound for 200 miles. Fish circulates through the
small as well as the great arterial systems of the kingdom with the
regularity and precision of the post, because it is unceasingly carried
from the fishing ports inland by the fastest trains and by those that
convey the mail bags. The Irish railways alone transported 1,092
tons of salmon last year—301 tons more than in 1865,—and now, with
our protected fisheries, this amount will be rapidly added to. Ice,
an article of modern commerce, is already beginning to find its way
south by means of the railway, and there is not the slightest reason
why elevated Northern Scotland should not _grow_ the commodity, just
as it has for many years been made to grow in Massachusetts, and more
recently in Norway.[57] It is unnecessary to pursue this subject, for
we each of us see, know, and feel that the railway is the great and
grand distributor of whatever we require for our wants, and of all that
energy and enterprise require for the development of national industry.
And, as regards personal locomotion, how grand and sublime are the
powers of the railway. We leave Edinburgh to-night. We travel warmly
in the cold season; luxuriously at all seasons, and with complete
unconsciousness of the fact that as each hour passes, we are nearly
forty miles farther from our starting point. The break at London in the
morning gives us the margin necessary for ablution and refreshment;
that evening we are in Paris, in ample time, and some to spare, for
starting by any of the rapid trains that convey passengers and mails
east, south, and west. If our destination be the Mediterranean, we are
at Marseilles at noon the next day, exactly 41 hours from the time
we had left Edinburgh; yet, Edinburgh, by railway, combined with a
short sea passage, and Marseilles, are exactly 1,239 miles apart. Our
pace, including breaks and stops, has been over thirty miles an hour,
whilst getting over the whole distance; excluding the breaks and stops,
five and thirty. We can commence the ascent of an Alpine pass, or one
across the Pyrenees, precisely at the same time as we should reach the
Mediterranean, had our destination been in that direction.
In 1834, when the late Duke of Wellington despatched Mr. Hudson,
belonging to one of the Government offices, to Rome, to inform Sir
Robert Peel that he had been called upon by King William IV. to form
a Ministry on the compulsive retirement of Lord Melbourne and his
colleagues,[58] it was thought a marvel that the messenger was able
to complete his journey on the twelfth day from that on which he left
London. Bound on an analagous mission, a Mr. Hudson of the present day,
would be a sluggard indeed, if he occupied even a quarter of twelve
days. Without the superscription, such as our ancestors (who could
write) put on their letters, “Haste! post haste!”[59] one put quietly
into a London post office “receptacle” on a Monday morning, would, as
the clock of St. Peter’s[60] was tolling 9·45 on Wednesday evening, be
found within the precincts of the Eternal City. The distance? 1,355
miles.
But why need we multiply instances. Let us then pass to say a word
or two about what railways have done for the humbler part of our
population. Have they not attained facilities for their pursuits as
well as for their enjoyments that were not dreamt of thirty,—twenty
years ago? How prosperous the working classes now are; their labour is
at a premium, and in demand such as it has never before experienced.
They have never been remunerated so handsomely, and they have earned
their pay with shorter hours, better ventilation, better food and more
of it, than they ever had before. Unions and combinations, however
deplorable in their course of action, at all events, are signs and
manifestations of power;[61] and, now-a-days, we find combinations
and strikes extended even to agricultural labourers. Why? Because
they know—stupid, heavy, unintelligent, and unenlightened though they
may be—that, thanks to the railway, they can get at least as good
employment elsewhere as in their own villages and hamlets. The farmer
knows—feels—and, farmer-like, grumbles at this, but he also knows,
that, thanks to free trade, and thanks to cheap railway conveyance,
he is enabled to obtain, in the first instance, the highest possible
fertilisation for his land, and, in the second, when his crops are
gathered, that he can dispose of them, notwithstanding immense cereal
and other eatable imports, in markets far distant, and at prices which
not only leave him nothing to complain of, but much to be satisfied
with. We no longer hear the old party cries, “Protection to native
industry,” and such like. The modern cultivator does not require the
protection which the old law gave him. He finds he can protect himself
in a far better manner without it.
