If we step from 1847 to 1859, we find that goods of all descriptions have in railway accounts become separated from minerals. Of the former, the 10,002 miles of railway that were open for traffic at the end of 1859, had carried 27,005,737 tons, and they had yielded a receipt to the companies of £8,373,283, so that each ton of goods carried was worth 6s. 2¼d. to them. We shall not stop to tell the particulars of intermediate years up to 1865; suffice it to say, that every year not only has the gross tonnage increased, but also the amount realised upon each ton of goods carried. This item which, as we have just stated, was 6s. 2¼d. in 1859, had risen steadily up to 6s. 7¼d. in 1865, and at the same time the number of tons carried had increased 9,781,901 tons, the number in 1865 being 36,787,638. In like manner the money received for goods increased £3,784,956, the amount in 1865 being £12,158,239; but, just as with third class passengers, the main increase has been in the years 1863, 1864 and 1865. It was at the rate of about 2,000,000 tons a year, and nearly one million sterling.
We have already referred so fully to coals and other subterranean products, at pages 48 et seq., that we only add here, that the average value to the companies of a ton of minerals was 1s. 7½d. in 1859, and that, with occasional fluctuations, it had increased to 1s. 8d. in 1865. This is a low average, and it looks as if the profits to the railway companies from mineral traffic must be very slight indeed.
The carriage of cattle of all kinds increased from 3,709,030 head in 1847, to 12,805,613 in 1859, when each head was worth 11¼d. There was hardly any change or fluctuation until 1863, when the number increased to 13,029,675 head. In 1865 they were 14,530,937 head, but their value had risen to 11½d. a head.
The conveyance of cattle by railway reminds us how enormously all the great centres and bee-hives of our population are indebted to the iron road and the iron horse for their daily consumption and sustenance. “Give us this day our daily bread,” is in the prayer that all Christians should offer up, morning and evening, and the railways do give it in a way the stoppage of which for two or three days would cause a famine in the land. Dr. Wynter, in the article “London Commissariat” of his Curiosities of Civilization, gives the marvellous statistics relating the daily supplies of food which come to London. But since Dr. Wynter wrote, the population of the Metropolis and of its outskirts has increased a fifth. Yet the great London mouth is fed, and the great London stomach is replenished with the same regularity as ever. As it is with London, so it is with every other concentration of souls in the land. Demand is always increasing, yet supply keeps pace, and never fails to be hand and hand with it. For we have the consolation of knowing that what we are unable to produce at home we have not the slightest difficulty in finding abroad. In addition to the 14,000,000 of cattle of all kinds that are conveyed, last year, from our green pastures to our slaughter-houses, we imported 237,739 oxen, cows, and calves; and as each of these animals, as he or she steps on shore, is, according to Board of Trade computation, worth £18. 14s. 5d., it follows that John Bull has paid for them, in meal or malt, in money or money’s worth, £4,092,941. 790,880 was the number of foreign sheep and lambs that came among us last year; and, as the Board of Trade put a value upon each of them of £2. 10s. in 1865, which value has not been diminished in 1866, the score against us on this account would be, according to arithmetic as practised in the Statistical Department of that branch of public service, £1,504,312; but according to the arithmetic as known elsewhere, it is £1,977,200. The former sum could only be correct if the value were £1. 18s.½d. per head.[24]
But we must not continue the subject in anything approaching detail; suffice it is to say, that among other articles from abroad, we had meat in the shape of bacon, beef, and pork, to the extent of about 1,000,000 cwt. in quantity, and £3,000,000 in value. Of butter and cheese we had 2,000,000 cwt., of the value of £9,000,000. The use of coffee among us is diminishing. In 1852 it was 42,000,000 lbs., in 1866, it was 10,000,000 lbs. less; but the home consumption of Tea has risen in the same period from 54,713,000 lbs. to 102,265,000 lbs.,[25] nearly double; but on the other hand the duty we paid for the lesser quantity was more than double what we paid for the larger, £5,900,625 in 1852, but happily only £2,658,716 in 1866. Of foreign corn we received, for home consumption, 23,000,000 cwt. of wheat, 8,000,000 cwt. of barley, 9,000,000 cwt. of oats, 14,000,000 cwt. of maize, and 5,000,000 cwt. of wheat flour, the aggregate value of corn amounting to £30,000,000. Of the important article of sugar, we received 10,500,000 cwt. The strong beverages came to us to the value of 2¼ millions for spirits, and not far short of five millions for wine. We are fond of spices and seasonings also, 130,000 cwt. of pepper, and 24,000 cwt. of cinnamon, cloves and nutmegs, and 1,100,000 cwt. of raisins and currants. But the article of all others in the list, the importation of which, in 1866, seems the most marvellous is that of eggs, 438,878,880! 14½ per annum for each inhabitant of the kingdom, ranging from “the infant mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms” to “the last scene of all that ends this strange eventful history, second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything,” and all these, independent and exclusive of all the eggs that all the true born English, Irish, Scotch and Welsh hens lay all over the kingdom. Truly we must be the most egg-eating nation in the world. Housekeepers of Great Britain! we wish you to know that the President of the Board of Trade assesses the value of each egg, when brought into the country, at a little less than 2⅖ farthings, or about 7¼d. a dozen. The difference between this price and the minimum of “16 a shilling warranted” constitute the charges and profits upon them between the time of their landing and their arrival in your kitchens. Fifteen years ago (1852) our importation of eggs was not a fourth of its present amount—it was 108,281,233.
CHAPTER IV.
RAILWAYS AND THE POST OFFICE—SPEED ON RAILWAYS.
Passengers, luggage, horses, carriages, dogs, merchandise, minerals and live stock constitute the whole of the traffic, as well as the whole of the receipts of railway companies, with one only exception. That exception is an important one: it is the conveyance of mails by railway.