The locomotive works of the London and North-Western Railway Company at Crewe extend over 140 acres, including 48 acres of covered-in shops, mills, etc. These works give employment to about 10,000 men and boys. In addition to the making of locomotives, the various processes carried on include the production of steel rails, girders for bridges, underframes for carriages, hydraulic machinery, cranes, bricks, gas-pipes, water-pipes, drain-pipes, and a great number of other objects and appliances necessary to the construction and operation of the railway. Created by the London and North-Western Railway Company, Crewe has developed from an agricultural village into a flourishing industrial town of 42,000 inhabitants.
At Wolverton, half-way between London and Birmingham, the company build and repair their own railway carriages and road vehicles, and do much work besides in the making of station furniture, office fittings, and other requirements. The works cover 90 acres, and give employment to about 4000 hands.
The Earlstown waggon works extend over 24 acres and employ 1800 persons, Earlstown, like Crewe and Wolverton, being essentially a railway colony. In each instance—as will be shown more fully in Chapter XXVIII—liberal provision is made for the educational, social and recreative needs of the workers and their dependents.
No fewer than 82,000 persons are included in the industrial army which to-day constitutes the staff of the London and North-Western Railway. Of this total 11,000 are salaried officers and clerks and 71,000 are employed at weekly wages. A company which employs such a multitude as this, and, indirectly, ensures sustenance to a much greater number of persons, incurs obligations that are not met entirely by a stated salary or wage. Hence the company, in addition to their encouragement of schools and educational institutes, support a Superannuation Fund Association and a Widows and Orphans' Fund for the salaried staff, and various funds, on a contributory basis, for the wages staff. Other organisations supported by the company include a savings bank, a literary society, chess, rifle and athletic clubs, a temperance society and numerous coffee taverns for the staff.
CHAPTER XXVII
WHAT THE RAILWAYS HAVE DONE
To say that the railways have revolutionised trade and industries would be simply to repeat one of the commonplaces of modern economic history. Taking the general statement for granted, I would invite the reader to look a little more closely at some of the actual results that railways have, or have not, brought about.
In the first place it would be going too far to say that the Railway Age inaugurated the Industrial Era. The invention of, or the improvements in, machinery which gave so immense an impetus to our national industries preceded the opening of the particular lines of railway—the Stockton and Darlington and the Liverpool and Manchester—that were more especially to lead to the great development of the railway system on present-day lines. All the same, it was the railways that, by offering a far more effective means of transport than was already afforded by canals, rivers or roads, made it possible for the industries then already started, or for those following thereon, to attain to their present proportions.
For the creation of what is known as the factory system, with its teeming industrial populations aggregated into busy urban centres, the railways are certainly far more responsible than the earlier modes of transport. The merits or the drawbacks of that system, from the point of view of general interests, are matters that need not be discussed here. Suffice it to say that as soon as the railways had allowed of great quantities of raw material being conveyed, at especially low rates, to particular localities; of machinery being set up there, also at lower cost than before; of labour from the rural districts being brought in and concentrated in the same localities, and of an efficient distribution, again at lower rates, of commodities produced on a large scale under the most economical conditions;—it was inevitable that factories should supplant home industries, that manufacturers should succeed small masters, and that great towns should grow up in proportion as rural centres declined.
In helping to bring about these results—results that so materially accelerated the "economic revolution" already proceeding—railway transport also supplied a ready means for providing these urban communities with the necessaries of life.