Material prosperity is spread broad-cast over the land. It is true we
have recently had a financial crash, and a financial crisis; but we
have had no crush, nor are we going to have one. It is also true that
our exports for the first six months of this year are, as a consequence
of somewhat diminished trade, less than they were in the corresponding
period of 1866. But, how much are they less? Not 7 per cent. of their
gross aggregate. They are, however, 3 per cent. better than they were
for the like time one year previously; and, note also, that they
are in those six months, £2,000,000 more than they were in the whole
_twelve_ months of fifteen years ago.
The twin sisters of progress in our day, are free trade and the
railway. Both are universal as regards application; both are expansive
and ever expanding. They always advance, they never recede. Free Trade,
however, is, so to speak, national, or of the nation as an abstract. It
requires for its world-spread development no more than that trade shall
avail itself of the advantages which unfettered intercourse between
nations imparts. The railway is the commercial reality of everyday
life. Its existence cannot be started without aggregated capital. It
then becomes the earnest, visible, and ever-working bee in the hive,
and by the means which it places at the disposal of all, not only are
intercourse and interchange facilitated between nations, but among
ourselves movement is giant-like and unceasing, not only for ourselves
actually, but for everything that pertains to us in our wants and
necessities, no matter under what classification they may be placed.
A grand prosperity has been achieved for the nation, but the gold to
which much of its accomplishment is due has proved unfruitful. The
fact, undoubted, need only thus be recorded. Others can say of it what
they please as a grievance.
It may be said, and no doubt it is said, that want of success in
railway investments has arisen from extravagance and mismanagement.
Undoubtedly the assertion is in part correct as regards both the
origination and the construction of most of our railways, but the
incompetence of Parliament, its unfitness as a tribunal (notably so
in the case of Lord Libeller), and the false system it has fostered,
have contributed a much larger share than the other two elements to the
present ill-favoured and unsatisfactory position of railways.
“Ah! but the working of railways! There, at all events, we have you.”
“See how defective it is. See the innumerable complaints constantly
appearing in the papers about want of punctuality. See the frightful
accidents that are occurring.” “Yes; it is quite true that delays occur
to trains. Nay, more, let it be granted that they are frequent—but
frequent in proportion to what?—to the number of trains that are
running night and day throughout every part of the kingdom?” “Yes.”
But the answer to that is—in 1865 3,448,509 passenger trains ran in
the United Kingdom, which is at the rate of 10,387 trains each week
day, and half that number is assumed as the number on Sundays, and on
Christmas Day and Good Friday. Fewer long trains travel on Sundays
than on week days, but on short urban and suburban railways the trains
are, except during the hours of divine service, as numerous as on week
days. Besides the passenger trains there were, in 1865, 2,108,198 goods
trains, heavily laden with merchandise and minerals, or at the rate
of 6,060 trains on each week day, and half that number on Sundays,
Christmas Day and Good Friday, making a total each day of 16,447. At
the end of 1865 there were, as has been frequently stated in these
pages, 13,289 miles of railway open for traffic; at present (October,
1867) the number of miles is fully 14,300, and there cannot be less
than 13,000 passenger trains a day. The proportion of trains arriving
late to trains arriving to time is not three per cent. throughout the
whole kingdom, and of those, nine-tenths are not more than fifteen
minutes behind time. The average number of persons travelling each
week day throughout the year is nearly 800,000; of these the very
utmost that are detained beyond fifteen minutes is 3,000; so that for
every 300 persons who travel per diem one must expect, on the doctrine
of averages, to be over fifteen minutes late, and one out of every
thirty-four passengers may be a few minutes over time. Judging by
the tone and the language of many of the letters of complaint which
appear in newspapers, if we could suppose such a person as one utterly
ignorant of everything relating to railways, he would believe that the
officials experience a special pleasure and enjoyment when trains are
irregular. Let us, in reply, assure that excellent and ignorant person
that there is nothing more abhorrent (with only one exception, to which
we shall refer immediately) to railway nature than want of regularity
and precision. They are to him precisely as the _vacuum abhorendum_ of
Nature, Pan-Anglican and Pan-Mundal.[62] In everyday life, if things
go punctually and precisely with us, the whole of our machinery,
both corporeal and physical, works pleasantly, without trouble and
without difficulty. And so it is on the railways—as long as there
are punctuality and regularity all goes right. It is, therefore, the
fact that the unceasing efforts of the staff of every railway company
in the kingdom are unremittingly directed to ensuring punctuality to
trains, as far as human nature can ensure it. It is the interest of the
officials of every grade to have everything on the line working with
the precision and fidelity of clockwork. The slightest irregularity
at any part of a line at once brings an accession of labour and of
responsibility upon the shoulders of every official, be he high or
low, connected with it. But happily Englishmen, among whom, of course,
we include Scotchmen and Irishmen, placed in positions of trust and
responsibility have always acted, and always will act, as Englishmen
ought to act—from a consideration that influences them above all other
