Two water communications existed between them; one by the rivers Mersey and Irwell, the other by the famous Bridgewater Canal, which did an immense business at an enormous profit. But the Manchester mills were fast outgrowing these slow and cumbersome modes of travel. Liverpool warehouses were piled with bales of cotton waiting to go, and the mills at Manchester had often to stop because it did not come. Goods also found as much difficulty in getting back. Merchants and manufacturers both grumbled. Business was in straits. What was to be done? Carting was quite out of the question. Canal owners were besought to enlarge their water-power. No, they would do nothing. They were satisfied with things as they were. Their dividends were sure.
But want demands supply; need creates resources. Something must be done to facilitate the transit of goods between the two cities. What? Build a tram-road, or rail-road. Nobody, however, but a very fast man would risk his good sense by seriously advising a rail-road. Solid men would certainly shun him. A tram-road was a better understood thing. The collieries had used small pieces of them for years. A tram-road then. Business men put their heads together and began earnestly to talk of a tram-road.
William James, a rich and enterprising man, entered heartily into the project, and undertook to make surveys for a suitable route. And not long after a party of surveyors was seen in the fields near Liverpool. Their instruments and movements excited attention. People eyed them with anxiety; suspicions were roused; the inhabitants became alarmed. Who were they, making such mysterious measurements and calculations on other people's land? A mob gradually gathered, whose angry tones and threatening gestures warned the surveyors of a storm brewing over their heads. Wisely considering that flight was better than fight, they took themselves off, and by-and-by turned up farther on.
The landowners, who might be supposed to have known better, told the farmers to drive them off; and the farmers, with their "hands," were only too ready to obey. They stationed themselves at the field gates and bars with pitch-forks, rakes, shovels, and sticks, and dared the surveyors to come on. A poor chain-man, not quite so nimble as his pursuers, made his leap over a fence quickened by a pitch-fork from behind! Even women and children joined the hue and cry, pelting the strangers with stones and dirt whenever they had a chance. The colliers were not behind the farmers in their foolish hostility. A stray surveyor was caught and thrown into a pit.
At a sight of the theodolite their fury knew no bounds. That unoffending instrument they seemed to regard as the very Sebastopol of the enemy, to seize and destroy which was to win the day. Tho surveyors, therefore, were obliged to hire a noted boxer to carry it, who could make good his threats on the enemy. A famous fighter among the colliers, determined not to be outdone, marched up to the theodolite to capture it. A fist-and-fist fight took place; the collier was sorely beaten, but the rabble, taking his part against the poor instrument, pelted it with stones and smashed it to pieces.
You may well suppose that surveying under such circumstances was no light matter. What was the gist of the hostility? It is hard to tell. The canal owners might have had a hand in scattering these wild fears; fears of what, however, it is not so easy to find out. There was nothing in a simple horse rail-road, or tram-road, as it is called, to provoke an opposition so bitter from the people. It was a new thing; and new things, great improvements though they may be on old ones, often stir up a thousand doubts and fears among the ignorant and unthinking.
Nor did the project generally take among those who would be most benefited by it. Mr. James and his friends held public meetings in all the towns and villages along the way; enterprising men in Liverpool and Manchester talked it up, and tried to create a public interest; but there was a holding back, which, while it checked all actual progress in the enterprise, did not cause it to be altogether given up. The time had not come; that was all.
Mr. James had a secret leaning towards the use of steam on the new road. He would have immediately and unhesitatingly advocated a rail-road run by locomotives. But that was out of the question. The public were far behind that point, and to have openly advocated it would have risked his judgment and good sense in the opinion of the best men. Therefore Mr. James wisely held his tongue. But hearing of the Killingworth locomotives, and of a collier who had astonished the natives by his genius, he determined to make a journey to Newcastle, and see the "lions" for himself.
Stephenson was not at home. "Puffing Billy" was; and "Billy" puffed in a way that took Mr. James's heart at once. He seemed to see at a glance "Billy's" remarkable power, and was struck with admiration and delight. "Here is an engine," he exclaimed, "that is destined before long to work a complete revolution in society."
The image of "Puffing Billy" followed him home.