CHAPTER XXVI.

RAILWAYS AND CANALS. “Canals are to the inhabitants of a country what seas are to nations; they equally serve to assist the wants of society and benefit commerce.” —_Cresy._ There is no movement of modern times that has been more pregnant in its results, or more interesting in its course of development, than that which has given to the world its existing system or systems of transportation. Of that movement, the competition of the railway and the canal for the traffic that has been equally open to both has been a phase that has received less attention than it deserved. The railways have now had a long innings. They have been productive of immense advantage to the world. The transportation of both goods and passengers has enormously increased as a result of the facilities they have afforded. But whether railways or canals are the best adapted to economical transport is still a problem which is exercising the minds of traders, economists, politicians, and engineers, in most of the leading countries of the world. It is probably among the things not generally remembered, if it is among the things generally known, that railways were first projected and sanctioned as feeders to canals. They were designed as the humble handmaidens of the canal system. The preamble to the earliest railway Acts recites that they would be of “great advantage to the extensive manufactories of earthenware” established in the Potteries and elsewhere. In 1792, the Monmouthshire Canal Navigation Company were authorised “to make railways or stone roads,”[217] from their canals to various ironworks and mines in the counties of Monmouth and Brecknock.[218] In the following year, the Grand Junction Company were authorised to make a railway at Blisworth, and “a collateral communication by cuts, railways, or other ways and means,” with their canal at Gayton, and the navigation of the river Nene at Northampton.[219] Up to 1825, indeed, canals were the absolute masters of the situation. Their owners could afford to smile at the idea of competition from railroads, and they did in many cases actually do so. In the construction of canals, as in the promotion of railway projects, there have, in most European countries, been periods of speculative operations on a large scale, culminating in crises more or less acute. In England, the canal mania was at its height between 1791 and 1794. In those four years eighty-one canal and navigation Acts were passed by Parliament.[220] This was only seven years before the first railway Act was obtained for the construction of the Wandsworth and Croydon Railway. In Holland and Russia, this epoch had been reached many years before. In Holland many canals had been constructed early in the seventeenth century, and in Russia, the same movement, initiated and carried to a certain degree of development by Peter the Great, culminated in a great number of canal projects being put forward about the same time that the canal mania was raging in England[221] over the question whether a railway or a canal should be built for the purpose of carrying coals from the inland collieries to the sea at Stockton. In 1768, a survey had been made for a canal for the purpose by one George Dixon and one Robert Whitworth. In the following year, Brindley surveyed the same route and reported that a canal about 27 miles in length could be constructed for 63,722_l._ No action, however, was taken upon either survey, nor upon a subsequent report by Rennie on the same scheme. In 1818, we find the project still exciting the attention of Darlington and Stockton, and the inhabitants of the district divided as to the merits of the two systems. In the latter part of that year, a meeting held at Darlington pronounced a judgment which closed the controversy. It was decided that a “rail or tramway was, under existing circumstances, preferable to a canal.” The expectations of the friends of railway transport were not, however, very high. They were advised by a committee which had been appointed to consider the subject, that “one horse, of moderate power, could easily draw downwards on the railway about ten tons, and upwards about four tons, exclusive of empty waggons.” Small as this outlook was, it was a great advance on the then existing system of coal transport, the towns of Tees-side having been, up to that date, supplied with fuel by droves of asses and mules, which stood in the principal thoroughfares until their burdens had been disposed of— “Here colliers stood with coals from distant parts, Some having two, and some but one-horse carts.” Even then, however, the railway had not made much impression, and the canal interest had as yet little to fear. The promoters of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, as we have seen, had no idea of employing locomotives, or of providing for passenger traffic. No mention of either was made in their original bill. The railway was intended only “to facilitate the conveyance of coal, iron, lime, corn, and other commodities” from the interior. “It had no congener for years. The impression of most people, while it was under construction, was that it was more or less of a mistake. While the line was in progress, a vigorous agitation for the construction of a canal for similar purposes was going on in the adjoining county of Northumberland.” When the locomotive engine was introduced upon the scene, the friends of canal navigation hailed it with ridicule. “Who,” it was said, “would ever dream of paying to be conveyed in something like a coal-wagon, upon a dreary wagon-way, by a roaring steam-engine?” The question appeared to carry its answer written on its face. The _Quarterly Review_, of March 1825, ridiculed the idea of the people of England trusting themselves to the mercy of “such a machine” as a locomotive engine on the then proposed London and Woolwich Railway, and declared its readiness “to back old Father Thames against the Woolwich Railway for any sum.” Nicholas Wood, the author of the first really scientific treatise on railway locomotion, denounced the idea that locomotives could be worked at the rate of 12 miles an hour.