TRANSFORMATION BY STEAM
All projects of increased speed in locomotion denounced when first
proposed. Sir Henry Herbert, M.P., in seventeenth century, on journeys
between Edinburgh and London in a fortnight. Parliament on railways.
Lord Clanricarde, Colonel Sibthorp, etc. George Hudson, the railway
King. Charles Guernsey, the original of Thackeray's 'de la Pluche.'
Progress and sequel of the railway fever of 1846. The Queen's first
railway journey. Hudson and his fall. Comparison between mines and
railways as sources of national wealth. Mr W. H. Mallock's
demonstration that the working classes of the United Kingdom have
increased in wealth more noticeably even than the upper classes.
The truth of Mr Disraeli's humorous description, in his Edinburgh speech
of 1868, of boots at the Blue Boar agreeing with the chambermaid at the
rival Red Lion about the folly and iniquity of railways, appears to be
rooted in the constitution of human nature. All readers are familiar with
the picture of the English traveller, drawn by Mr Apperley in his famous
_Quarterly_ article, _The Road_. This imaginary passenger had gone to
sleep in the days when public conveyances could not be counted on to
perform more than some half dozen miles an hour. He awakes in the era of
the lightning coaches and quicksilver mails timed to perform twice that
distance within the sixty minutes. If, as archaeologists say, a certain
Ericthonius of Athens[7] invented some fifteen centuries B.C. the first
chariot of which authentic record exists, he, too, was perhaps regarded as
an enemy rather than as a benefactor by some among his amazed
contemporaries. More than 3,000 years after the Attic revolutionary an
English Member of Parliament, Sir Henry Herbert, said that a man who
proposed to travel to and fro between Scotland and England within seven
days each way would be voted fit for Bedlam.
By 1843, thirteen years, that is, after the historic steam locomotive
between Manchester and Liverpool which caused the death of Mr Huskisson,
the great railway systems of England existed in a form more or less
complete. Eighteen hundred miles in all were open for traffic. Parliament
had authorized the expenditure on them of seventy million pounds. Sixty
million pounds had been so spent already. An average of three hundred
thousand passengers was carried weekly. Neither by the opinion of
parliament nor of the public were railways regarded with unequivocal
favour, or even at all times with toleration. Colonel Sibthorp could say
in the House of Commons that he considered all railways as public frauds
and private robberies. Lord Fitzwilliam, Lord Lansdowne, the Duke of
Wellington, Lord Clanricarde, all spoke of George Stephenson's invention
in the same contemptuous tones. The _Morning Post_ in February 1842 dwelt
with satisfaction on the fact that 'the Queen never travels by railway;'
while Prince Albert who did sometimes patronize the train between Windsor
and London was obliged only too often to protest: 'Not quite so fast, Mr
Conductor, if you please!' Within four months of the _Morning Post's_
announcement, the _Railway Times_ was able to record that Her Majesty made
her first trip on the Great Western. A few months later the Royal
passenger accomplished the distance between Southampton and Vauxhall in
less than two hours without a hitch. Five years subsequently the Queen and
Prince Consort journeyed to Cambridge for the installation of His Royal
Highness as Chancellor in a train driven, as Her Majesty records, by
George Hudson, the railway King. Between 1836 and 1846 the English mind
was fairly reconciled to the new method of transit. The day had finally
gone by when, as they had done a little previously, a firm of London
solicitors could refuse the business of the Brighton line on the plea that
coaches would drive off the trains in a month. From 1836 and onward the
Liverpool and Manchester, the London and Birmingham, and the North Midland
lines were all paying ten per cent. During 1846, the year of the railway
mania, 440 railway Bills passed authorizing the construction of 8,470
miles and the raising of L180,138,901.
