British Canals: Is their resuscitation practicable?

by Edwin A. Pratt

"Makers of wheels, tires, axles, springs, and similar parts are busy. Of late the South African colonies have been larger buyers, while India and the Far Eastern markets, including China and Japan, South America, and some other shipping markets are providing very good and valuable indents. In all cases, it is especially remarked, very early execution of contracts and urgent delivery is impressed by buyers. The leading firms have learned a good deal of late from German, American, Belgian, and other foreign competitors in the matter of rapid output. By the improvement of plant, the laying down of new and costly machine tools, and by other advances in methods of production, delivery is now made of contracts of heavy tonnage within periods which not so long ago would have been deemed by these same producers quite impossible. In no branch of the engineering trades is this expedition more apparent than in the constructional engineering department, such as bridges, roofs, etc., also in steam boiler work."

Now where, in cases such as these, "urgent delivery is impressed by buyers," and the utmost energy is probably being enforced on the workers, is it likely that even the heavy goods so made would be sent down to the port by the tediously slow process of canal boat, taking, perhaps, as many days as even a goods train would take hours? Alternatively, would the manufacturers run the risk of delaying urgent work by having the raw materials delivered by canal boat in order to effect a small saving on cost of transport?

Certainty of delivery might again be seriously affected in the case of canal transport by delays arising either from scarcity of water during dry seasons, or from frost in winter. The entire stoppage of a canal system, from one or other of these causes, for weeks together, especially on high levels, is no unusual occurrence, and the inconvenience which would then result to traders who depended on the canals is self-evident. In Holland, where most of the goods traffic goes by the canals that spread as a perfect network throughout the whole country, and link up each town with every other town, the advent of a severe frost means that the whole body of traffic is suddenly thrown on the railways, which then have more to get through than they can manage. Here the problem arises: If waterways take traffic from the railways during the greater part of the year, should the railways still be expected to keep on hand sufficient rolling stock, etc., not only for their normal conditions, but to meet all the demands made upon them during such periods as their competitors cannot operate?

There is an idea in some quarters that stoppage from frost need not be feared in this country because, under an improved system of waterways, measures would be taken to keep the ice on the canals constantly broken up. But even with this arrangement there comes a time, during a prolonged frost, when the quantity of broken ice in the canal is so great that navigation is stopped unless the ice itself is removed from the water. Frost must, therefore, still be reckoned with as a serious factor among the possibilities of delay in canal transport.

Secondly, there is the question of quantities. For the average trader the railway truck is a much more convenient unit than the canal boat. It takes just such amount as he may want to send or receive. For some commodities the minimum load for which the lowest railway rate is quoted is as little as 2 tons; but many a railway truck has been run through to destination with a solitary consignment of not more than half-a-ton. On the other hand, a vast proportion of the consignments by rail are essentially of the "small" type. From the goods depôt at Curzon Street, Birmingham, a total of 1,615 tons dealt with, over a certain period, represented 6,110 consignments and 51,114 packages, the average weight per consignment being 5 cwts. 1 qr. 4 lbs., and the average weight per package, 2 qrs. 14 lbs. At the Liverpool goods depôts of the London and North-Western Railway, a total weight of 3,895 tons handled consisted of 5,049 consignments and 79,513 packages, the average weight per consignment being 15 cwts. 1 qr. 20 lbs., and the average weight per package 3 qrs. 26 lbs. From the depôt at Broad Street, London, 906 tons represented 6,201 consignments and 23,067 packages, with an average weight per consignment of 2 cwts. 3 qrs. 19 lbs., and per package, 3 qrs. 4 lbs.; and so on with other important centres of traffic.

There is little room for doubt that a substantial proportion of these consignments and packages consisted partly of goods required by traders either to replenish their stocks, or, as in the case of tailors and dressmakers, to enable them to execute particular orders; and partly of commodities purchased from traders, and on their way to the customers. In regard to the latter class of goods, it is a matter of common knowledge that there has been an increasing tendency of late years to eliminate the middleman, and establish direct trading between producer and consumer. Just as the small shopkeeper will purchase from the manufacturer, and avoid the wholesale dealer, so, also, there are individual householders and others who eliminate even the shopkeeper, and deal direct with advertising manufacturers willing to supply to them the same quantities as could be obtained from a retail trader.

For trades and businesses conducted on these lines, the railway—taking and delivering promptly consignments great or small, penetrating to every part of the country, and supplemented by its own commodious warehouses, in which goods can be stored as desired by the trader pending delivery or shipment—is a far more convenient mode of transport than the canal boat; and to the railway the perfect revolution that has been brought about in the general trade of this country is mainly due. Business has been simplified, subdivided, and brought within the reach of "small" men to an extent that, but for the railway, would have been impossible; and it is difficult to imagine that traders in general will forego all these advantages now, and revert once more to the canal boat, merely for the sake of a saving in freight which, in the long run, might be no saving at all.

Here it may be replied by my critics that there is no idea of reviving canals in the interests of the general trader, and that all that is sought is to provide a cheaper form of transport for those heavier or bulkier minerals or commodities which, it is said, can be carried better and more economically by water than by rail.

Now this argument implies the admission that canal resuscitation, on a national basis, or at the risk more or less of the community, is to be effected, not for the general trader, but for certain special classes of traders. As a matter of fact, however, such canal traffic as exists to-day is by no means limited to heavy or bulky articles. In their earlier days canal companies simply provided a water-road, as it were, along which goods could be taken by other persons on payment of certain tolls. To enable them to meet better the competition of the railways, Parliament granted to the canal companies, in 1846, the right to become common carriers as well, and, though only a very small proportion of them took advantage of this concession, those that did are indebted in part to the transport of general merchandise for such degree of prosperity as they have retained. The separate firms of canal carriers ("by-traders") have adopted a like policy, and, notwithstanding the changes in trade of which I have spoken, a good deal of general merchandise does go by canal to or from places that happen to be situated in the immediate vicinity of the waterways. It is extremely probable that if some of the canals which have survived had depended entirely on the transport of heavy or bulky commodities, their financial condition to-day would have been even worse than it really is.

But let us look somewhat more closely into this theory that canals are better adapted than railways for the transport of minerals or heavy merchandise, calling for the payment of a low freight. At the first glance such a commodity as coal would claim special attention from this point of view; yet here one soon learns that not only have the railways secured the great bulk of this traffic in fair and open competition with the canals, but there is no probability of the latter taking it away from them again to any appreciable extent.