introduction of such waterways.[228] They were upheld and protected by

large vested interests. They offered the facilities which were desired by many inland towns of being brought into direct connection with the sea. But the railway system, first put forward as a tentative experiment, and without the slightest knowledge on the part of its promoters of the results that were before long to be realised, was making encroachments, and proving its capabilities. This was a slow process, as the way had to be felt. The first railway Acts did not contemplate the use of locomotives, nor the transport of passenger traffic. The Stockton and Darlington Railway, constructed in 1825, was the first on which locomotives were employed. Even at this date, there were many who doubted the expediency of having a railroad instead of a canal, and in the county of Durham, as we have already indicated, there was a fierce fight, carried on for more than twenty years.[229] In the United States, the supremacy of waterways was maintained until a much later date. As we have elsewhere shown, a keen and embittered struggle was kept up between the canal and the railroad companies until 1857; and even in the latter year the Legislature of the State of New York, finding that railway competition was making serious inroads upon their canal traffic, were considering whether they should not either entirely prohibit the railways from carrying freight, or impose such tolls upon railway tonnage as would cripple the companies in their competition with canals.[230] Finding also that a large part of the traffic that had been diverted from the canals to the railroads had been carried by the latter “without profit, if not at an absolute loss,” the Legislature was recommended to enact that the railway companies should be “compelled to transport at no less than fairly remunerative rates such freight as would naturally seek the cheapest mode of transit.” The canals were said to have been “despoiled of their income by a semblance of legal enactment, and their rightful heritage bestowed upon chartered competitors.”[231] We may smile in this year of grace at such interpretations of the fundamental laws of political economy and of the liberty of the subject. No doubt John Stuart Mill would have set the rights of _meum_ and _tuum_ in a clearer and more logical light. But in those days vested interests fought hard, and distinctions were not so clearly drawn as in these. The element of speed, to which such great importance has since been attached, was only then beginning to be appreciated.[232] The vested interest of canals had the Government on its side, the canals having been largely constructed with State aid. The railways, on the contrary, were entirely the products of private initiative, which had to make a bold fight in order to establish any footing at all. The two systems were, moreover, essentially antagonistic in their characteristics. “The infernal activity of railroad men was naturally most repulsive to gentlemen of the old school, whose stately decorum was well reflected in the placid and unostentatious movement of the boats on the canals.”[233] The railway companies were accused of having entered into a conspiracy “deliberately to break down these great public works, upon which the State has spent forty years of labour,” and to “crush the canals into a kind of atrophy, which might result in making them odious to the State, and to transfer them eventually at a vile price to the managers of this highly creditable scheme.” The public press took up the cudgels on behalf of the canals. A mighty wave of popular indignation against the railroads swept over the land. “Danger to the canals!” was the shibboleth of political parties and commercial cliques. The leading New York journal declared that “the whole community is aroused as it never was before.” Prominent men of all parties demanded, through the press, that the canals should be rescued from the danger with which they were threatened. The agitation, however, came to nothing. It had no solid bottom. It was an agitation similar in kind to that which had disturbed Europe when Arkwright’s spinning machine and Compton’s mule were taking the place of hand labour. The clamour suddenly collapsed, and was never heard of afterwards. Meanwhile the railway system proceeded apace. The records of human progress contain no more remarkable chapter than that which tells of the growth of American railroads. The State of New York, in which the canal interest was the strongest, had, in 1845, 721 miles of railway. In 1877 it had about 6000 miles. In the United States, as a whole, the railway mileage increased from 4633 miles in 1845 to 78,000 miles in 1877, and 160,000 miles in 1889. The growth of the system was attended, as it always is, by a corresponding growth of trade, and what was of more importance to the people, by a diminution of the cost of living. The total freight traffic carried on the railways of the United States in 1881 was 350 million tons, being an average of 6·7 tons per head. In 1888 the total freight carried was 589½ million tons, being an average of 9·8 tons per head. In 1870 the cost of conveying a barrel of flour from Chicago to New York was 6_s._ 5_d._; in 1880 a working man was only called on to pay 3_s._ 3½_d._ for the same service. From the date when the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was fairly established, canal navigation in England, with a few notable exceptions, appears to have fallen into a slumber which recalls the long night of depression and inactivity that settled down upon the arts and sciences during the middle ages. After a few years, hardly a single apologist could be found for the system of internal navigations. Railways were all the vogue, and were built everywhere. The covering of the country with a network of iron roads was made the business alike of engineers, economists, financiers, and manufacturers. The results of the railway mania of 1845-46, did something to stem the torrent of new projects, many of them of an almost impossible character. But only for a time. The canal system never again appeared to look up. One by one, canals dropped out of the race, and were bought up by railway companies, either with a view to getting rid of their competition, and so securing absolute control over the traffic, or in order to make way for new railway lines. The canals that thus fell into the hands of railways were, perhaps naturally enough, not particularly well looked after. But for this the public did not seem to care. The country had for many years been enjoying an exceptional amount of prosperity. The start that our mechanical and manufacturing superiority had given us in the