Men of Invention and Industry

by Samuel Smiles

"By a system of steady and just treatment he has obtained a complete mastery, exempt from lawless intimidation or control, over the various servants and agents employed by him, and his establishment is popular with all classes on account of its general usefulness and the fair liberal spirit of its management. The success achieved by this spirited gentleman is the result, not of a single speculation, which might have been favoured by local circumstances, but of a series of distinct experiments, all of which have been successful."

When the railways were actually made and opened, they ran right through the centre of Bianconi's long-established systems of communication. They broke up his lines, and sent them to the right and left. But, though they greatly disturbed him, they did not destroy him. In his enterprising hands the railways merely changed the direction of the cars. He had at first to take about a thousand horses off the road, with thirty-seven vehicles, travelling 2446 miles daily. But he remodelled his system so as to run his cars between the railway-stations and the towns to the right and left of the main lines.

He also directed his attention to those parts of Ireland which had not before had the benefit of his conveyances. And in thus still continuing to accommodate the public, the number of his horses and carriages again increased, until, in 1861, he was employing 900 horses, travelling over 4000 miles daily; and in 1866, when he resigned his business, he was running only 684 miles daily below the maximum run in 1845, before the railways had begun to interfere with his traffic.

His cars were then running to Dungarvan, Waterford, and Wexford in the south-west of Ireland; to Bandon, Rosscarbery, Skibbereen, and Cahirciveen, in the south; to Tralee, Galway, Clifden, Westport, and Belmullet in the west; to Sligo, Enniskillen, Strabane, and Letterkenny in the north; while, in the centre of Ireland, the towns of Thurles, Kilkenny, Birr, and Ballinasloe were also daily served by the cars of Bianconi.

At the meeting of the British Association, held in Dublin in 1857, Mr. Bianconi mentioned a fact which, he thought, illustrated the increasing prosperity of the country and the progress of the people. It was, that although the population had so considerably decreased by emigration and other causes, the proportion of travellers by his conveyances continued to increase, demonstrating not only that the people had more money, but that they appreciated the money value of time, and also the advantages of the car system established for their accommodation.

Although railways must necessarily have done much to promote the prosperity of Ireland, it is very doubtful whether the general passenger public were not better served by the cars of Bianconi than by the railways which superseded them. Bianconi's cars were on the whole cheaper, and were always run en correspondence, so as to meet each other; whereas many of the railway trains in the south of Ireland, under the competitive system existing between the several companies, are often run so as to miss each other. The present working of the Irish railway traffic provokes perpetual irritation amongst the Irish people, and sufficiently accounts for the frequent petitions presented to Parliament that they should be taken in hand and worked by the State.

Bianconi continued to superintend his great car establishment until within the last few years. He had a constitution of iron, which he expended in active daily work. He liked to have a dozen irons in the fire, all red-hot at once. At the age of seventy he was still a man in his prime; and he might be seen at Clonmel helping, at busy times, to load the cars, unpacking and unstrapping the luggage where it seemed to be inconveniently placed; for he was a man who could never stand by and see others working without having a hand in it himself. Even when well on to eighty, he still continued to grapple with the immense business involved in working a traffic extending over two thousand five hundred miles of road.

Nor was Bianconi without honour in his adopted country. He began his great enterprise in 1815, though it was not until 1831 that he obtained letters of naturalisation. His application for these privileges was supported by the magistrates of Tipperary and by the Grand Jury, and they were at once granted. In 1844 he was elected Mayor of Clonmel, and took his seat as Chairman at the Borough Petty Sessions to dispense justice.

The first person brought before him was James Ryan, who had been drunk and torn a constable's belt. "Well, Ryan," said the magistrate, "what have you to say?" "Nothing, your worship; only I wasn't drunk." "Who tore the constable's belt?" "He was bloated after his Christmas dinner, your worship, and the belt burst!" "You are so very pleasant," said the magistrate, "that you will have to spend forty-eight hours in gaol."

He was re-elected Mayor in the following year, very much against his wish. He now began to buy land, for "land hunger" was strong upon him. In 1846 he bought the estate of Longfield, in the parish of Boherlahan, county of Tipperary. It consisted of about a thousand acres of good land, with a large cheerful house overlooking the river Suir. He went on buying more land, until he became possessor of about eight thousand English acres.