considerations, a sense of duty. Hence no effort that railway officials
can make is wanting when irregularities occur. But human means and
human appliances break down at the moment least expected; no ingenuity,
no foresight can prevent them. The weather, a slight shower of rain,
which renders rails slippery at starting; a heated axle, caused by a
few particles of grit getting into an axle box, notwithstanding the
minute precautions taken to prevent such an incident; the delays,
confusion, and blunders of passengers themselves,—an old lady insisting
vehemently that she gave her little box with “my best bonnet in it,”
to the guard, whilst she had taken it into the compartment, and in
her flurry, agitation, or absence of mind[63] at the prospect of
her coming to her station, had forgotten that she had at starting
placed it on the seat beside her; at ticket collecting and ticket
examining platform—for, alas! the prevalence of fraud and dishonesty
among—we regret to say, and the remark only applies to a very few as
compared with the general mass of travellers—all classes of ticket
holders—renders occasional examination of them necessary;[64] but,
of course, the most frequent cause of delay on railways proceeds
from—without which the railway would he nothing at all—the engines.
As is well known, all engines are made of the best materials of every
description; but it is not so generally known that—according to the
testimony of Sir Francis Head in 1849, and of the late Mr. Robert
Stephenson, M.P., in 1866—a locomotive consists of 5,416 pieces, all
of which, although indebted to machinery for a large portion of the
work of their construction, have, nevertheless, each and every one of
them, to pass through human hands, and they have to be fitted and put
together as carefully as the machinery of a first-class watch. From
the moment that a locomotive commences duty she is examined daily by
competent and skilled men, whose object is to detect, not only the
slightest flaw, but the slightest indication that may lead to one;
and if either be detected, to substitute another locomotive which
has successfully gone through the ordeal of rigid examination. The
engine-driver and firemen are also on the alert, for they know what the
consequences may be to them if a break down or accident take place.
Yet, in spite of unceasing watchfulness, portions of the machinery of
an engine will give way, at places, too, never expected. An engine may
apparently be doing her duty admirably, when all of a sudden a tube—a
great artery of her internal organisation—bursts. With us weak mortals
an internal artery bursting lays us low for ever; and, although so dire
a fate does not attend the engine, she is, for all the purposes that
she was engaged upon at the moment of her disaster, as practically dead
as if she had never been gifted with motive power. No human foresight
can prevent these and similar, although minor, accidents to engines, no
more than we can tell whether the apparently healthy and vigorous man
of the morning may not be the cold and lifeless corpse of the afternoon.
Yes, as long as we are human, and must depend upon human means (no
matter how apparently complete and perfect they may be) for the
fulfilment of our purposes, unrehearsed and unexpected incidents,
leading to disappointment, annoyance, and vexation, are alike
inevitable and unceasing. And so it is we have not, and never can have,
PERFECTION on railways; but we have the nearest possible approach to
it in all that relates to their working. This is a sentence that may
possibly—nay, more probably will—excite the terrible susceptibility
of the _genus_ which, without being “of the poets,” is, nevertheless,
vastly irritable—the great and magnificent British public. Why, the
very losses of temper we display whilst we exact perfection in others,
is proof that we are a long way from possessing it ourselves. Should
we not remember one of the earliest lessons taught us by our Saviour,
from whom nothing but goodness and wisdom could ever flow?—“He that
is without sin among you let him first cast a stone.” Cast the stone
when you yourselves are perfect; without sin of thought or sin of
action. But do we not witness daily, hourly, at each instant, that
perfection does not belong to any of us? But let all men be assured of
this—not on the testimony of quacks and nostrum-mongers, but on the
undoubted evidence of fact—fact which is truth, pure, consistent, and
unadulterated—that there does not exist in any one of the innumerable
organisations, ramifications, aggregations, or embodiments throughout
the empire a class of men that is more earnestly devoted to produce
that near approach to perfection just referred to than among the well,
yet often unjustly, abused humble servants of the railway community;
for it is upon these men, in its last resource, that the public must
depend for everything. At the stations of large towns and cities their
individuality is naturally not so much noticed—or it might perhaps
be more correctly stated, not so much known—as at smaller stations,
being more completely mixed up in the immense human leaven of great
populations. Still those of the public who frequent large stations know
some of the men—inspectors, guards, and porters. They respect them;
and if inquiry be made of the minister of the faith to which each man
belongs, he will be able to assert of more than nine-tenths of them,
that each carries the moral discipline which he has learned on the
railway into the transactions of his inner life. Besides attending at
his place of worship, his little home is clean and respectable; his
children are brought up—as they should be brought up—with respect for
religion, with steady attendance at the school; and when the hours of
play come round they are not the less ready, on occasion, to give or to
receive the pummelling which every real English boy is ready to give or
to receive, and is all the better therefor into the bargain.
