That is all about British weather.
V. Our Transportation
Then there are our railroads. These, like our boxed-in passenger coaches and little four-wheel freight cars, tickle you to death, I know. The compartment system is a national symptom. An Englishman loves one thing above all others, and that is to get a railway compartment to himself. Nobody knows why, but he does. Probably the craving arises from his inability to converse easily with strangers. That inability is passing away. I shall speak of it later. But the three-class system is a relic of antiquity. Fifty years ago there were three grades of comfort in British railroad travelling. You could have your family horse-coach lashed upon an open railroad truck and attached to the train. You thus travelled in your own carriage, or chaise. I do not know what happened to the horses. This was the usual custom of the grand folk of those days. Or you could travel by ordinary railway coaches, without cushions or windows. Or you could pack yourself into an open freight truck, much as soldiers on the Western Front are packed to-day, and so reach your destination with other merchandise.
That has all gone now. Practically the only difference between first, second, and third class in these days is a difference of price—which means elbow-room. (Second class, by the way, has almost entirely died out.) The three classes are almost equal in comfort, especially just now, when the War has abolished nearly all dining-cars and sleepers. Our sleeping-car system never amounted to much, anyway. The journeys were too short to make it necessary for such as were travelling by night (and they were comparatively few) to go to bed. The lordly Pullman car is almost unknown here.
I said just now that we used to be proud of our railroads in time of peace. We are doubly proud of them to-day in the stress of War. They passed automatically into Government hands the day the War broke out, and they have given our whole country a lesson in the art of carrying on. Thousands of their employees are away in the trenches; hundreds of their locomotives and freight cars are in France or Mesopotamia or Palestine, enlisted for the duration. You will notice them when you get over, marked R.O.D. (Railway Operating Department). They have all come from England. Miles of tracks here have been torn up and conveyed bodily overseas. There is little labour available to execute repairs, and none to build new stock. There is a shortage of coal, a shortage of oil, and no paint. Passenger services have been cut down by a half, and fares raised fifty per cent; yet the traffic is still enormous, and the strain on the depleted staffs is immense. But they manage somehow. Men who have long earned their retirement remain in service, while boys and women do the rest. Carry on!
VI. Our Gopher Runs
Then comes our substitute for your Subway, and street-car system generally. In London you will notice that there are two kinds of Subway—the so-called Underground, or shallow transit, and the deep Tubes. The system is so complicated, owing to the shape of London, that it has been found impossible to have a one-price ticket such as prevails everywhere in the United States.
The Underground is the oldest underground railroad in the world. You probably gathered that for yourself the first time you saw it. Twenty-five years ago its trains were drawn by ordinary steam locomotives, which were supposed to consume their own smoke. Perhaps they did, but it must have leaked out again somewhere.
The old Underground Railway of London got nearer to the ordinary conception of hell than anything yet invented. Stations and trains were lit by feeble gas or oil lamps; all glass was covered over with a film of soot, and the brightest illumination was provided by the glow of the locomotive furnaces as the train rumbled asthmatically into a station. The atmosphere was a mixture of soot, smoke, sulphur, and poison gas. The trains were on the box-compartment system, and small compartments at that. The train usually waited two or three minutes in each station (instead of ten seconds as now), and it required a full hour to travel from King’s Cross to Charing Cross. It was impossible to see to read a newspaper, so that passengers, to pass the time, used to rob, assault, and occasionally murder one another. With the coming of electric traction the old Underground was cleaned up and refurnished. At the same time, the Tubes were constructed away down in the London clay, where there could be no interference from oozy gravel, or gas mains, or sewers.