Moral.
The few rough sketches which we have now concluded, insignificant and trivial as they may appear in detail, form altogether a mass of circumstantial evidence demonstrating the vast difficulty as well as magnitude of the arrangements necessary for the practical working of great railways; and yet we regret to add, in their general management there exist moral and political difficulties more perplexing than those which Science has overcome, or which order has arranged.—We allude to a variety of interests, falsely supposed to be conflicting, which it is our desire to conciliate, and from which we shall endeavour to derive an honest moral.
When the present system of railway travelling was about to be introduced into Europe, it of course became necessary for Parliament and for His Majesty’s Government seriously to consider and eventually to determine whether these great national thoroughfares should be scientifically formed, regulated, and directed by the State, under a Board competently organized for the purpose, or whether the conveyance of the public should be committed to the inexperienced and self-interested management of an infinite number of Joint-stock Companies. Without referring to by-gone arguments in favour of each of these two systems, and, above all, without offering a word against the decision of Parliament on the subject, we have simply to state that the joint-stock system was adopted, and that accordingly capitalists and speculators of all descriptions—men of substance and men of straw—were authorized at their own cost to create and govern the iron thoroughfares of the greatest commercial country in the world. The first result was what might naturally have been expected, for no sooner was it ascertained that a railway connecting, or, as it may be more properly termed, tapping immense masses of population—such, for instance, as are contained in London, Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, &c.—was productive of profit, than, just as, when one lucky man finds a rich lode, hundreds of ignorant, foolish people immediately embark, or, as it is too truly termed, sink their capital in “mining,” so it was generally believed that any “railway”—whether it connected cities or villages it mattered not a straw—would be equally productive.
The competition thus first irrationally and then insanely created was productive of good and evil. The undertakings were commenced with great vigour. On the other hand, as engineering talent cannot all of a sudden be produced as easily as capital, many important works were constructed under very imperfect superintendence; and as iron, timber, and every article necessary for the construction of a railway simultaneously rose in value, the result was that the expense of these new thoroughfares, which by the exaction of fares proportionate to their outlay must, as we have shown,[A] eventually be paid for by the public, very greatly exceeded what, under a calm, well-regulated system, would have been their cost. Nevertheless, in spite of all difficulties and expenses, foreseen as well as unforeseen, our great arterial railways were very rapidly constructed.
Their managers, however, had scarcely concluded their “song of triumph,” when they found themselves seriously embarrassed by a demand on the part of the public for what has been rather indefinitely termed “cheap travelling;” and as this question involves most serious considerations, we will venture to offer a very few observations respecting it.
There can be no doubt that, inasmuch as it is the duty of Parliament to legislate for the interests of the public, so it is the duty of Her Majesty’s Government to exercise their influence in legitimately obtaining for the community cheap travelling. But although money is valuable to every man, his life is infinitely more precious; and therefore, without stopping to inquire whether by cheap travelling is meant travelling for nothing, for fares unremunerative, or for fares only slightly remunerative to the Company, we submit as a mere point of precedence, that the first object the legislature ought to obtain is, that every possible precaution shall be taken to ensure for the public SAFE travelling.
Now, casting aside all petty or local interests, we calmly ask in what manner and by what means would Her Majesty’s Government ensure for the public safe travelling, supposing our railways were the sole property of the State?
The answer is not only evident, but, we submit, undeniable.
The way, under Providence, to protect the public from avoidable accidents on railways is, utterly regardless of expense, to construct the rails, sleepers, locomotive-engines, and carriages of the very best materials, carefully put together by the best workmen; and then to intrust the maintenance of the line to engineers and other men of science of the highest attainments, assisted by a corps of able-bodied guards, pointsmen, and policemen, all sober, vigilant, active, intelligent, and honest.