Go to country stations; but before going there let one fact be stated,
that the process of “winnowing” on railways, or separating the grist of
the staff from the chaff, is always going on; that is, the men who do
not come up to the standard—not of height, for on many railways this
qualification is not regarded—but of moral and physical quality, are
unceasingly being got rid of, or leaving the railway by discharging
themselves.
At the country station is there a man of the district, of his sphere
of life, that is more respected, or that enlists a larger amount of
sympathy among all classes, than the station master? Cordial good
feeling and considerate kindness are extended to every one of the
persons that are subordinate to him. Why? There is not a man or woman
of the land, high or low, rich or poor, “gentle or simple,” who has
either visited or who resides adjacent to a country station, that
cannot answer the question, in language of the heart, much warmer than
any that it would be right for us to make use of.
But accidents? Yes, and let it here be stated broadly that when they do
occur, they are, of course, harrowing to the minds of the public, but,
it must be added, they are infinitely more so to railway officials.
They are of a fearful character when they do happen, but, happily, they
are not very frequent.
We proceed to give an account of them for the years from 1861 to 1865,
both inclusive.
In the first-named year there were (including the estimation of 100
journeys as taken by each periodical ticket-holder, and they are
included in this proportion in the calculation for the subsequent
years) 178,929,039[65] passengers, of whom 46, or one in every three
and three-quarter millions carried, were killed, and 781, or one in
every quarter of a million, were injured from causes beyond their own
control; 33, or one for every five millions and a half carried, were
killed from their own misconduct or want of caution.
In 1862, 186,094,671 passengers were carried, of whom 26, or one in
every seven millions carried, were killed, and 536, or one in every
333,000 persons carried, were injured from causes beyond their own
control; and 9, or one in every twenty millions and a quarter carried,
from their own misconduct or want of caution.
In 1863, 211,074,175 passengers were carried, of whom 14, or one for
every fifteen millions carried, were killed, and 400, or one for every
550,000 carried, were injured, from causes beyond their own control;
and 21, or nearly one for every ten millions carried, from their own
misconduct or want of caution.
In 1864, 236,922,065 passengers were carried, of whom 15, or one for
every fifteen and three-quarter millions carried, were killed, and 698,
or one for every 350,000 carried, were injured from causes beyond
their own control; and 21, or one for a little more than every eleven
millions carried, from their own misconduct or want of caution.
In 1865, 261,577,415 passengers were carried, of whom 23, or 1 in every
eleven and a half millions carried, were killed, and 698, or 1 in every
380,000 carried, were injured from causes beyond their own control; and
13, or 1 in every twenty millions carried, from misconduct, or want of
caution.
If the several figures above stated be added together, it will be seen,
that whilst 1,094,597,385 passengers were carried on English railways
in five years, the number of persons killed from causes beyond their
own control, that is, through some accident, neglect, omission, or
commission on the part of the railway companies, was 124; and the
number injured, in consequence of one of the foregoing reasons, was
3,449. Of these persons, although many were serious sufferers, the
great bulk received injuries from the effects of which they were cured
in a few weeks,—several in a few days. In the same five years, 97
passengers were killed from misconduct or imprudence.
In addition to the numbers enumerated in the foregoing statement, a
great many persons, not passengers, are killed, either by trespassing
on the railway, walking on it at forbidden places, or _by suicide_.
