RAILWAY EXTENSION.
1 Adam Street, Adelphi, 22d November 1853. Six—The Times, in its strictures on the contest between the South- western Directors and the opposing shareholders, very fairly assumes, that if the contest be merely a question of making bad and unprofitable branch- lines, the shareholders are undoubtedly in the right to prevent them from so doing if they can. Into the merits of the particular question I am not about to enter. The conflicting statements make it clear that one side or other must be very wrong, and time will doubtless show. But the general ques- tion is another matter : even if it can be shown that all the branch-lines have been too costly and injudiciously made, that will not prove that branch- lines are an evil per se. A country poasessiug the most perfect locomo- tion is usually the most thriving ; and, broadly stated, -there can be no doubt that whatever may be the defaults and defects of our railways, they are a real source of the magnificent prosperity of this our land. Take them away from us, and our annual accumulation of hoarded capital, that goes on win- ning the world from the wilderness, would begin to decrease. To talk of trunk-lines as if they alone were profitable, seems to emit the consideration that trunk-lines are but as the main rivers, that would dry up, were •they not fed by numerous rivulets and streams. That lawyers, and engineers, and contractors, should get up a company and make a line from anywhere to nowhere, for the sake of profiting by the transaction, and leave the shareholders and managers to find out how to make it pay, and that they should occasionally make lines through deserts, is no re- markable thing. There are abundance of "men about town" who pass their time in doing worse than this. And that they make the share- holders pay as large a price as possible for it, as no more remark- able than that the vendors of calico and woollen cloth do the same thing. Nor is it remarkable that energetic .peeple job and contrive and set new schemes going, good or evil, in order to get money. There is no regular orderly course for suchpeople : they must be doing ; it is an instinct of their nature. And this is a fortunate thing for the world ; for the haves will not do ; and if the orderly haves could stop the disorderly have-nuts in their in- stinctive career, all activity would cease; the world would be all lotus- eaters. Let us not set ourselves up too high on the stilts of our virtue and affirm that Nature has no uses for irregular action. Even the "small deer." of Capel Court have their part to play in the great scheme of creation, as surely as their neighbours at the Bank or on the Stock Exchange ; and though they be.driven away when out of season,- they come back again when the grass has grown for them to crop. As.thus. A plethora of capital needs employment. An honest man of clear brains puts a plan before the capitalists—" Two hundred miles of railway from teartown to Ironstone, to be finished in four years, and will pay a divi- dend of 7 per cent : no shares to be sold till all the capital is paid up, and no interest till the line is earning it." Not a share sells. Forth starts a Capet Court man, and proclaims a rival line. " Expected dividend, 17 per cent ; deposit, 10a. per share. Interest to be paid on calla." Capi- talists buy, because it is not an investment, but something they may sell again,—at a premium, premium, premium,—till the last holders find they have paid double price for their shares, and that the railway by jobbing has cost 50 per cent more than it ought, and the market-price gradually falls till it stays at a value corresponding to its earnings. The loss has been shuffled amongst the community. But who shall call it loss ? The community has gained a road that passes over something, either agricultural land or gravelly heath or pine barrens, or minerals of value or forest land. There is a road developed by which the jobbing spirit has given value to property valueless before, or additional value to pro- perty before less valuable. And in this jobbing the lawyer has wrought to more purpose than in Iarndyce v. Jarridyee ; he has conned better things than musty parchments; he gets to know matters as well as words, and to move on with progress that teaches him a new trade, that makes him cling less tena- ciously to his old wordmongering. The engineer has built up—not destroyed, he bus raised works of art, and given food to many men, instead of making many men food for powder; and when got through, has perhaps found out how he could have made the line at lees cost with as much profit to himself. The contractor, the jolly delver in the dirt., where few care to follow him, whose courage no clay-pit ever daunted nor watery tunnel scared, who looks through the earth without a divining-rod, well knows what is below, and nods to his rivals what share they should have for letting him alone at his bargain, and makes up a "poor mouth" at delivering his tender, based on a double calculation of cubic yards of earthwork, and double that for con- tingencies, and something for sharp measurement, and fifty per cent on that as a set-off against penalties, looking sheepish and scared as he signs his con- tract, with a hole in it he knows of, in case of accidents ; and protesting that but for the chance of "Tommy," he had as lief be without it ; and finally coming through with half a million of gain, and a dinner, and a speech to the directors, which the shareholders don't share in. In this pro- cess a good deal of surplus cash has passed from the pockets of unenergetie men to that of a man all energy, a sort of public save-all, who has got what the navvies would have drunk and eaten, ready for some other public work. Is the public really damaged by this process ?
