"_Facility of communication begets_ '_community of interests_,'
_which is the only treaty that is not a_ '_scrap of paper_.'"--
THE LATE LORD FISHER.
Lord John Russell, it is said, used, in conversation with Queen Victoria,
to date all political development from the Revolution of 1688. If those
mystic figures signalize the birthday of Whiggery, in the political
world, in much the same way we may date the constitution of the Cambrian,
as we know it to-day, from the year 1864. In more than one way it was a
notable period in Welsh railway annals. The various independent links in
the chain were either completed and wholly or partially in working order,
or in course of construction. Thanks to the influential efforts of the
Earl of Powis, arrangements had been made with the Post Office and the
London and North Western Railway Company, through Sir Richard Moon, for
the conveyance of mails from Shrewsbury to Borth, the then terminus.
Through working arrangements were also in force among the various local
companies, and it was obvious that the time had come to face the problems
of future policy. These were not altogether of simple solution.
[Picture: A Group of Old Officials. Standing--From left to right--The
first figure is unidentified; Mr. Geo. Owen, Engineer; Mr. Henry Cattle,
Traffic Manager. Seated--Mr. A. Walker, Locomotive Supt.; Mr. George
Lewis, Secretary and General Manager; Mr. H. C. Corfield, Solicitor]
Very early in the year Mr. Abraham Howell was moved, in one of his
frequent letters to the Earl of Powis, to warn his lordship that he
scented "another crisis coming on in the affairs of the Welsh Railways."
Once more there was division of opinion and "parties" were forming. Mr.
Piercy and the majority of the directors were for extending "the Welsh
system so as to make it independent of the great companies and set aside
existing agreements and obligations." Mr. Howell himself, with Mr. Savin
and a minority on the Board, inclined rather to the course of
accommodation with circumstances, making the best of the lines and
properties of the companies as they stood, avoiding extensions and
increasing capital, while cultivating friendly arrangements with
neighbouring companies and so avoiding as much as possible Parliamentary
and legal conflicts.
After all the tribulations through which these undertakings had passed
the more politic and pacific course certainly had its advantages, but one
Parliamentary adventure could not easily be avoided. Whether the policy
was to be one of splendid isolation or of neighbourly friendship, the
moment was obviously ripe for some measure of internal consolidation, and
powers were sought for this purpose. The Bill had to pass through the
now familiar ordeal of battle, both in the Committee of the House of
Commons and in the House of Lords, when many of the old arguments and
some new ones were skilfully marshalled on behalf of the Great Western
Railway Company and rolled on the tongue of eminent and eloquent counsel.
Even the little Bishop's Castle undertaking threw in its lot with the
opposition, finding a powerful protagonist in Mr. Whalley. But the
Cambrian had stout friends to put in the witness-box. Earl Vane proved a
tough nut to crack in cross-examination. So did the Earl of Powis, still
apparently tinged with a North Western bias. With the result that after
much forensic oratory, closing appropriately on a reminder of "the
troubles and difficulties the companies had gone through," and a well
deserved "tribute to the energy and talent of their solicitor, Mr.
Abraham Howell," the Amalgamation Bill, excluding for the time being the
Welsh Coast line, was passed into law in July, 1864.
It set up a joint board, limited to a minimum of six and a maximum of
twelve, the first directors chosen being those who had similarly served
the several independent companies, some of whom, of course, had acted on
more than one of these concerns. The following year, some previous
difficulties being removed, the Welsh Coast Railway was brought into the
combine, and the Cambrian then assumed the organic shape in which it
remained until the further amalgamation with the Mid-Wales Railway in
1904.
Financially, however, the directors still swam in troubled waters.