This was the zenith of the shortlived splendour of George Hudson, the
railway King. He has been seen already in these pages, amid the Hyde Park
crowd in the early forties, resting his large heavy person in his wife's
chariot. The man himself had first become known on the City Board of
Health in York. Afterwards he was elected Mayor of his native town. In
that capacity he made the acquaintance of George Stephenson. In 1845 the
son of the York linendraper, now a power in the railway world was returned
to the House of Commons as Member for Sunderland. His parliamentary career
is alone, if at all, remembered to-day by the frequent encounters on the
floor of the House between himself and Mr Bernal Osborne. Diverting
memories of these were often recalled for the benefit of his friends by
Hudson's antagonist, with the generous admission of the raconteur that he
had, in the ex-King, usually found his match, if not in humorous retort
and thrust, yet in substantial argument. Two years after the 'King' drove
the engine which took the Queen and her Consort to Cambridge, suspicions
of Hudson's motive and conduct took (April 19, 1849) a definite shape. The
shareholders of the Midland demanded a Committee of Inquiry. The
incriminated Chairman resigned his post, and quietly accepted his
permanent eclipse. It was noticed to his credit at the time, and has not
since been denied, that he made no efforts at self exculpation, disclosed
no names or confidential transactions, and thus refused, as unquestionably
it was in his power to do, to associate persons of the highest
consideration with himself in his fall. Hudson was only the type of a
class whose members were invested by the railway passion of the period
with brief splendour and unsubstantial prosperity. In the Upper House,
Lord Clanricarde mentioned how Charles Guernsey, a broker's clerk, had
subscribed fifty-two thousand pounds for shares in the London and York
line. This was the undoubted original of Thackeray's 'de la Pluche.' The
total of his gains appears to have amounted to thirty thousand pounds.
The essential facts of the sequel with very little of fictitious
amplification are given by the novelist.
A reaction, as has been seen, followed the morbid enterprise of 1846. Its
results, however, have endured to the present hour. In 1845 the United
Kingdom possessed only two thousand four hundred miles of iron way. The
capital invested upon these was only eighty-eight millions. Before 1850,
the capital had increased to two hundred and thirty millions. To-day the
aggregate miles of the railways of the United Kingdom are little, if at
all short, of twenty thousand. The expenditure has been six hundred and
thirty millions. The gross annual income is sixty millions. In order to
appreciate with approximate accuracy the part played by the steam
locomotive in the creation of nineteenth century wealth in England, or to
define with practical distinctness that familiar term 'the railway
interest;' it is necessary to examine this matter more in detail. In 1855
the total of capital represented by the United Kingdom railways was
L297,584,709. In 1894, the latest date to which the Board of Trade returns
are published, the total was L985,387,855. After forty years, therefore,
the railway investments of these Islands had increased by L687,803,146.
Another chief source of national wealth and industrial employment during
this reign has been provided by mining enterprise. In respect of the money
value of each, what are the relations which the yield of subterranean
labour has borne to the enterprises of steam upon the surface of the
earth? In 1855 the value of all the minerals brought to the light of day
is expressed by the figures L29,579,001. The figures referring to railways
for the same year were, it will be remembered, seen to be L21,507,599.
This comparison between the two shows therefore that in 1855 the mines
exceeded the railways in value in round numbers, by eight million pounds.
The exact figures of the excess were L8,071,402. Forty years later this
balance is more than redressed. In 1894 the total of mineral wealth was
L80,900,453. The entire railway receipts were L84,310,831. In other words,
the surface opulence of the United Kingdom had not only made good its
inferiority to the subterranean wealth, but had advanced beyond that
rival, in round numbers, by three and a half million pounds. The exact
figures were L3,410,378.