Now it is highly satisfactory to reflect that every one of the above costly precautions, as well as all others of a similar nature which a paternal government could reasonably desire to enforce, are as conducive to the real interests of the proprietors of a railway as they are to the safety of those who travel on it; for even supposing that the Directors take no pride in maintaining the character of the national thoroughfare committed to their charge—that, reckless of human life, they care for nothing but their own pockets—a railway accident summarily inflicts upon their purses the same description of punishment instantaneously awarded to a man who carelessly runs his head against a post. For instance, only a few weeks ago a ballast-train on the London and North-Western Railway having stopped for a moment, a goods-train behind it ran into it. No one was hurt excepting the Company—who suffered a loss of 4000l. by the collision. Independent, therefore, of the heavy damages readily awarded by juries to any one hurt by a railway accident, the injuries self-inflicted by the Company on their own costly engines, carriages, &c., are most serious in amount, to say nothing of the almost incalculable embarrassment they may create: indeed, taking into fair consideration the costly results which have occurred to our railway companies by the dislocation of a bolt, the unscrewing of a little nut, or from a variety of other causes equally trifling, it may, we believe, be truly said that the punishments which railway companies have received from accidents have, generally speaking, exceeded rather than fallen short of their offences; and thus every intelligent board of directors is aware that safety in travelling is more emphatically for the interest of railway proprietors than any other consideration whatever: in short, that there is nothing more expensive to a railway Company than an accident.
It being evident, therefore, that it is as much for the interests of railway proprietors as of railway travellers that every possible precaution should be taken by the Company to prevent accidents, we have now to observe that to attain all the necessary securities there is but one thing needful—namely, MONEY. With it Her Majesty’s Government might conscientiously undertake the serious responsibility of prescribing all that Science could administer for the safety of the public. Without money, what government or what individual who had any character to lose could for a moment undertake that which his judgment would clearly admonish him to be utterly impracticable? Now, if this reasoning be correct, the managers of our arterial railways were certainly justified in expecting that, if the Government required them to take every possible precaution to ensure safe travelling, they would, as a matter of course, assist them in obtaining the same means which they themselves would require had they to effect the same object—namely, MONEY. But instead of endeavouring to obtain for railway companies these means—or rather, instead of enabling them to retain the means which, under their respective Acts of Parliament, they already legally possessed of purchasing security for the public, Parliament, in compliance with a popular outcry for cheap travelling, deemed it advisable to require from railways a reduction of the tolls necessary to ensure SAFE travelling.
To any one who will carefully observe the practical working of a railway, it is not only alarming, but appalling, to reflect on the accidents which sooner or later must befall the public if the master-mind which directs the whole concern, but which cannot possibly illuminate the darkness of every one of its details, were suddenly to be deprived of the talisman by which alone he can govern a lineal territory four or five hundred miles in length—namely, an abundant supply of MONEY. Parliament may thunder—Government may threaten—juries may punish—the public may rave; but if the fustian-clad workmen who put together the 5416 pieces of which a locomotive engine is composed are insufficiently paid—if the wages of the pointsmen, enginemen, and police be reduced to that of common labourers—if cheap materials are connected together by scamped workmanship—the black eyes, bloody noses, fractured limbs, mangled corpses of the public, will emphatically proclaim, as clearly as the hopper of a mill, the emptiness of the exchequer. So long as the manager of a railway has ample funds he ought to be prepared, regardless of expense, to repair with the utmost possible despatch the falling-in of a tunnel or any other serious accident to the works—in short, the whole powers of his mind should be directed to the paramount interests of the public, which, in fact, are identical with those of the Company. But if he has no funds—or, what is infinitely more alarming, in case, from want of funds, the impoverished proprietors of the railway shall have angrily elected in his stead the representative of an ignorant, ruinous, and narrow-minded policy—how loudly would the public complain—how severely would our commercial interests suffer, if, on the occurrence to the works of any of the serious accidents to which we have alluded, the new Ruler were to be afraid even to commence any repairs until he should have been duly authorised by his newly-elected economical colleagues to haggle and extract from a number of contractors the cheapest tender!