race of nations, aided and abetted by the locomotive engine and the steamship, and the awakening of foreign countries to a sense of requirements previously ungratified, if not unfelt, created an enormous demand for our industrial products. In many industries, indeed, we had hardly any competition. In most others, there was a sufficient margin of profit to make it of little consequence what rates were charged for railway transport, so long as the transport was effected. In such a race as this, the slow movements of canal boats were not deemed worthy of attention, and the railways had it all their own way. But a time was now at hand when all this was about to be changed. Foreign nations had learned our arts and manufactures, had adopted our processes, had purchased our machinery, and had instituted systems of technical instruction that caused industrial knowledge to be generally diffused and thoroughly appreciated. The development of the modern steamship, acting in concert with the improvement of railway transport in the United States, inflicted upon British agriculture a blow from which it has not rallied, and possibly never may. The prices of agricultural produce in England, hitherto almost unaffected by the range of prices elsewhere, were now controlled by the cost of producing wheat in Dakota, mutton in New Zealand, beef in Texas, butter and cheese in France, and other commodities elsewhere. Almost suddenly, a very remarkable fall took place in the profits of agriculturists at home. Our agricultural population, with its purchasing power thus seriously crippled, did not bring orders into the manufacturing districts to the same extent as formerly. Coincidently with this falling off in the home demand, foreign nations, having learned to supply their own wants, sought fewer English-made goods than before. A little later still, and they were competing “brow to brow” with English industrials in neutral markets. Our import and export returns, which had been advancing with portentous strides, suddenly dropped down in a way that caused serious alarm. It was found that the decline was one of price rather than of volume, and manufacturers, having to accept much less profits than formerly, were compelled to strain every nerve to make ends meet. This could only be done in one or other of three different ways—by the command of cheaper materials, by more economical processes of manufacture, or by cheaper transport. The railways of the United States, the telegraph system, and our own steamship lines provided the first desideratum. The second were diligently looked after by the manufacturers themselves. As regards the third they were powerless. Inquiry revealed the fact that the railway rates charged in England were generally higher than those charged in competing countries. In some cases they had damaged once-flourishing industries, and imperilled the very existence of large centres of population. Complaints against railway monopoly and railway exactions became universal. The railways were for a long time inexorable, and as they turned a deaf ear to the remonstrances of traders, the latter had to seek elsewhere for relief. At this stage in the remarkable annals of recent industrial progress, attention was once again turned to the comparative merits of canals and railways for the transport of heavy traffic. A committee of the House of Commons was in 1882 appointed to inquire into the subject of British canals. This committee sat for a considerable time and took a great deal of evidence, most of it of an extremely unsatisfactory character, as showing how greatly British canals had passed under the domination of the principal railway companies. The report of this committee directed renewed attention to the advantages of canals as a means of transport, and gave an impetus to canal construction, of which the Manchester Ship Canal, now approaching completion, is the latest and most signal triumph. New ship canals are, however, being talked of; and it is more than likely that Sheffield and some other inland towns will, before long, be able to float large vessels to the sea. The Railway and Canal Traffic Act of 1888 contained certain provisions that specially affected canals. One of these requires returns to be made annually to Parliament by canal companies. This provision will enable us to ascertain that which has heretofore been a sealed book—the extent to which British canals are now utilised. The concurrent proposals of the railway companies as to maximum rates and terminal charges will be likely to help the canal system, if it has any vitality left, towards resuscitation. FOOTNOTES: [217] Stone blocks were used instead of wooden sleepers on the earliest railways. [218] One section of this Act enabled the company to charge a toll for cattle driven along the line, as on an ordinary highway. [219] 33 George III. [220] Clifford’s ‘History of Private Bill Legislation,’ vol. i. p. 41. [221] Oddy’s ‘European Commerce’ gives a list of the canals that were either being promoted or constructed at the commencement of the century. Some of them were of very considerable extent. Oddy remarked in 1805 that “by means of the canals already finished a great part of European Russia has communication with one or other of the seas by which it is bounded.” [222] ‘Practical Treatise on Railroads,’ first edition. [223] ‘Practical Treatise on Railways,’ third edition, p. 699. [224] Ibid., p. 18. [225] ‘Minutes of Proceeding of the Institution of Civil Engineers,’ vol. lxxx. p. 11. [226] Preface to the ‘Lives of the Engineers,’ p. 7, 1st Ed. [227] Johnson was a declared enemy of canals, believing that they would interfere with country seclusion, make living dearer, displace pack-horses and waggons, and injure the trade of towns near which they might be carried. [228] ‘History of the Commerce and Town of Liverpool.’ [229] Some particulars of this controversy will be found in the work entitled, ‘The Jubilee Memorial of the Railway System,’ which the writer prepared, at the request of the North-Eastern Railway Board, for the occasion of the jubilee of the first passenger railway, held at Darlington, September 1885. [230] Poor’s ‘Manual of Railroads for 1881,’ p. xxvii. [231] Ibid., p. xxx. [232] One of the advocates of the canal, as against the railroad, remarked that, “very possibly it may be vital, as it certainly is characteristic, for a live American to hurry his person at racehorse speed across the continent; but it certainly is not vital, nor in any respect necessary or expedient, thus to hurry his fuel, his timber, his building materials, his food, nor any very large proportion of his merchandise or manufactures.” [233] Poor’s ‘Manual for 1881,’ p. xxxiii.