THIRD-CLASS PASSENGERS.
THERE is one master principle of finance which Railway Directors have yet to learn, and this is that five farthings are worth more than a penny. Once thoroughly aware of this fact, they might pos- sibly be induced to desist from the warfare they have been accus- tomed to wage against their unlucky third-class passengers. There are signs indeed abroad of an inclination to strike a truce, but the terms as yet offered still fall short of the concessions essential to an enduring amity. They have given up stifling all their third-class passengers. A large proportion are still condemned to travel in huge black boxes, with port-holes for windows, closed by a bit of board, without light, ventilation, air, or the chance of enjoying the prospect. Most of the wretched travellers are still huddled into these dens, men and women, drunk and sober, tipsy roughs and decent servant girls, all together, with an overflowing surplus of sticky-faced bahies between, are all told to sit on benches ranged round the wooden cell, all sloping towards the centre, down which runs a fifth bench so close to the others, that the weary victims sit knee:to knee, and as close as sprats in a barrel. These carriages are still the majority; but they are never replaced, and a third-class passenger who is very lucky, or very impertinent, may succeed in getting a carriage not built on purpose to torture. A separate carriage for nursing mothers, or for women generally, must of course be given up, as tending to foster those no- tions of comfort and decency it is the object of third-class arrange- ments to destroy. But the new third-class vans have glass windows, and sometimes a ventilator above ; the seats are fairly arranged, and they do not all slope downwards, and if there were any attempt to afford a light, and men when drunk to the blasphemous stage were refused admittance, and the guard were forbidden to shove women in by the shoulders, and were dismissed when he used his boots as a means of propulsion, and some rule were enforced with regard to lug- gage, and a small section of the staff were directed to attend to the third-class carriages, those conveyances might, to people of hardy habits and large physique, be rendered almost endurable. Nobody would travel in them who could help it, but then nobody would dread such ajourney as much as a tolerably severe wound, or a short attack of fever.
This concession once made, the way might be open to con- sider the essential preliminaries to a lastinm° treaty of peace, viz. just fares, and a complete alteration in the times at which "Par- liamentary" trains are accustomed to start. These times have been fixed on most lines with a malicious ingenuity, defended on the plea that if they were not inconvenient, too many would travel third-class. As they would travel three times as often the plea is as futile as its effect is unjust. • On the Eastern Counties the "Government" through tram starts at 7.15, compelling the Londoners who want to use it to rise about six, and fight in the bitter cold for the tickets doled out to the struggling crowd through a pigeon-hole by a clerk whose first idea of efficiency is insolence to all but the first class. This train travels at decent speed, but as speed is too good a thing to be given to enemies, the stoppages are made as long as possible —forty minutes at Ipswich — and the train arrives at Norwich, a distance of one hundred and thirteen miles, in seven hours. The Norwich artisan, in fact, who wants to make a purchase in London must waste two days in doing it. On the Great Northern the starting time is 6.50 morning, though night travelling is the greatest of boons to the working man, but on this line the speed appears to be better. It is useless to run through the list. On every line out of London th hour for the Parliamentary passengers has been deliberately fixed f two ends : to make the 4ourney as unpleasant as possible, an
prevent the passenger from returning from anywhere on the day on which he started.
For all these annoyances the Parliamentary passenger pays a penny a mile, or about nine times the price charged for his own weight in goods. He cannot, it is true, be packed quite so close, nor can he be stacked in uncovered vans ; but then, on the other side, he does his own porterage, and costs nothing for delivering beyond the station. Taking a point at some distance, say Ipswich, on the the Eastern Counties line, the charge for a trip to London and back is eleven shillings and tenpence, or nearly a week's wages—a sum an artisan, unless under compulsion, can by no possibility spare. Of course he travels only when he must, and the whole advantage of what may be called unnecessary travelling—i.e. travelling for pleasure, or avoidable business—is lost to the railway companies. The utter ab- surdity of this charge is, however, best proved by the admissions of the directors themselves. On the London and Brighton Railway there runs every Sunday during the summer a train which covers a hundred miles for a half-crown fare. That is at the rate of a third of a penny a mile, ajust rate when compared with goods, and this train is exceedingly profitable. Why should not the fare be perma- nently fixed at that rate ? The directors will say the trains can he pnly filled once a week, but that is, we believe, a delusion. Through passengers can only afford one day, but the mass of passengers are those who desire to be carried only a few miles. Reduce the charge to a farthing a mile, and the working man would travel, not four times for once, but forty times. The habit of locomotion which has spread through the well-to-do classes would spread through the lower also, and they are six times as numerous as their more fortunate rivals.
Philanthropists might reason on the utter injustice of the existing rules, fixed as they are by companies with a monopoly of passenger traffic, but justice is not an argument to use with railway direc- tors. The conviction it is necessary to drive into them is that the existing system diminishes dividend. They have only one direc- tion in which to look for increased passenger traffic. The first-class move as much as they are likely to do, though preposterous fares act as a check even on them. Second-class travelling is decreasing, and as second-class accommodation unites most of the annoyances of the third with none of its cheapness, it is likely to decrease still more. It is to the third class the companies must look for development, and that mine has scarcely been tapped. That the working classes have no disinclination to travel is sufficiently proved by the crowds who throng to excursion trains, and render that mode of conveyance about as safe as a sharp skirmish. That they would travel on business if they could only bear the expense is a fact familiar to all who know them. Once uprooted, the English peasant or artisan is as migratory an animal as his master, quite as fond of trying his luck, and nearly as well disposed to spend the bad months in town. If he would travel only four limes a year, for any distance, the present number of third- class passengers would be doubled, while if he travelled once a month, the passenger traffic would be increased six-fold, and the whole ratio of dividends to capital would be remodelled to the benefit of the shareholders. That result, however, cannot be obtained except by attaching third-class carriages to every train except the express, and reducing ordinary fares to the rate charged for excursions. In one country only has anything like a fair experiment been made in cheap fares. The Government of India started from the principle that third-class fares must be lower than the cost of walk- ing, which, as a native wears no shoe-leather, appeared an absurdly low standard. It has, however, been reached. In Bengal the re- gular charge is three miles for a penny, at which rate the carriages are filled to suffocation, and the expenses less than fifty per cent. on the receipts, which again yield a dividend of upwards of thirteen per cent. This rate, however, is still too high, and the directors of the Bombay line have added a fourth-class, travelling, we believe, six miles for a penny. This is cheaper than walking, the cost of food during the time lost being more than the railway fare. The rate instantly doubled the total traffic, and though we have not yet seen the return of receipts, it must show an increase over increased expense of at least thirty per cent. It is in a similar reduction, we firmly believe, that the hope of the railway future is to be found. The companies have satisfied the middle class without redeeming their finances, and it remains only to content the people. Low fares, pleasant accom- modation, and reasonable hours, will attract a class before whom the present race of passengers will seem but an insignificant item.
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