But we fear it would not be difficult to show that, in reducing the established rates of our great railways before their works were completed, Parliament has unintentionally legislated upon erroneous principles. For instance, we have already explained that the profit of a railway depends upon the amount of the population and goods which flow upon it from the towns it taps. If, therefore, the traffic on an arterial line be but moderately remunerative, it must be evident that a branch line must be an unprofitable concern—unless, indeed, the company be authorized to levy upon it higher tolls than are sufficient on the trunk line. When, therefore, in the rapid development of our great national railway system it was found necessary for the accommodation of a fraction of the public to apply to Parliament for powers to make these unremunerating branch lines, the companies were certainly in theory entitled to expect the extra assistance we have explained;—instead of which they were practically informed that, unless they would consent to LOWER their tolls altogether, they would not be allowed to develop their system by the construction of any branch line; which is as if a tenant were to say to his landlord—“If you incur the expense of making convenient bye-roads to my farm to enable me with facility to take my crops to market, you must lower my rent.”
As it is undeniable that exorbitant rates, besides being inconvenient to the public, are highly injurious to the real interests of railway proprietors—indeed we have shown how enormously the traffic of the country has been increased by low charges—we would be fully disposed, not only most strongly to recommend, but, as far as it may be legal, to enforce, that salutary principle; but the insuperable difficulty of at present adjusting the proper tolls to be levied on the public is, that no arterial railway in Great Britain can either declare in figures, or even verbally explain, the real state of its ultimate expenditure and receipts, for the sole reason, namely, that the enterprise is not yet worked out, and that no man breathing can foretell what are to be its limits.
What has become, we ask, of the old London and Birmingham Railway (born only in 1836)—of the Grand Junction Railway—of the Manchester and Birmingham—the Liverpool and Manchester Railways—and of a score of others we could name? What has become of the civil, or rather uncivil, war which all these companies waged against each other; as well as against Messrs. Pickford, the most powerful carriers in the world? They have all lost the independence they respectively occupied, and, like the ingredients cast by Macbeth’s witches “i’ th’ charmed pot,” they have “boiled,” or, as it is now-a-days termed, amalgamated, into one great stock; and while this long continuous arterial line has been drawing from the public for goods and passenger traffic considerable receipts, it has been, and at various localities still is, draining its own life-blood by the forced construction of a number of sucking branch-lines, which, as far as we can see, are not likely ever to be remunerative.
For some time railway companies deemed it their interest to compete against each other, but this ruinous system was gradually abandoned and is now reversed. The two lines from London to Peterborough, after competing for several months, now divide their profits. The two lines to Edinburgh will probably ere long do the same. But besides this transmutation of competition into combination, public notice was lately given that three of the large arterial lines, namely, the Great Western, the South-Western, and the London and North-Western, were meditating an amalgamation of their respective stocks into one vast concern. On this important project, which for the present has been abandoned, we will offer a very few observations.
We believe it may be affirmed, without fear of contradiction, that the working details of a railway are invariably well executed in proportion to their magnitude:—that, for instance, in the management of the London and North-Western Railway the arrival and departure of trains are better regulated at their large stations than at their small;—that their great manufactories are better and more economically conducted than their little ones;—that the arrangements of Messrs. Pickford and of Messrs. Chaplin and Horne are better at Camden Town than at the small outlying stations;—in short, we most distinctly observed that wherever there was an enormous amount of important business to be transacted, there were invariably to be found assembled superior talents, superior workmen, superior materials; and that, on the other hand, at small and secluded localities, where little work was performed, inferior men, inferior waggons, horses, &c., were employed.
In the old system of travelling it was safer to drive along a lonely road than through crowded streets; old horses as well as old drivers were deemed safer than young ones; in fact, the more the traveller was impeded, the less dangerous was his journey. But on our railways, when once a man has tied himself to the tail of a locomotive engine, it matters but little, especially in a fog, whether he flies at the pace of fifty miles an hour, or whether he crawls, as it is now termed, at the rate only of twenty; for, in either case, if there be anything faulty in the works, machinery, or management, accidents may occur to him which it is fearful to contemplate.