Creditors became impatient and began to press their claims. More than
one suit was brought against the Company involving long and expensive
proceedings in the Court of Chancery, and very early in 1868 it was found
necessary to convene, at Oswestry, a meeting of the "mortgagees, holders
of certificates of indebtedness and other creditors, and of the
preference and ordinary proprietors for the consideration of the best
means of dealing with the conflicting and other claims and interests of
the company's creditors and proprietors and of passing such resolutions
in regard thereto, or any of them, as might at such meeting be deemed
expedient." To obtain some means of getting out of the financial morass
in which the undertaking was floundering was "expedient" indeed, and it
is hardly surprising to find that, in view of the many conflicts of
interest, the assembly is recorded to have been both "large and
influential." Mr. Bancroft presided in the absence of Earl Vane,
chairman of the Company, and he was supported by the directors and
officials who had done much to bring the Cambrian into existence and were
now struggling to put it on its feet. The scheme which was laid before
the meeting was long and complicated. More than one meeting was required
to thrash matters out, but in the end a readjustment was arrived at, and
a new scheme was adopted for constituting the board. From July 1st,
1868, until December 31st, 1878, it consisted of ten directors, four of
whom were elected by the Coast Section and four by the Inland Section,
the other two seats being in the nomination of Earl Vane and the Earl of
Powis. The revenue from the whole undertakings went into a common fund,
and, after deducting working expenses, the surplus was divided between
the Coast and Inland Sections in certain proportions, to be determined by
arbitrators and an umpire. Admirable as this arrangement might be in
theory, in practice we know what generally happens when
"United, yet divided, twain at once
Sit two Kings of Brentford on one throne,"
and it is hardly astonishing that this form of dual authority should have
led to a good deal of squabbling between the rival "monarchs." It
proved, indeed, a cumbrous contrivance, and, when the period for its
operation terminated, with the close of 1878, the constitution of the
board was allowed to revert to the limits laid down under the Act of
1864, without any provision for sectional directors at all. During these
intervening years, indeed, questions of finance and of the upkeep of the
lines were still for ever cropping up, and not always as readily disposed
of. It is a long and dreary story of the inevitable struggles with ways
and means which so often marks the life of pioneer undertakings. For
years these Chancery suits hung like chains about the company's neck, and
even into the eighties the directors were never free from sudden
embarrassments and never knew from what quarter they might proceed.
One such difficulty, indeed, ultimately proved a blessing in disguise.
In 1884, at the instance of the Company's bankers, the line was placed in
the hands of a Receiver, Mr. John Conacher, fortunately, being chosen for
this office. The line was ripe for a great and final effort to place the
undertaking on a firmer footing, and, together with the late Mr. A. C.
Humphreys-Owen, Mr. Conacher drew up a scheme of arrangement between the
Company and its creditors under which about seventy different stocks were
consolidated into ten; and it was their patient and skilful work in thus
formulating what became known as the scheme of 1885, that laid the
foundation of the Company's improved financial position of which the
proprietors and the public have reaped the benefit in subsequent years.
Meantime, however, other matters not directly bearing on finance, engaged
the attention of the directors. Amongst these was the question of the
works, which it was found necessary to erect, since the Company was
working its own line. In July 1864, the inhabitants of Welshpool,
conscious of the prominent part which the town had played in the
inauguration of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway, presented a memorial to
the board in which they urged its central position on the system and the
recent completion of the waterworks as strong arguments for favourable
consideration of the borough's claims to such an advantage. Nor was it
without an eye to future development that Welshpool station was built in
a manner capable of allowing its upper stories to be used as the
Company's offices. Here, for the brief space, the offices were, but in
both these cases ambitious Poolonians were doomed to disappointment.
[Picture: The late MR. A. C. HUMPHREYS-OWEN, M.P. Chairman, 1900-1905]
The official headquarters of the Newtown and Machynlleth Railway Company
were destined for some time to remain at Machynlleth, where Mr. David
Howell, its secretary, practised as a solicitor; but in January 1862 the
staff of the Oswestry and Newtown had removed from Welshpool, and,
together with those of the Llanidloes and Newtown, the Oswestry,
Ellesmere and Whitchurch, the Buckley and the Wrexham Mold and Connah's
Quay, jointly occupied two rooms on the second floor of No. 9a, Cannon
Row, Westminster, Mr. George Lewis being secretary of all five companies.
On the floor below the Aberystwyth and Welsh Coast Company cohabited with
some dozen slate and stone companies, while Mr. Benjamin Piercy sat in
state hard by in Great George Street, and Mr. Thomas Savin weaved his
ambitious schemes around the corner, at No. 7, Delahay Street, with Mr.
James Fraser (father of the auditor of the Cambrian in recent years)
acting, under power of attorney, as his manager. This proved quite a
convenient arrangement so long as Parliamentary Committee work absorbed
much of the time of these officials, and here all the companies held
their board meetings, generally on the same day.
