Some interesting facts in this connection were mentioned by the late Sir James Allport in the evidence he gave before the Select Committee on Canals in 1883. Not a yard, he said, of the series of waterways between London and Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, part of Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Leicestershire—counties which included some of the best coal districts in England for supplying the metropolis—was owned by railway companies, yet the amount of coal carried by canal to London had steadily declined, while that by rail had enormously increased. To prove this assertion, he took the year 1852 as one when there was practically no competition on the part of the railways with the canals for the transport of coal, and he compared therewith the year 1882, giving for each the total amount of coal received by canal and railway respectively, as follows:—
| 1852 | 1882 | ||||
| Received by | canal | 33,000 | tons | 7,900 | tons |
| " " | railway | 317,000 | " | 6,546,000 | " |
The figures quoted by Sir James Allport were taken from the official returns in respect to the dues formerly levied by the City of London and the late Metropolitan Board of Works on all coal coming within the Metropolitan Police Area, representing a total of 700 square miles; though at an earlier period the district in which the dues were enforced was that included in a 20-mile radius. The dues were abolished in 1889, and since then the statistics in question have no longer been compiled. But the returns for 1889 show that the imports of coal, by railway and by canal respectively, into the Metropolitan Police Area for that year were as follows:—
| BY RAILWAY | ||
| Tons. | Cwts. | |
| Midland | 2,647,554 | 0 |
| London and North-Western | 1,735,067 | 13 |
| Great Northern | 1,360,205 | 0 |
| Great Eastern | 1,077,504 | 13 |
| Great Western | 940,829 | 0 |
| London and South-Western | 81,311 | 2 |
| South-Eastern | 27,776 | 18 |
| ———————— | ||
| Total by Railway | 7,870,248 | 6 |
| ———————— | ||
| BY CANAL | ||
| Grand Junction | 12,601 | 15 |
| ———————— | ||
| Difference | 7,857,646 | 11 |
| ———————— | ||
If, therefore, the independent canal companies, having a waterway from the colliery district of the Midlands and the North through to London (without, as already stated, any section thereof being controlled by railway companies), had improved their canals, and doubled, trebled, or even quadrupled the quantity of coal they carried in 1889, their total would still have been insignificant as compared with the quantity conveyed by rail.
"FROM PIT TO PORT."
(Prospect Pit, Wigan Coal and Iron Company. Raised to the surface, the coal is emptied on to a mechanical shaker, which grades it into various sizes—lumps, cobbles, nuts, and slack. These sizes then each pass along a picking belt—so that impurities can be removed—and fall into the railway trucks placed at the end ready to receive them. The coal can thus be taken direct from the mouth of the pit to any port or town in Great Britain.)
[To face page 82.