STEAM CARRIAGES ON COMMON ROADS.
[One of the most accredited works upon this vital topic is An Historical and Practical Treatise upon Elemental Locomotion; by Mr. Alexander Gordon, Civil Engineer. It shows the commercial, political, and moral advantages; the means by which an elemental power is obtained; the rise, progress, and description of steam-carriages; the roads upon which they may be made to travel; and the ways and means for their general introduction. This arrangement of the subject is exceedingly well executed by Mr. Gordon, who has added a series of efficient illustrations—from a diagram simplifying the high-pressure modification of the steam-engine as applied to steam-carriages, to the last completed Steam Drag and Carriage attached; while the most material points of Mr. Gordon's views are fortified by a condensation of the evidence before the select committee of the House of Commons. All this and much more is accomplished within two hundred octavo pages, which a less economical and therefore less praiseworthy editor would have expanded into a costly quarto. Mr. Gordon's work has thus been planned and executed in the right spirit: he maintains national benefits which must arise from the adoption of steam carriages, and he seeks to place his views in the hands of all who are immediately interested in the subject by means as efficient as economical. We quote a few extracts, (the most interesting to the general reader,) from the first chapter, which aims at a cursory estimate of a few of the leading commercial, political, and moral advantages which will accrue to the community by the substitution of inanimate or steam power for animate or horse power, for locomotive purposes; leaving its spirit of fairness to the just appreciation of the reader.]
Economy of Conveyance.
In a great commercial country like ours, extending its ramifications to every branch of natural and artificial produce, it is almost superfluous to remark that a vast capital is sunk annually in the mere transport of marketable commodities: and which is not only a loss to the seller as being an unproductive outlay, but entails a heavy increase of expense to the buyer also upon every article of daily consumption. Any means, therefore, that will accelerate the conveyance, and at the same time reduce materially the expense of carriage, bears upon its surface a great public gain.
Expeditious locomotion, to the commercial world more particularly, in every mercantile transaction, is equivalent to capital: and such is the vast importance of economy of time here, that no extra expense is considered as too great to accomplish the utmost speed. We have this practically illustrated in the preference which society gives to a complicated machinery put into motion at an enormous expense, to travelling by the winds of heaven which cost nothing.
To the merchant time gained is equal to money: for time occupied in travelling is just so much profitable employment lost. Time occupied in the transport of goods is equivalent to so much interest of capital spent: for a thousand pounds invested in merchandise is unproductive so many days as the transport is tedious. That part of the capital of an individual which is employed in the carrying of his goods to and from market, is so much abstracted from his means of producing more of the article in which he exerts his ingenuity and labour, whether it be in agriculture or manufacture.
Easy communication lessens the time occupied in the transport; and a saving of time lessens the distance, or our notion of distance. This effects a saving of money: and a saving of money permits of a greater employment of capital. The man who can only afford to keep one traveller soliciting orders for his goods, will thus be enabled to keep two; because the expense of travelling will be reduced a half. Or it may be, he will find it more advantageous to employ the saving in the production of a more delicate and desirable article in the way of his trade. The increased traffic from place to place will give likewise an impulse to business, which, in the present stagnant times, is most desirable. The manufacturer in Scotland will find the London market more easily arrived at: and the merchant in the metropolis will be able to get his orders more rapidly given and executed. A conveyance which, in good management, would be a weekly one, is, in bad management, a monthly one: and the carrier is obliged to quadruple his charge for the transport. To meet this charge the merchant has to add to the cost of the article, and so on throughout the various gradations of mercantile transition, until the consumer pays the necessarily increased price. Hence, whatever reduces the price of transportation, reduces the price of the commodity transported. Whatever reduces the traveller's time, reduces his claim for compensation, and (competition being always at work) he is content with a smaller profit upon his merchandise. If a scarcity of any article occurs at one point of the kingdom, the monopolist there cannot continue his increased price for any duration of time. Commerce may, in this respect, be resembled to water, for, if not obstructed, it will always circulate till it finds its level. An opening or channel being furnished, an equalised supply will make its way wherever required.
Thus we see that the strength, wealth, and happiness of a nation, depend very much upon facility of communication. The ill-defended spot in the empire is alive to the reality, that subsidies having bad roads or a tedious navigation to pass may arrive too late to present an effectual resistance to a plundering enemy. The hard-working emigrant of a remote settlement, distant from a market, feels the difficulty and loss he sustains in bringing produce to the spot where merchants and dealers meet for the purposes of exchange. A spot uncommunicated with may be visited by the honors of famine, and no channel exist for conveying thither the food required. A grievous pestilence may sweep off an isolated people before the aid of the physician can arrive to arrest its progress.