In 1865, their numbers were—killed, 76; injured, 351. Many railway
servants are killed or injured each year, mainly, we regret to say,
through their own imprudence. In 1865, 122 were killed, and 83 injured.
The above catalogue is, undoubtedly, a melancholy one; one that it
would, of course, have been all the better if it could have been
avoided. But this, we say with deep sorrow and regret, is impossible.
In the first place, as long as the working details of railways depend
upon human hands and human heads, we shall have accidents. Some of
the worst accidents that have taken place on railways have been
caused by the sudden failure, not of presence of mind, for there was
no circumstance of a peculiar nature to require it, but by an utter
failure, a total absence, as it were, of mind, just at the very
moment that, by no means a great, but still some, mental exertion or
exercise of mind was requisite. Signal-men, perhaps the most careful
and cautious persons in railway service—men selected for the position,
after much previous drill, in consequence of superior steadiness,
sobriety, and good conduct—find, too late, from some cause utterly
unexplainable, that the lever of “points,” or of a signal has been
turned to the left when it should have been turned to the right, or
_vice versâ_. Fearful accidents occur from the machinery of the engine
suddenly giving way, in consequence of which it leaves the rails, and
the carriages behind it follow, and pile themselves one above another
in a manner that is incredible to those who have not seen them. Other
accidents arise from a sudden failure of portions of the permanent
way; yet, possibly, the same permanent way has been carefully looked
at by completely competent men only half-an-hour previous to the
accident; for it may be mentioned, that there is no part of a railway
road-bed that is not thoroughly examined every morning. In a line
that is well signalled—and it may be taken for fact that there is no
railway in the kingdom upon which there are not at present efficient
signals—accidents are not the result of delays, although there is a
very general belief in the minds of the public that it is otherwise. In
two recent instances, accidents of a calamitous nature have been the
result of a rail being taken up and not replaced before a train has
come upon the spot; this description of accident having been chiefly
caused by permanent-way signal-men not going sufficiently far back
with the flag danger-signal to enable a train to be brought to a
stand-still before arriving at the spot where the line is interrupted,
other precautions have been added, which now render an accident from
this cause nearly impossible. But many of the fearful collisions,
the terrible accounts of which shock the public mind from time to
time, are caused by combinations of circumstances and incidents so
extraordinary and unusual, that it is hard to conceive, on the doctrine
of combinations, how they could occur. They do occur, nevertheless; and
all that can be said with respect of them is, that the circumstances
of every railway accident are carefully read and studied by every
traffic manager, and most station masters, in order that a lesson or a
caution may be obtained for future guidance. But these accidents will
continue to occur—there are, we fear, no real means yet discovered to
prevent them—and all that can be hoped for as regards the future is,
that as experience of what are in short almost impossible circumstances
is accumulating, we may perhaps arrive at an epoch where no further
incidents of this character can be combined together for human
destruction on railways.
What has been already said with reference to the earnestness of
railway officials to prevent delays, applies with tenfold additional
force to their never-ceasing anxiety to avoid accidents. There is no
possible precaution that can be taken, which is not taken to endeavour
to prevent them. In every way they are disastrous; they not only
create intense personal suffering and misery, they are not only a
risk to employés, because at any moment, from an act of imprudence or
forgetfulness, employés may be the cause of them, and thereby render
themselves liable to punishments that extend even to penal servitude;
but even _after_ their occurrence they become to them a source of
immediate and immense responsibility. The line must at once, quick
almost as the flash of lightning, be protected against trains coming
in either direction; the killed and wounded must be removed, and those
to whom life still belongs must be attended to with the most earnest
solicitude; arrangements must be made, and carried into execution
without a moment’s delay, so as to render the line fit for traffic
again in the shortest period that human hands, aided with hearty
good-will, can accomplish; all these duties must, nevertheless, be
executed in the midst of scenes of havoc and misery that are enough
to unnerve and prostrate most men, with as much coolness and _sang
froid_ as if the man’s services at the moment were not more important
than attaching an additional carriage to a train, in consequence of an
unusual accession of traffic at a station, or the performance of some
other such like formal piece of everyday duty.
