RAILWAYS
IT is only a hundred years since the first train propelled by steam puffed slowly along with a man riding on horseback in front of it. Four years later in 1829 " Stevenson's Rocket " ran in a famous contest, winning a prize of £500 and attaining a speed of thirty miles an hour. The invasion of England by an irresistible army of trains had begun, and in a few years the land was conquered and the life of the nation was changed. Still men were found of stubborn mind, even men of genius like the Duke of Wellington, who prophesied that the great triumph of science would come to nothing, still the mass of the population dis- trusted the new means of transit, but the trains went full steam ahead all the same. By the early 'forties many of the great routes were finished or begun, and in '45 the railway mania took sudden possession of the public mind. The " third class," who had been so ill catered for, forced to travel in open trucks and by long-distance trains so slow as to make the hours of discomfort almost unbearable, and by short-distance trains at times apparently designed for inconvenience, forgot their grievances and piled their savings upon railway schemes. The Parliament of '45 was called the " Railway Parliament " ; the newspapers, with Punch at their head, wrote and joked of nothing but new lines. The House of Commons, however, to some extent kept its head. It required as a condition precedent to the consideration of a railway Bill that a deposit of 10 per cent. upon the estimated cost of a new scheme should be lodged with the Accountant-General by the promoters, and 5 per cent. for Parliamentary expenses. On November 30th, the latest date at which the Board of Trade would receive plans, there had been lodged 1,263 Bills, representing a capital of 563 millions requiring the deposit of a total sum of 59 millions—exceeding by 20 millions the gold in the Bank of England and the notes in circulation. The figures were published, and panic ensued. Only 120 companies survived out of those promoted. The financial disaster which ensued recalled that of the South Sea Bubble. Yet even this blow did not check the progress of the train.
Great fortunes were made and small ones lost during the boom. Immense ignorance, some rascality and much ordinary unprincipled dealing hastened the debacle. A characteristic story is told of Hudson, the railway king of the hour, in Mr. J. B. Atkins's Life of Sir William Howard Russell. Russell was put by Delane at the head of the Times staff of reporters acting upon the railway committees. The whole staffs of most of the London papers were speculating, and opportunities of unfair advantage naturally offered themselves to men cognisant of the inner workings of the various schemes. Hudson suspected Russell of feathering his nest, and a little before the crash came asked Russell in confidence why he had pursued a certain line of action. Russell, who felt during all his journalistic life that the Press offered him " a plain alternative between honesty and dishonesty," assured him that all he had done he had done solely in the carrying out of his official duties and in proving to the great rich man that he had no interest, material or otherwise, in railways outside of his appointed work, felt that he had cleared his honour. Hudson, however, did not grasp his point of view. "Dear me ! " he said, " is that so I I am exceedingly sorry to hear it for your sake."
Although in the matter of railways England laid claim to be the pioneer among the countries of Europe, France and Austria followed close upon her heels ; Germany and Italy were not much more than a decade behind her- and the United States soon caught her up. The catas- trophe of '45 was hardly over when plans were made and carried out for the piercing of mountains, the bridging of stretches of water, the burrowing-under of streets and riverbeds. The small beginnings of all these wonders were fresh in men's minds. Stevenson had carried the Liverpool and Manchester Railway across " Chat Moss."
This he did by building " mattresses " of hurdles and brushwood on which stone and earth were dumped, the process being repeated till the " insatiable maw " of the bog was satisfied and a firm base obtained. Tunnels were used before locomotives were invented to go through them. The canal system had necessitated the making of short, low tunnels, and barges were propelled through them by a man called a " legger " who lay on his back and kicked the roof. Railed roads also were familiar sights in the North of England for many years before locomotives were invented to hurry along them.- They were private affairs, built chiefly by colliery owners to ease the work of horses, and the standard " gauge " of to-day owes its dimensions originally to the width of the wagons then employed. If draft horses cease out of the land they will still have a memorial upon the rail- road and still give a name to the mechanical unit of power.
In the 'sixties and 'seventies of the last century men as yet not old must have felt that they had lived in two worlds, entering as they came to later middle life into a society in a perpetual state of flux. The towns threw out large suburbs, the villages emptied themselves into them. The trains which brought country produce to the cities brought the country men also, leaving the life their fore- fathers had led for generations in order to man the new factories and to increase the output of the old ones. The chimney became the centre of English life, and men flew to it buzzing and settling in swarms about it, and allowing to their everlasting disgrace their young children to be enslaved to the new industrial gods.
For many years railway history has gone on without any great event. Even the growing use of electricity with all its financial potentialities has had little effect upon the imagination of passengers. The comfort of travel has been increased, cushions and restaurant cars and " sleepers " have eased the weariness of thousands, but no high standard of train-luxury has been attempted, at any rate in this country. Napoleon III. had a conservatory full of flowers and other absurd superfluities attached to the. Imperial Special, but his folly found no imitators. Indeed it is strange to think how little the " rolling stock " has changed with the years. The Broad Gauge proved a failure here and no fantastic schemes have been tried even in America. One wonders that the railway train has never been exploited as a cure. Doctors still recom- mend the train as a means to an end merely. We wonder that some Train Treatment has never suggested itself to their imaginations. A " Rushing Air Cure " for consumption or a " Rest Cure of Ceaseless Change " - for the nerves might have occurred to them.
To the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the men who saw the spread of the system the world appears to be held together by railway-lines. Consider, for instance, the effect of railways upon the minds of children. After the doll the train is the favourite toy. Ordinary people cannot imagine life without easy public means of transit. If railways -do not pay they say to themselves they will still run ; by steam or by electricity, at a loss or a- profit, they will run. Trunks will throw out branches and they in their turn smaller ones till the meshes of the net are so small that there will be no one who cannot walk or send his goods to the station from whence his destination. is divided by more or fewer hours-of comfortable inertia. Yet there are signs in the sky and on the earth to make thinking men pause. Aeroplanes and- motor-cars increase and multiply—and there are other and perhaps more portentous signs of the coming of a new era. The history of a people is the story of its moods. It is obvious that the English world is very_ tired, just as a hundred years ago it was very dull. Men are risking everything, not out of ambition, but for leisure. The workers are deter-, mined to go home early and they. are passionately dis- contented because they so many of them have no proper homes to go to. The housing question is in reality the home question. It effects all classes of the community. Domestic life is at a very low ebb because people have not the means to live according to the standard which is set by their memories or their righteous ideals.
All hopeful people believe that a solution to the pro- blem is not far off—but what will be the effect of this reformation upon a society kept too long waiting at the door worn out by the search for pastime ? Are we all longing half consciously for the quiet life which the trains have destroyed ? If so the railways are in danger because the whole fabric of modern life is in danger—with its commerce resting as it does upon willing overwork. The way backwards leads through a desert of starvation, and even those who cast longing eyes behind them, if they care for the prosperity of the people, must wish the railways God-speed.
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