There were stirring times without, and it is scarcely strange if Cannon
Row did not live up to the reputation of its suggestive name. Rows,
indeed, were frequent and occasionally threatened to reverberate beyond
the walls of the official sanctum. There is an old and honoured Cambrian
official, then a young clerk sitting at his desk in the office above the
board room, who remembers the occasion when an extraordinary scene was
enacted on that dusty little stage. From a scuffle of some sort in the
board room Mr. Gartside, a Director of the Oswestry and Newtown Railway
Company, beat a hasty retreat up the stairs to the clerk's room, closely
pursued by Mr. Whalley. Mr. Gartside being rather portly, was much out
of breath, and suddenly pausing and turning round to recover himself on
gaining the hearthrug he received Mr. Whalley's fist full in the stomach,
which completed his exhaustion. Recovering his breath and as much of his
dignity as the circumstances would permit, the disabled Director
appealing dramatically to the astonished clerks, exclaimed "Gentlemen, I
call on you to witness that the hon. Member for Peterboro' has struck
me." But the clerks unable to grapple with so unaccustomed a situation,
beat a hasty retreat, and nothing more was heard of what was presumably a
more or less accidental "assault."
From Great George Street, the offices were subsequently moved to No. 3,
Westminster Chambers, and soon after Mr. Savin's failure, in 1866, when
the directors took over the working of the line from the unfortunate
lessee, after a short trial of another London office, the Secretary and
his staff, in August of that year, packed up pens, ink, paper and
documents and settled themselves in Oswestry, where they have since
remained. In Oswestry, too, on a site under the Shelf Bank, close to
where the first sod on the Ellesmere and Oswestry line was cut, the works
were erected and have continued to be maintained.
[Picture: Oswestry station and Company's Head Offices. Reproduced from
the "Great Western Magazine."]
On a subsequent occasion, however, they were the ostensible cause of one
of those sudden storms which, as we have said, from time to time assailed
the board-room or even periodical assemblies of the proprietors. On this
occasion it was, indeed, a bolt from the blue. A few days before the
date fixed for the half yearly meeting, at Crewe, in February 1879, there
had been placed in the hands of the shareholders a pamphlet bearing the
innocent title "Cambrian Railways Workshops." But, when they read it,
the recipients discovered that, whatever the reason for the choice of
such a heading, the sermon was founded on a much wider text. It
traversed the whole policy of the Board, the constitution of the Company
and the management of its property, and it was written in highly
censorious terms. That, in itself, might have been of comparatively
little moment, for the directors were not without their critics--no
directors of public companies ever are. But the author, who did not
withhold his name, was Mr. David Davies, constructor of much of the line
and now one of the most influential directors. Here, apparently, was a
matter for serious concern, and the seriousness was not diminished when
to the pamphlet itself was added a speech, at the shareholders' meeting,
in which Mr. Davies did not scruple to suggest that the line was being
expensively worked, that the rolling stock had not been adequately
maintained, that the road was defective and that, some of the stock being
worthless, the whole undertaking was in a false position. It was what
Earl Vane (now become Marquess of Londonderry), who presided, called "a
stab in the dark." The stab in the open with which Mr. Davies followed
it up was certainly not less sensational. He declared that "the line at
the moment was not safe, and he should not be at all surprised to see the
rails sprinkled with human blood before they were very much older." He
alleged that a fellow director (Mr. S. H. Hadley) had expressed a wish to
see the Oswestry shops burnt down and new shops erected at Aberystwyth
instead. The balance-sheet was "an insult." He washed his hands of the
whole affair and demanded a Committee of Inquiry. A hub-bub ensued,
amidst which it was not impertinently pointed out that Mr. Davies had
himself laid much of the road which he now condemned, and, backed by a
letter from Mr. George Owen, the engineer, it was shown that his
strictures on its existing condition were unsubstantiated by facts. But
Mr. Davies stuck to his guns, and before what was well described in the
local Press as "a stormy meeting" terminated, he had left the room and
his seat on the Board. It was a matter of doubt, for some moments,
whether the noble Chairman would not go too, but, happily, he discovered
enough signs of confidence among the proprietors present to encourage him
to continue his thankless task.
It was a tremendous tempest while it lasted, but it was soon over. At
the next half-yearly meeting, in the following August, the directors were
able to report that, instead of spilt blood, the summer had brought a
considerably increased weight of tourist traffic, hearty congratulations
were showered on Mr. George Lewis, the Secretary, on his efficient
administration of the line, and Capt. R. D. Pryce, presiding, in the
absence of the Marquess, concluded the proceedings on a happy note of
assurance that directors and shareholders were "of one mind," and full of
sanguine expectations as to the future of their undertaking. The throes
of consolidation are sometimes not less severe than those of birth
itself, but they can be as successfully survived.