The interesting analysis of the resources of the different orders of the
community contained in Mr W. H. Mallock's 'Classes and Masses' supplies
tolerably conclusive evidence that the results of mining and railway
enterprise have been distributed not very unequally between the rich and
the poor, or, as Mr Mallock rather puts it, between income tax payers on
L1,000 or upwards a year and those who, earning less than L150 a year, pay
no income tax at all. His estimate is that the population of England
contains seven hundred thousand families, equal to a total of three
million souls, 'with means of subsistence, insufficient, barely
sufficient, or precarious.' Although these figures represent the entire
population at the Norman conquest, Mr Mallock is able to show that
relatively to all inhabiting this realm the necessitous class has
decreased, not increased. In the seventeenth century, one-third of the
dwellers in Sheffield, then (1615) as to-day a great manufacturing centre,
were dependent on charity. Thirteen years after the Queen's accession
(_i.e._ 1850), out of every two hundred of our population nine were
paupers. In 1882 the proportion of pauperism was only five. Between 1850
and 1897 the population has increased from twenty-eight millions to
thirty-eight millions. The income-tax payers have increased from one
million and a half to nearly eight millions.[8] Incomes between L150 and
L1,000 have increased from three hundred thousand to nine hundred and
ninety thousand. Incomes above L1,000 have increased from twenty-four
thousand to sixty thousand; or, as this authority finds it more convenient
to put it, the middle class has grown by six hundred and ninety thousand.
The rich have been re-inforced by only thirty-six thousand. On the other
hand Mr Mallock is able to dispose of the fallacy that during the present
reign the very richest class have grown richer still. In 1850 the incomes
of fifty thousand pounds and upwards were seventy-two thousand; in 1897
they are nearer a hundred thousand; thus while the fairly well-to-do
middle classes have increased by hundreds of thousands, the professional
plutocrats measure their increase only by a few simple thousands. Briefly
summarized, the arithmetical argument of Mr Mallock is as follows. In
1800 the whole wealth of the country was two hundred and forty million
pounds. Of that amount the workers took one hundred and eleven million
pounds, leaving for the middle classes and the rich one hundred and thirty
million pounds. Three quarters of a century later, or more exactly in
1881, Mr Mallock's latest date, making his argument still more applicable
to 1897, the total of national wealth was one thousand three hundred
millions. Of this the workers had six hundred and sixty millions. The
working classes had thus, from being twenty millions behind the rich at
the opening of the century, advanced twenty millions beyond the rich
towards its close. From these figures, the inference is fair, and indeed
irresistible, that railways like other inventions have contributed to the
material prosperity of all classes equally, and have not enriched the
capitalists alone.
Notwithstanding George Hudson, who has become merely a memory, or Charles
Guernsey, the stockbroker's clerk who was his lowly imitator, the railway
plutocracy would seem to be a phrase more full of sound than of practical
meaning. If to this remark the name of Vanderbilt be objected, the true
facts of the case rather confirm than disprove the present remark.
'Commodore' Vanderbilt was a rich man before he ever owned a railway
share. He sold a fleet of steamers to purchase control of the New York
Central Railway. Had he invested the capital realized by this preliminary
transaction in any of the industries of his nation, such as the tinning of
beef from a cattle ranche in California, or the curing of bacon at
Chicago, he might have made the same or an even larger fortune. Railway
diplomacy was only the accidental employment of Mr Vanderbilt's
extraordinary genius for creative finance. The same talents exercised upon
any other material, or expended in any other career could scarcely fail to
have commanded same results. In another department of the industry
afforded to intellect by the steam locomotive, Charles Austin made two
fortunes out of railway Bills. His abilities as an advocate were probably
unequalled among the generation to which he belonged. Since Austin's day
lawyers of the same, or something like the same capacity have amassed
wealth not inferior to Austin's out of electric patents practice, or in
other branches of law which have been specially in request at the moment.
