No one can say that the atmospheric railway had not a fair trial. The government engineer, General Pasley, did for it what had never been done for the locomotive—he reported in its favor, whereas a former, government engineer had inferentially reported against the use of locomotive power on railways. The House of Commons had also reported in favor of the use of the steam-engine on common roads; yet the railway locomotive had vitality enough in it to live through all. "Nothing will beat it," said George Stephenson, "for efficiency in all weathers, for economy in drawing loads of average weight, and for power and speed as occasion may require."
The atmospheric system was fairly and fully tried, and it was found wanting. It was admitted to be an exceedingly elegant mode of applying power; its devices were very skillful, and its mechanism was most ingenious. But it was costly, irregular in action, and, in particular kinds of weather, not to be depended upon. At best, it was but a modification of the stationary-engine system, and experience proved it to be so expensive that it was shortly after entirely abandoned in favor of locomotive power.[83]
One of the remarkable results of the system of railway locomotion which George Stephenson had by his persevering labors mainly contributed to establish was the outbreak of the railway mania toward the close of his professional career. The success of the first main lines of railway naturally led to their extension into many new districts; but a strongly speculative tendency soon began to display itself, which contained in it the elements of great danger.
The extension of railways had, up to the year 1844, been mainly effected by men of the commercial classes, and the shareholders in them principally belonged to the manufacturing districts—the capitalists of the metropolis as yet holding aloof, and prophesying disaster to all concerned in railway projects. The Stock Exchange looked askance upon them, and it was with difficulty that respectable brokers could be found to do business in the shares. But when the lugubrious anticipations of the City men were found to be so entirely falsified by the results—when, after the lapse of years, it was ascertained that railway traffic rapidly increased and dividends steadily improved—a change came over the spirit of the London capitalists. They then invested largely in railways, the shares in which became a leading branch of business on the Stock Exchange, and the prices of some rose to nearly double their original value.
A stimulus was thus given to the projection of farther lines, the shares in most of which came out at a premium, and became the subject of immediate traffic. A reckless spirit of gambling set in, which completely changed the character and objects of railway enterprise. The public outside the Stock Exchange became also infected, and many persons utterly ignorant of railways, but hungering and thirsting after premiums, rushed eagerly into the vortex. They applied for allotments, and subscribed for shares in lines, of the engineering character or probable traffic of which they knew nothing. Provided they could but obtain allotments which they could sell at a premium, and put the profit—in many cases the only capital they possessed[84]—into their pockets, it was enough for them. The mania was not confined to the precincts of the Stock Exchange, but infected all ranks. It embraced merchants and manufacturers, gentry and shop-keepers, clerks in public offices, and loungers at the clubs. Noble lords were pointed at as "stags;" there were even clergymen who were characterized as "bulls," and amiable ladies who had the reputation of "bears," in the share-markets. The few quiet men who remained uninfluenced by the speculation of the time were, in not a few cases, even reproached for doing injustice to their families in declining to help themselves from the stores of wealth that were poured out on all sides.
Folly and knavery were for a time in the ascendant. The sharpers of society were let loose, and jobbers and schemers became more and more plentiful. They threw out railway schemes as lures to catch the unwary. They fed the mania with a constant succession of new projects. The railway papers became loaded with their advertisements. The post-office was scarcely able to distribute the multitude of prospectuses and circulars which they issued. For a time their popularity was immense. They rose like froth into the upper heights of society, and the flunkey Fitz Plushe, by virtue of his supposed wealth, sat among peers and was idolized. Then was the harvest-time for scheming lawyers, Parliamentary agents, engineers, surveyors, and traffic-takers, who were ready to take up any railway scheme however desperate, and to prove any amount of traffic even where none existed. The traffic in the credulity of their dupes was, however, the great fact that mainly concerned them, and of the profitable character of which there could be no doubt.
Parliament, whose previous conduct in connection with railway legislation was so open to reprehension, interposed no check—attempted no remedy. On the contrary, it helped to intensify the evils arising from this unseemly state of things. Many of its members were themselves involved in the mania, and as much interested in its continuance as the vulgar herd of money-grubbers. The railway prospectuses now issued—unlike the original Liverpool and Manchester, and London and Birmingham schemes—were headed by peers, baronets, landed proprietors, and strings of M.P's. Thus it was found in 1845 that no fewer than 157 members of Parliament were on the lists of new companies as subscribers for sums ranging from £291,000 downward! The projectors of new lines even came to boast of their Parliamentary strength, and of the number of votes which they could command in "the House." At all events, it is matter of fact, that many utterly ruinous branches and extensions projected during the mania, calculated only to benefit the inhabitants of a few miserable boroughs accidentally omitted from Schedule A, were authorized in the memorable sessions of 1844 and 1845.
George Stephenson was anxiously entreated to lend his name to prospectuses during the railway mania, but he invariably refused. He held aloof from the headlong folly of the hour, and endeavored to check it, but in vain. Had he been less scrupulous, and given his countenance to the numerous projects about which he was consulted, he might, without any trouble, have thus secured enormous gains; but he had no desire to accumulate a fortune without labor and without honor. He himself never speculated in shares. When he was satisfied as to the merits of an undertaking, he would sometimes subscribe for a certain amount of capital in it, when he held on, neither buying nor selling. At a dinner of the Leeds and Bradford directors at Ben Rydding in October, 1844, before the mania had reached its height, he warned those present against the prevalent disposition toward railway speculation. It was, he said, like walking upon a piece of ice with shallows and deeps; the shallows were frozen over, and they would carry, but it required great caution to get over the deeps. He was satisfied that in the course of the next year many would step on to places not strong enough to carry them, and would get into the deeps; they would be taking shares, and afterward be unable to pay the calls upon them. Yorkshiremen were reckoned clever men, and his advice to them was to stick together and promote communication in their own neighborhood—not to go abroad with their speculations. If any had done so, he advised them to get their money back as fast as they could, for if they did not they would not get it at all. He informed the company, at the same time, of his earliest holding of railway shares; it was in the Stockton and Darlington Railway, and the number he held was three—"a very large capital for him to possess at the time." But a Stockton friend was anxious to possess a share, and he sold him one at a premium of 33s.; he supposed he had been about the first man in England to sell a railway share at a premium.
During 1845, his son's office in Great George Street, Westminster, was crowded with persons of various conditions seeking interviews, presenting very much the appearance of the levee of a minister of state. The burly figure of Mr. Hudson, the "Railway King," surrounded by an admiring group of followers, was often to be seen there; and a still more interesting person, in the estimation of many, was George Stephenson, dressed in black, his coat of somewhat old-fashioned cut, with square pockets in the tails. He wore a white neckcloth, and a large bunch of seals was suspended from his watch-ribbon. Altogether, he presented an appearance of health, intelligence, and good humor, that it gladdened one to look upon in that sordid, selfish, and eventually ruinous saturnalia of railway speculation.