But beyond all these considerations, there is one that cannot, when
referring to the subject of railway accidents, be overlooked, or
passed by without comment—their cost. In 1865, no less than £333,533
were paid in compensation by railway companies, in consequence of
railway accidents. If to this amount be added £200,000, for destruction
of rolling stock and road, the heavy expense involved in their
re-establishment or replacement, the enormous law costs to which the
companies are subjected in settling claims or in defending actions,
mounts up the total amount of actual expenditure, owing to these
fearful occurrences, to upwards of half-a-million sterling, or nearly
1¼ per cent. on the total capital expended on railways. To this amount
might also be added loss of receipts which always occur to a railway
immediately after the occurrence of a serious accident. From the one
cause of cost, without seeking to find any other reasons, railway
companies have good reasons to dread railway accidents.
Yet considering the immense amount of persons carried, the numbers
killed or wounded is small as compared with the numbers of those who
are sufferers from accidents to which we are all liable all over the
kingdom. Taking the metropolis only, there were 375 persons killed in
the year 1862, of whom 171 came to sudden death within city limits, the
remainder being the casualties of this description for all the other
parts of London.[66] If we refer to the Wreck Register of the Board
of Trade, for 1866, we will see that, whilst the number of wrecks and
casualties to ships[67] from all causes, on or near the coasts of the
United Kingdom was 1,860 (just 251 more than the average of shipwrecks
for the last five years, and 322 more than the average for ten years),
the number of the lives lost was 896.[68] It is estimated that 500,000
persons navigate the ships both foreign going and coasting, in which
these lives were lost. Their number would have, beyond all doubt, been
greatly added to, but for noble efforts that have been established,
as well as increased within very recent years, for saving life from
shipwreck. During the last year and the first-half of 1867, no less
than 1,600 lives have been saved by means of the 153 boats of the
National Life Boat Association. A large number of lives has also been
saved by the rocket apparatus which is furnished to the Coast Guard by
the Board of Trade, out of the Mercantile Marine Fund.
In 1864 there was one life lost for every 109,715 tons of coal raised
in British collieries. In that proportion there would have been 903
persons killed in collieries in 1866.
Accidents by fire are awfully numerous, and no class or rank of life
is exempt from them, but they are naturally more numerous among the
children of the humbler classes than in the superior stations of life.
From the nature of female dress, the sex is not only more exposed to
these accidents than men are, and the consequences are less fatal to
males than they are to females. Fire-escapes have been a means, under
Divine Providence, of saving many lives from destruction in houses on
fire.[69]
Distressing and harassing as railway and other accidents are in this
country, their number and frequency in the United States are utterly
appalling. Of accidents to American railway trains in 1866, there were
82, by which 115 persons were killed and 607 were wounded. “This,”
says the writer from whom the foregoing information is derived, “is an
improvement over 1865, when there were 183 railroad accidents, killing
335 persons outright, and wounding 1,427 others.” It appears also that
1866 exhibits a better report in this respect than any year since 1861,
but it must not be forgotten that in American accidents “persons
wounded” means only those who were not “killed outright” at the time of
an accident. The great hulk of the wounded die subsequently, and should
in reality be included among the killed. Persons who only suffer from
minor wounds and injuries are not reported. It is only in England that
the slightest injuries are reported and are included in the general
account of persons injured. There were 23 steam-boat disasters on the
various rivers and inland waters of the United States during 1866, by
which 633 persons were killed and 156 wounded. In 1865, by 32 such
accidents, 1,788 persons were killed and 265 were injured; but in 1865
a larger number of persons were killed in this way than in any previous
year since 1854. What the numbers were in 1854 the writer who imparts
the foregoing information does not mention; but he adds:—“These figures
do not include any loss of life by disasters on the ocean.” As, until
the outbreak of the war of 1862, the mercantile marine of the United
States was equal to that of the United Kingdom, we may conclude, even
making allowance for its recent diminution, that there must have been
more lives lost on the sea than on the lakes, because American-built
ships have always been notoriously less solidly built than British,
and because the United States does not possess life-boats and other
means of saving life such as we happily have in such abundance in this
country.
We conclude this chapter by repeating the painful admission that
railway accidents are inevitable. It must, however, be added, as an act
of justice to railway officials, that their efforts are never-ceasing
to prevent them. But, after all, how feeble and powerless is poor
humanity!