While the railway fever of the forties was at its height, a little man
with an intellectual head covered by a proverbially shabby hat might often
of an afternoon have been seen walking down Parliament Street. He never
failed to bestow a copper upon the crossing sweeper at the point where the
Home Office stands to-day. Formerly the contractor usually lavished on the
man a four-penny bit. But times were bad. The vail was reduced to a
quarter of that amount. The donor humorously anticipated the day when he
might be glad of a reversionary interest to the broom and shovel employed
outside the Horse Guards. That calamity, which of course never seriously
threatened, was averted. The little gentleman with the ostentatiously
neglected head-gear, Thomas Brassey, was a millionaire long before he
built his last railway. But his contemporary, Thomas Cubitt, made the same
fortune out of building Belgravia. Railways have also often enriched the
landowners through whose estates the lines have run. So high an authority
as Mr Samuel Laing holds that the owners of the soil have been over
compensated by the companies generally for the acquisition of their land.
To this, however, the country gentlemen would reply that in countless
instances they have received no more than the agricultural value for their
acres.[9] Certainly the profits of this class from railways have not
exceeded the gains which have accrued from the selling or leasing of other
property for building purposes. The railway interest, then, as a phrase
scarcely points to the existence of railway shareholders as a caste or
even a separate class. Railway shares, as the statistics above quoted
show, are distributed in fairly equal proportions through all classes of
the community. The learned professions, especially the Church, are
represented as well as the State or capital in these proprietorial bodies.
In the great majority of instances, the separate sums held are small.
Thus, ten years ago, the London and North Western Railway with its ninety
millions of capital had about thirty thousand debenture and stock holders.
Three thousand pounds scarcely represent what could be regarded as a
plutocratic investment. As for the men who were the early captains of
railway industry, they none of them secured more than modest competences.
Vignoles, Stephenson, Brunel, Hackworth, Allport, Cawkwell, Grierson; none
of these founded, none of their descendants are likely to found,
territorial families. Sir Daniel Gooch, so long the chairman of the Great
Western, left six hundred thousand pounds to his posterity. The greater
portion of this sum was made, not in railways, but in coal and in
telegraphs. Sir Edward Watkin, who is still with us, and to whose
enterprise neither the mountain precipice nor the realm of air is
inaccessible, has perhaps been not less prospered. It would not however be
easy to multiply instances of railway opulence like these.
On the other hand Arkwright of the spinning jenny has founded two rich
county families. His rival, Hargreaves, established another. The true
conclusion on this subject seems to be that the wealth invested in our
railways is only one, if the most conspicuous manifestation of the wealth
of the community. No better summary of the facts could be found than the
shrewd phrase into which George Stephenson condensed the whole subject.
'The country made the railways, and in return the railways made the
country.' The prosperity of the manufacturing classes which has coincided
with the Victorian era provided the money that built the railways. In
return the early development of our railway system enabled us to get so
far in advance of Continental nations as merchants and manufacturers that
our rivals have not yet caught us up, and perhaps never will.
The future development of the English railway system may be a tempting and
instructive topic for speculative experts, but is not for a general
survey, such as the present. The issues between traders and framers of
railway rates for the carriage of merchandise are periodically expressed
in the demand for the acquisition of the iron roads, like the telegraphic
wires, by the State. The mighty sections of the Anglo-Saxon race on either
side of the Atlantic present the two great exceptions to the State
proprietorship or State control of the public locomotives. Seeing that
half the railway mileage and capital of the world belongs to the United
Kingdom and to the United States, these exceptions are themselves of
considerable importance. The incorporation of the railway systems of the
United Kingdom into the national service would, it has been calculated,
involve the doubling of the annual Budget, and an addition to the
permanent Civil Service of five per cent, of our male population. If this
estimate be correct, it seems likely that a Minister of the Crown will
think even more than thrice before he seriously proposes the assumption of
such a responsibility by himself and his colleagues.
Apart from his general obligations to the work on Railways (2 vols.
Cassell & Company, 1894, by Mr John Pendleton), the writer expresses
his grateful acknowledgment for valuable help in this portion of his
work privately received from Mr Acworth, the great authority on modern
railways throughout the world, and from Mr A. J. Wilson, the eminent
writer on financial and commercial topics.