On the much-debated question of American capital and American enterprise in Great Britain,[6] Mr. Speyer spoke no less to the point. He said that those who undertook to provide the metropolis with an up-to-date system of locomotion should be encouraged, for they performed a task that should have been done twenty years ago. English capital had had every opportunity of investment in underground lines, and if only half of the five millions had been subscribed in this country it was not the fault of the promoters. They would have preferred that the Underground Company should have English shareholders only, but unfortunately they had had to allot half of the shares of the Company to Americans and foreigners. One would have thought, he said, that there would have been more keenness in London to build its own underground railways, which would so materially add to the well-being of the masses. If either of the proposed lines were situated in South Africa, Australia, or Klondyke, London investors would have been tumbling over each other to subscribe. But the fault of these lines was that they were at our own doors. It was a fact, incredible though it might seem, that the richest city in the world did not appear able or willing to provide the funds for what was really a public necessity—quicker transit. So let them hear nothing more of American invasion, if people here stood with folded arms and allowed others to do the work which they ought to have done themselves; for while they persisted in this non possumus attitude, no one could blame the Company if they went elsewhere.
CHAPTER XIII
PROVINCIAL TRAMWAYS
“They shall measure to their cities round about.”—Deuteronomy xxi. 2.
THE LIGHT RAILWAYS ACT OF 1896
IN the year 1896 an Act of Parliament was passed which, it is no exaggeration to say, revolutionised tramway locomotion, and was destined to produce consequences undreamt of by the promoters of the measure.
Under the Tramways Act of 1870, Municipal Corporations had been exercising their powers of buying up existing tramways, working them in the interests of the ratepayers, and of generally entering into the business of providing a cheap and efficient means of traversing the area within their boundaries. They used the new Light Railways Act of 1896 occasionally, but only for the promotion (by two or more combined local authorities) of certain lines running through several districts.
Prior to 1870, tramways, like railways and canals, had to be promoted by special Bills, and the Tramways Act of that year was intended to facilitate their construction, and to cheapen and simplify the method of obtaining parliamentary powers, either by Bill or by the alternative of an application to the Board of Trade for a Provisional Order authorising the construction of the tramway, the said Order being subsequently confirmed by an Act of Parliament introduced by the Board.
The Act of 1870 provided that no tram line should be sanctioned without the consent of the district local authority, and that the local authority might buy up the undertaking at the end of twenty-one years at its then value—practically only the worth of the rolling-stock and plant, without any allowance for the goodwill of a going concern.
In either case (that of a private Bill in Parliament or a Board of Trade Provisional Order), if a tramway was planned to run through two or more districts, the consent of the local authorities having jurisdiction over two-thirds of the length of the line was sufficient. But this condition gave the local authorities owning just over a third of the route, power to veto the whole scheme.
Under the same Act, land, otherwise than by mutual agreement, could not be acquired by tramway promoters.