21 SEPTEMBER 1844, Page 13

LOSERS BY EXTORTION AND ANNOYANCE TO TRAVELLERS.

FACILITY to the customer is one great help in all traffics, difficulty a heavy drawback ; and some trades are well aware of the fact, while others continue unaccountably blind to it. Surprising as it is, some of those who provide for travellers do seem to think their interest best served by subjecting their customer to the utmost degree of difficulty, annoyance, and humiliation. Not a summer passes but what, out of the thousands of grievances felt, a few are loudly denounced in the papers. Inn-bills of preposterous amount are given in detail ; though they cannot be called " extraordinary," because enormous charging is the rule. A passenger deplores, in the Times, that 2s. 6d. is charged by the Dover boatmen for landing each passenger ; another complains ofa tax of 3d. each for the use of a plank from the boat to the shore. Land at Ramsgate Pier, and you are besieged by a crew of bullies offering one-horse flies at charges that would exceed the imagination of a London cabman. Land at London Bridge, on a wet evening, and, unless your own carriage has been kept in the rain for some indefinite period awaiting the arrival of your steamer, you are lost in a chaos of distracted passengers, impudent porters, noisy coachmen, and multitudinous

demands for silver. In the long run, there can be no gain in this vexation and obstruction of passengers; on the contrary, there must be a good deal of loss to all concerned. How much loss may be in some degree surmised by seeing the effect of the opposite conduct. Since the multiplication of omni- buses and the greater uniformity in the tariff' of prices enforced by the joint influence of competition and law, the number of habitual riders has enormously increased. The cheapness has the effect of making many ride, and frequently, who never rode before ; those who rode occasionally ride often or always. The hurried mechanic commands the use of a carriage. It is not merely the cheapness, but the facility of the thing that promotes its use : the price is certain, or nearly so ; the name of the place you seek is most legi- bly written on the omnibus ; the conductor has not to be called down, as the old stage-coachman used to be, but is ready at the door. To look at larger arrangements : the systematic manner of receiving payment, of stowing luggage, and of disposing passengers, at the best-conducted railway-stations, no doubt contributes very greatly to the common use of railways: the readiness with which you can pop on your hat, pay your money, walk into a rail- way-coach, and descend at Birmingham or Liverpool without having stirred from an easy seat, and almost without ex- changing a word, induces many a man to take the trip who would stay at home rather than face the "bother" of the quondam stage—the chance of not finding a vacant seat, or of losing his place if taken, with all the fees of guards, porters, and coach-office distractions. The extreme good order of the ar- rangements for landing passengers and luggage at Herne Bay Pier gives it the preference with some who go to that watering-place, or choose that route to other places in Kent, even if not so con- venient in some respects, such as time or distance : it is " so easy." The traveller's ease returns profit to those who cause it ; but every shilling circumvented by some entrapping ruse or extorted by im- pudence keeps back tens of other shillings.

It requires no vast effort of intellect to bring about an improve- ment. The great thing needed is some matured and fixed plan to which the traveller may confidently trust himself, without fear of more than the average sublunary accidents inherent in all hutnan affairs. Let us consider the article of luggage alone. If you travel by a steamer that does not ply between England and a foreign port, you escape the annoyances of the Customhouse, only to endure worse. Arriving at the quay with a few packages, you must submit to have them seized by strange men, who may be banditti in disguise for any thing you know; and, after stopping behind to pay the cabman—(asking twice his fare, because he reads in your face your impatience to follow)—you rush after the ravishers of your luggage, just in time to see some of it—who can say how much or how little ?—hurried away by third or fourth parties to some mysterious abyss; while the porter or porters be- wilder you with importunities, which they leave, without data for guidance, to your generosity—in strong hopes that you may not know, or not remember, the usual' charge. Your voyage is em- bittered by doubts whether half your floating wealth may not be on its way to Antwerp or Egypt, or the marine-store-dealer's. Arrived at the port, a sudden madness seems to possess the whole world. The "hold" is exenterated of a scattered mass of carpet-bags, boxes, and bundles—passengers hover round in distracted and often despairing vigilance—sailors tumble over the entire cargo ten times oftener than they need, because nobody knows what anybody wants till everybody-else's goods have been scrutinized : at last you have your packages collected in a corner on deck—and then, while an impatient sailor taking tickets at the gangway bawls " Now, who's for the shore ?" you see a heedless and strange porter hurry off with half your things; giving you the agreeable alterna- tive, of trusting to fate ever to see it again, or else of following it and leaving the remainder to be seized by some other gentleman's porter, at a guess, or by some steamer-sneak as plunder. You make your election of trusting to the indiscriminate bustle which allows the ordinary porter no time for premeditated dishonesty; and after a half-hour of tortured proprietorship, find all your luggage pre- cariously piled about you in a coach, and you do not recollect how many sixpences startled out of you by the peremptory assurance of porters unknown. How easy to abolish all this needless chaos I Let every passenger about to depart take his luggage to some building on shore, and there deposit it without further regard ; let it be conveyed, in the gross, on board the steamer ; and at the end of the voyage, let the whole be carried into a similar building on shore, to which only authorized porters should be admitted, and in which each passenger might at leisure pick out his own. Steam- companies might or might not make themselves answerable for the value ; but it would not be difficult, with such a plan, with trusty servants, with duplicate-tickets, and with something like a rough alphabetical array of packages, to give the passenger every reason- able security that, without confusion or trouble, he would find in the building at the end of his voyage, and receive on producing his duplicate-tickets the same packages that he deposited in the build- ing at the beginning. Knowing that all the porters in the place were authorized, he would have a further guarantee for the safety of his property in taking it away. This is but one of many improve- ments that might be suggested, to abolish much needless annoyance and real immorality, and to give, in smoothing the way of travel, an additional and incalculable impulse to the growing disposition for short journies about the country. Travellers lose much—much money, much temper, and consequently much self-respect—through bullying extortion ; but the owners of steamers and other travelling apparatus lose a great deal more.