Such facts are obvious to even the most indifferent observers of human society. Yet, nevertheless, there have been, and are, short-sighted individuals, in every gradation of it, with minds and views so warped and distorted by an ignorant selfishness, that they have opposed every improvement which tended to make the least change in their long-established habits. Such persons were they, who, during the last century, promoted petitions from counties in the neighbourhood of London, praying Parliament not to extend the turnpike-roads into remoter parts of the country, lest these remote districts, by means of a less expensive labour, should be able to sell their agricultural products in the London markets at a cheaper rate than themselves!—and such in our own day are the attempts made to put down steam conveyance. How short-sighted we are! Did we consult our own advantage we should see that those facilities of communication, against which we oppose ourselves, are the growing sinews of a greater fabric of wealth and prosperity.
Such are the numerous and important advantages, in a commercial point of view, which will result to society from the substitution of elementary for physical power. But even these, great though they be, are of trifling consideration when compared with the immense benefits which will result from the substitution when brought into operation as an economic principle.
Substitution of Steam for Horse Power.
[Mr. Gordon then refers to the conclusion of political economists "that the grand source of all our evils is redundancy of population; or in other words, an increase of animated life beyond the nourishment adequate to support it.">[
The substitution of inanimate for animate power, if not the panacea which is to cure all the evils of our condition, is at least one that comes recommended as a matter of fact—easy of operation, and effectual in its result. If want of food, or, in other words, redundancy of population be the bane of the country, it does not propose to meet that evil by a visionary project, tending in its operation to unhinge society—tedious in its process, and ending at length in bitter disappointment—but it meets the evil directly, substantially, and effectually, by the substitution of food.
And how are all these immense advantages to be effected?—By the substitution of inanimate for animate power. At present, the animate power employed in the commercial transportations of this great kingdom is estimated to amount to two millions of horses: each horse consumes as much food as is necessary for the support of eight men. Hence the conversion of its consumption to purposes of human existence would, if carried to this practical extent, amount to a quantity of food equal to support sixteen millions of people.
Where the product is so enormous—so vastly beyond our immediate necessities—it is not requisite to go into any minutiae of detail. To calculate all the gains we will leave to the political economist, as also to bring the matter out in its fair proportions; but to establish the matter clearly within the bounds of a safe, an easy, and practical issue, we have merely to state, that a conversion of food from a physical to a moral purpose, adequate to the supply of one-fourth part of the above aggregate estimate, that is to say, to four millions, is amply sufficient to relieve us at the present moment from that pressure of pauperism which sits like an incubus upon the energies of the nation, and which will precipitate us, if not timely avoided, into speedy and irretrievable ruin.
Now the suppression of the stage-horses upon our principal thoroughfares, and of the dray-horses in the great commercial towns, may be calculated to economize a saving of food equivalent to the supply of the above number of human beings.
It is, perhaps, not superfluous to remark, that the amount of food, equal to the supply of the said four millions, is not the produce of an extended agriculture and proportionate outlay, but is just that part of the annual produce of the country, subtracted from the whole, which is at present required for the mere purpose of transportation—i.e. to feed the animals used for draught,—and is consequently a dead loss as unproductive capital.
In addition to the evil arising from such a consumption of unproductive food, is also to be considered the very great loss consequent upon the heavy capital sunk in horse purchase. Were this viewed, as properly it ought, as money withheld from other purposes of trade, and which might be more advantageously invested, our capitalists and men of science would not oppose the substitution of inanimate for animate power in the way they have done. Neither, did the landed interest maturely weigh the varied benefits it will produce in agriculture, would they view it in the light of an invasion upon their respective interests. They do not give a quid without receiving a quo every way as valuable. The reduction of farm consumption—the bugbear of the project—will be met and compensated by a steady and proportionate demand from other quarters. Whilst in the United Kingdom, the 8,100,000 acres of land now required to feed the horses, together with the capital sunk in their purchase, will, when both applied to other and general purposes, amply compensate for the exchange.
In order more readily to show one effect, let the horses be considered only 1,000; a smaller number may not make the argument so difficult. Let us reduce this number, and the farmer may then turn his oat-ground into wheat-ground; and instead of so much land being employed to furnish food for a thousand horses, the same land, when turned into tillage fit to sow wheat upon, will produce sufficient bread-corn to feed two thousand poor families.
Again, if instead of 20,000 horses, we keep 30,000 fat oxen, butchers' meat will be always cheap to the operative classes, whilst the quantity of tallow will of course make candles cheap: and so many hides lower the price of leather, and of shoes and all other articles made of leather. Or the same quantity of land may then keep thirty thousand cows, the milk of which will make both butter and cheese cheaper to the poor, as well as the labouring manufacturer; all which articles are very considerable, and of material moment in the prices of our manufacturers, as they, in a great measure, work their trade to rise and fall in price, according to the cheapness of their materials and the necessaries of life. The same may be said in favour of more sheep and woollen cloths.
(To be concluded in our next.)