The really remarkable thing is, that the men who have got the road, paying too much for their whistle, sit down and whine and complain, and pray to Hercules, as though they were the most forlorn and ill-used people under heaven. They cry out, "There is no help in us !" and they sit by the road-side. Back comes the contractor, money in both pockets, out of work and in want of a job. " Hello, good people, don't you know what to do with it ? I'll rent it of you at four per cent on the outlay !" " What are you going to do with it ? " "That is my concern. I made it, and know what it's good for." " Don't listen to him " cries one Director to another ; "he's a cheat, and knows how to make ten per cent—let us find out by waiting."
There was a line in Ireland that when made was in this forlorn position— the Dublin and Kingstown. But a certain James Pim and his comates took counsel together ; and they bought some acres of barren sand-beach with a pleasant air from the sea, and built cottages thereon. They rented the cot- tages, and got travellers on the line ; and sold the cottages when asked to do so, and built more. And then other people imitated them, and they were wise enough to encourage and not deter them. And the result was, that a line which was a failed speculation as a means of transporting mere steam-boat passengers, became a ten per cent investment, and remained so.
This is no overdrawn picture. But let us soberly consider the proposition, " That agricultural lines of railway cannot pay." This can only mean that costly stations and telegraphs, and bridges and platforms, and heavy em- bankments and excavations, don't pay. The bare line at 30001. per mile would pay. Minerals do not pay without railways. Manufactures do not pay without railways. What is agriculture but food manufacture on a large scale, which needs reducing to a machimacture to produce cheaply. And machines cannot be brought to bear on all farm processes, from digging the soil upwards, till fuel can be cheaply carried over the farms by rail, till manure can be brought on and produce taken off by rail. If agriculture be not worth pursuing in England, this argument ceases ; but if it is to be continued the cheapest process is by rail. It is quite true that the agriculturists ought to make their own lines, even for their own sakes; for when made expensively even by other people's money, they have to pay too highly for an inconvenient use at the mercy of domineerers. But if the land were given in shares at its real value, where wanted, the landholder would always profit. A remedy might be found for this. As the State practically recognizes the land to be public property, subject to compensation, it might tax for the maintenance of the railway all border property, upon the increased rental produced by the rail- ■ way. But there is another consideration. If we look at the map, we find that for one mile of railway there exists many miles of highway and turnpike roads. All these roads are available as railways, at the mere expense of laying down the rails, without in any way interfering with the ordinary traffic. Bad gradients might be sim- ply levelled ; but even upon gradients of one in twenty-five, small compact engines would draw thirty tons at seven to ten miles per hour. In the cities of America this thing is done, in Paris it is doing ; yet we here meet with valuable property of all kinds lying comparatively valueless by change of traffic, and only wring our hands. A vigorous effort to amalgamate the highway trusts and turnpikes of England might cover the land with a net of rails, preventing the necesssity of non-paying branches. But non-paying !—why are they non-paying? If they run over agricul- tural land, the addition of a water-pipe along their course would convert them to a street of villages, were the holders of dwellings secured against arbitrary exaction when the dwellings were built. If a heathy gravel and broken surface, it is the St and healthy residence for man ; for Providence has so ordered it, that the abiding-place of-fertile vegetation is not the healthy abode of man, and so the spots fitted for man to reside on and ramble on are unfitted for vegetation. We have amongst us of late almost too strongly the spirit of enclosing heaths and commons that need watching. Man shall not live by bread alone, nor shall he pass all his days in a mere wheat factory. " Sight, thought, and admiration" are needed; and we would fain have some portion of the beautiful wild earth left, with the handwriting of the I Creator fresh upon it, without being driven to seek it in distant regions. And we would have the means left whereby the whole of our people might tam access to the sight of beauty in cheap but seemly fashion. If we have the sense to turn our highways into the modern utilities of railways at mo- derate cost—if we thus enable builders to select new sites, and we reduce travelling to two rates of prices of ld. and fd. per mile—we may very largely increase the rental and the resources of the islands in which we dwell : but we shall not do so by assuming aaa dogma that only trunk-lines can pay. I am, Sir, yours faithfully, W. BRIDGES ADAMS.
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