Considering, therefore, that not only the ability necessary for the general management of a railway, but the intelligence and vigilance requisite at every station and on every portion of the line are found practically to increase according to the demand, and vice versâ, it is evident that nothing would prove more fatal to the public as well as ruinous to proprietors than to split an efficient remunerating great railway into two or more inefficient and unremunerating small ones. A little railway, like “a little war,” is murderous to those engaged in it,—ruinous to those who pay for it; and we are therefore of opinion that it is for the interest of the public not only that traffic should be concentrated as much as possible on large lines, rich enough to purchase management, engineering, servants, and materials of the very best description, but that these great lines by uniting together should voluntarily force themselves to exchange all paltry considerations, mean exactions, and petty projects for those great principles which alone should guide the administration of a national system of railways. There can be no doubt that any description of monopoly is abstractedly an evil, but if it be equally true that every inch of railway throughout the country represents an integral portion of a vast legally constituted monopolizing system, the practical question to consider is, not whether monopoly is an evil, but whether, of two evils, it would be more or less convenient for Parliament and the public to deal with one monopoly than with many;—whether, for instance, it would be more or less easy for Government, in recommending alterations of fares, &c., to correspond solely with the directors of the London and North-Western Railway than to communicate seriatim with the boards of the several companies to whom the present line originally belonged, each of which might possibly, in opposition to each other, be pursuing a different course of policy.
As the new system has created an enormous increase of traffic, so it has also, pari passu, developed talent proportionate to the extraordinary demand for it; and, therefore, whatever may be the imaginary dangers from a concentrated administration of our railways, we feel confident that the public have much greater reason to apprehend the inconveniences, to say the least, that must inevitably result to them from those sudden unreasonable changes of management, or rather of mismanagement, which are sure periodically to take place so long as every separate railway monopoly arbitrarily pursues not only its own system, but that which its restless shareholders from time to time may think proper to ordain. At all events, until the best plan of managing our great railways shall have been finally ascertained, and most especially until the unknown liabilities, expenses, and receipts attendant upon the establishment over the surface of our country of a series of iron highways shall have been accurately developed, it must be utterly impossible for any practical man to decide to what extent, if any, the Parliamentary tolls originally levied on the public ought in equity to have been reduced.
The great truth, however, sooner or later must appear; and as the hurricane, however violently it may blow, in due time is invariably succeeded by a breathless calm;—as the ocean waves, although mountain high, shortly subside;—as the darkest night in a few hours turns into bright daylight;—so must the present mystified prospects of our great railways inevitably ere long become clear and transparent as those of any other mercantile firm; and when this moment shall have arrived, we believe a very short time will elapse before Parliament, the amalgamated Railway Boards, and the public, will come to a creditable and amicable adjustment; for while, on the other hand, it can never be the interest of the public to prefer cheap to SAFE travelling, so it can never be the serious and fixed purpose of any body of men competent to direct the affairs of our arterial railways to exact from the public an exorbitant dividend which must inevitably create condign punishment; for so sure as water finds its own level will British capital always be forthcoming to lower by legitimate competition anything like a continued usurious exaction from the public. But a moment’s consideration of the following facts will show that, as regards railway tolls, the public have as yet no very great reason to complain.
1st. As regards the public:—
In 1835 the fares paid by the public for travelling from London to Liverpool, at the average rate of say 10 miles an hour, were, exclusive of fees to guards and coachmen—
| £. | s. | d. | £. | s. | d. | ||
| Per Mail, outside | 2 | 10 | 0 | Inside | 4 | 10 | 0 |
| Per Coach, ditto | 2 | 5 | 0 | Ditto | 4 | 5 | 0 |
In 1849 the fares paid by the public for travelling the same distance, at an average rate of 22½ miles per hour (the express trains travelling at about 30 miles per hour) are—
| £. | s. | d. | ||
| Per | Express and per Mail trains | 2 | 5 | 0 |
| First Class | 1 | 17 | 0 | |
| Second Class | 1 | 7 | 0 | |
| Third Class | 0 | 16 | 9 | |
2ndly. As regards the proprietors of Railways:—
In Herapath’s Railway Journal of the 30th of September last it appears that the capital expended on railways now open for traffic, amounting to 148,400,000l., gives a profit of 1·81 per cent. for the half-year, or 3l. 12s. 4⅘d. per cent. per annum. Deducting the non-paying dividend lines, the dividend on the remainder amounts to 2·09 per cent. for the half-year, or 4l. 3s. 7⅕d. per cent. per annum.