[222] So recently as 1830, when the Manchester and Liverpool Railway was opened, the railway system was intended for the transport of merchandise alone, and a speed of more than 12 miles an hour was not dreamt of. In this case, as in that of the Stockton and Darlington Railway five years before, the transportation problem was still unsolved. “The barge ne’er came, but in its place Shot into view the great fire-dragon, And entered on his world-wide race, With fairy coach and grim coal-waggon.” But at coal-waggons, or rather at heavy traffic generally, the enterprise was expected to stop. The Rainhill locomotive contest, and the convincing proofs afforded thereby of the practicability of applying railway transport alike to goods and passengers, at a high rate of speed, impressed men’s minds with the conviction that, if canals were not already doomed, they were, at any rate, by no means so superior as they had seemed up to that time. The Stockton and Darlington Railway had been opened for the purpose of bringing the coalfields and the ports of Durham together. There was no idea of competing with any other means of transport, because no other means of transport existed, except the pack-horse. But in the case of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the object in view was that of antagonism to the canals, which had proved impracticable in their dealings with the merchants and manufacturers of those towns. If the canal companies had met the just and reasonable demands of the traders of Lancashire, the probability is that the Liverpool and Manchester Railway would not have been constructed until many years later. As it was, the high-handed proceedings adopted by those companies, raised the Frankenstein of railway competition, and the difficulty now was, how to lay it. Sisyphus, himself, had no harder task to perform. The issue for a time appeared to be doubtful, but not for long. The new system of transport fulfilled every expectation formed by its most sanguine promoters, and disappointed every apprehension entertained by its enemies. The canal companies found it necessary to undertake experiments, in order to demonstrate the greater economy of their system of transport. They also attempted to introduce steam propulsion, to improve their lines of communication, and in some cases to reduce their rates of charge. They did not, however, greatly mend matters. Nicholas Wood analysed their experiments, and declared that “coals and minerals were conveyed on railways equally cheap, if not at a less rate, than on canals,” and in opposition to those who maintained the greater economy of waterways, he declared that “in no instance has it been shown that canal navigation is conducted at a cheaper rate, including every charge.”[223] He thereupon argued that “the slow, tardy, and interrupted transit of canal navigation must, therefore, of necessity yield to other modes, affording a more rapid and certain means of conveyance.”[224] In 1825, Charles Maclaren of Edinburgh wrote an elaborate pamphlet on the comparative merits of railways, canals, and common turnpike roads, in which he maintained that the effect obtained by the draught of a single horse was ten times as great on a railway, and thirty times as great on a canal, as on a well-made road. He argued, further, that a canal cost about three times as much as a railway, so that it would require “nearly the same rates or dues per ton to make the capital yield the same interest.” The relative conditions of working canals and railways were at that time very imperfectly understood, and probably the author of this interesting pamphlet would have been amazed, had he lived, to see the average expenditure per mile of railway constructed in England and Wales returned, as it now is, at close on 50,000_l._ per mile, or fully four times the outlay incurred on our canal system, relatively to mileage. An engineer of great experience, speaking of the contest between railways and canals, has observed[225] that the introduction of railways proved, in the first instance, a practical bar to the extension of the canal system, and, eventually, a too successful competition with the canals already made was the result. Frequently the route that had been selected by the canal engineer was found (as was to be expected) a favourable one for the competing railway, and in the result, the towns that had been served by the canal, were served by the railway, which was thus in a position to take away, even the local traffic of the canal. For some time it appeared as though canal undertakings and canalised river navigations must fail, for although heavy goods could be carried very cheaply on canals, and although, in the case of the many works and factories erected on their banks, or on basins connected with them, there was with canal navigation no item of expense corresponding to the cost of cartage to the railway stations, yet the smallness of the railway rates for heavy goods, and the greater speed of transit, were found to be more than countervailing advantages. Canal companies, therefore, set themselves to work to add to their position of mere owners of water highways, entitled to take toll for the use of those highways, the function of common carriers, thus putting themselves on a par with the railway companies, who were, in the outset, legalised only as mere owners of iron highways, and as the receivers of toll from any persons who might choose to run engines and trains thereon—a condition of things which was altered as soon as it was pointed out that it was utterly incompatible either with punctuality or with safe working. This addition to the legal powers of the canal companies, made by the Acts of 1845 and 1847, had a very beneficial effect upon the value of their property, and assisted somewhat to preserve a mode of transport competing with that afforded by the railways. In most of the leading countries of the world, a time arrived when the canal system and the railway system came into strong competition, and when it seemed doubtful on which side the victory would lie. This contest was necessarily more marked in England than in any other country. England had not, indeed, been the first in the field with canals, as she had been with railways. On the contrary, we are told by Smiles that “at a time when Holland had completed its magnificent system of water communication, and when France, Germany, and even Russia, had opened up important lines of inland communication, England had not cut a single canal.”[226] But England, having once started on a career of canal development, followed it up with greater energy and on a more comprehensive scale than any other country. For more than half a century canals had had it all their own way. They had in their time done good work, in spite of much opposition.[227] Coming as they did on the back of an era of very dear transport, they easily proved their claims to make transport cheaper. Baines states that they carried traffic for about one-fourth of the rate that was paid previous to the