After ten years’ competition with railways the dividends received by the Canal Companies between London and Manchester were in 1846 as follows:—
| Per Cent. | |
| Grand Junction Canal | 6 |
| Oxford | 26 |
| Coventry | 25 |
| Old Birmingham | 16 |
| Trent and Mersey | 30 |
| Duke of Bridgewater’s (private property) say | |
The dividends received by the Grand Junction Canal for the last forty years have averaged 9l. 10s. 9d. per cent. per annum.
Great as have been and still are the advantages to the country of our inland navigation, it cannot be denied that the creation of railways was a more hazardous undertaking than the construction of canals. Without, however, offering any opinion as to the relative profits which it has been the fortune of the proprietors of each of these valuable undertakings to divide, we merely repeat that, considering the unknown difficulties which for some time must continue to obscure the future prospects of our railways, it is neither for their interest nor that of the public that the managers of these great national works should in the mean while be cramped by want of means in the development of the important system which it has pleased the Imperial Parliament to commit to their hands instead of to the paternal management of Her Majesty’s Government.
If the present alarming depreciation of railway property continue, it is evident that decisive measures, good, bad, or indifferent, will be deemed necessary by the shareholders to prevent, if possible, further loss; and while, on the one hand, the public ought not to be alarmed at impracticable threats, it is only prudent to consider what will probably be the lamentable results of a civil or rather of an uncivilized warfare between the travelling public and the proprietors of the rails on which they travel.
In case the present reduced fares should prove to be unremunerative, we have endeavoured to show that, unless the shareholders in anger elect incompetent managers, the public have no reason to entertain any extra apprehension from accidents;—for the engine-driver might as well desire to run his locomotive over an embankment as a company of proprietors—almost all of whom are railway travellers—become reckless of their property as well as of their lives. Indeed, if railway rates were to be further reduced to-morrow, the public would, we believe, travel as safely, and perhaps even more so, than at present. The result of inadequate rates is not danger, but inconvenience, amounting to deprivation of many of those advantages which the railway system is calculated to bestow upon the country. For instance, to every practical engineer it is well known that pace is just as expensive on rails as on the road. At present the public travel fast, and those who want to go long distances are accommodated with trains that seldom stop. If, however, it does not suit them to pay for speed, they cannot reasonably expect to have it. If railway companies, as well as the public, are forced to economise, both we believe would eventually be heavy losers by the transaction. The London and North-Western Company, by taking off their express trains, might at once save upwards of 20,000l. a-year, besides severe extra damage to their rails. The railways in general might reduce the number of their trains,—make them stop at every little station,—run very slow,—suppress the delivery of day-tickets,—curtail the expenses of their station accommodation,—and finally abandon a number of tributary lines upon which large sums of money have been expended. It must be for the public to determine whether, for the sake of a small saving in their fares, which after all are moderate as compared with other travelling charges, they desire not only to forego the accommodation and convenience to which they have lately become accustomed, but to arrest the development of the railway system to its utmost extent, and with its development its profits.
But, whether our railways be eventually governed by high-minded or by narrow-minded principles,—by one well-constituted amalgamated board, or by a series of small disjointed local authorities,—we trust our readers of all politics will cordially join with us in a desire not unappropriate to the commencement of a new year, that the wonderful discovery which it has pleased the Almighty to impart to us, instead of becoming among us a subject of angry dispute, may in every region of the globe bring the human family into friendly communion; that it may dispel national prejudices, assuage animosities; in short, that, by creating a feeling of universal gratitude to the Power from which it has proceeded, it may produce on earth peace and good will towards men.