Edwin A. Pratt

“ There is of late such an admirable commodiousness, both for men and women, to travel from London to the principal towns of the country that the like hath not been known in the world, and that is by stage coaches, wherein any one may be transported to any place sheltered from foul weather and foul ways, free from endamaging one's health and one's body by hard jogging or over-violent motion on horse back, and this not only at the low price of about a shilling for every five miles but with such velocity and speed in one hour as the foreign post can but make in one day. ”

“ Invention and production had already far surpassed the means of efficient distribution. England was on the eve of the greatest industrial expansion of any country in Europe; but she was starting thereon with probably the worst means of inland transport of any country in Europe. Canals appeared to be the one thing needed; and every fresh canal constructed was heralded with joy because it foreshadowed, among other things, better trade, more employment, higher wages, cheaper fuel and provisions, and less of the isolation from which many a land-locked community was suffering. ”

“ The complete stoppage of the railway system for any such period would thus be a national disaster. Food might still come to the ports in the same quantities as before; but without the railways there would be no adequate means for its distribution, and the large inland towns would more especially be at a disadvantage. The mere possibility of such an eventuality may help one to realise the extent of our dependence to-day on rail transport from the point of view, not alone of trade, industry and commerce, but of our daily life and sustenance. ”

“ He noticed that everybody who advocated the construction of canals always wanted them constructed with the taxpayer's money, and always wanted them to be worked without a toll. Why should not the same principle be applied to railways also? A railway was even more useful to the public than a canal; therefore, construct it with the taxpayer's money, and allow everybody to use it free. It was always possible to get plenty of money subscribed with which to build a railway, but nobody would subscribe a penny towards the building of canals. An appeal was always made to the government. ”

“ From the great stores which keep their "fleet" of delivery cars, and from the furniture-remover who wants the equivalent almost of a traction-engine down to the draper, the grocer or the butcher who is content with a modest three-wheel auto-carrier for loads up to five or ten cwt., every class of trader is to-day finding that, to keep pace with the times, and to deliver goods as promptly and at the same distances as his competitors, he must needs have a quicker means of road transport than a horsed-vehicle. ”

“ An army, with all its material, could, in a few days, be transported from the north to the south, from the east to the west, of France. If a country could thus speedily carry considerable masses of troops to any given point on its frontiers, would it not become invincible, and would it not, also, be in a position to effect great economies in its military expenditure? ”

“ For this reason, instead of restricting facilities, such a company seeks to increase them; instead of imposing extortionate fares and rates it aims, not merely at immediate profits on the transport of particular commodities, but at encouraging such a development of the district in general as will ensure its prosperity, increase its population, expand its trade, and create more traffic of all kinds in a not far distant future.
It was precisely this idea that led the Great Eastern Railway Company to set the example it did in seeking to develop the interests of its agricultural districts. ”

“ The attaining of the speed of 25 or 30 miles an hour, at such an enormous expense, cannot be justified on any principle of national utility. The usefulness of communication, in a national point of view, consists principally in rendering the conveyance of all the productions of the soil and of industry as cheap as possible.... But a speed of 10 miles an hour would have accomplished all these purposes, and have been of great benefit to travellers, while it could have been attained at from one half to one third of the expense which has been incurred by the system that has been acted upon. ”

“ Against the loss in the one direction in railway revenue, owing to the greater use of motor-cars, there can at least be set the constant growth in the taste for travel which the railway companies (partly, again, to make up for the competition in suburban traffic) have done their best to cultivate by means of abnormally low excursion or week-end fares based, as one leading railway officer put it to me, "not on any idea of distance, but on the amount that the class of people catered for might be assumed to be willing to pay." ”

“ It is a track of country which lays a most heavy tax upon all travellers and upon itself. Such roads are a much heavier tax than half a crown a horse for a toll would be. Agriculture, manufactures and commerce must suffer in such a track as well as the traveller.... Until better management is produced I would advise all travellers to consider this country as sea, and as soon think of driving into the ocean as venturing into such detestable roads. ”

“ Just as in mediæval times England had consisted of so many separate self-governing and self-dependent communities, each with the house of the lord of the manor as the "hub" of its own little universe, so—in the days when communications had certainly, though still only relatively, improved—did the county town become the recognised centre of social life and movement for each and every county where there was any pretence to social life at all. ”

“ Though the city, village, or country in which they live is at the lowest ebb of poverty it will, in a short time, by trade passing through it, alter its very nature and the inhabitants become, from nothing, as it were, to a very rich and substantial people; their very natural idea of mankind, and their rude and unpolished behaviour, will be altered and soothed into the most social civility and good breeding by the alluring temptations of the beneficial advantage of trade and commerce. ”

“ The whole history of transport shows constant change and progress, the achievements of one generation or the "records" of one pioneer being only the starting-point of fresh advance or of still greater triumphs later on. ”

“ The Danube is the largest river in Europe in respect of its volume of water; it is the only large European river that flows due east; and it is therefore the great highway to the East for South Germany, for Austria, for Hungary, and for the younger nations in its valley. It flows through more lands, races, and languages than any other European river. The Rhine is the great water-highway for Western Europe; and it carries the traffic and the travellers of many countries and peoples. Both streams give life to the whole Continent; they join many countries and the most varied interests ”

“ When the private carriages began to increase in number he expressed his opinion of them thus:—
"The first coach was a strange monster, it amazed both horse and man. Some said it was a great crab-shell brought out of China; some thought it was one of the pagan temples, in which cannibals adored the devil....
"Since Phaeton broke his neck, never land hath endured more trouble than ours, by the continued rumbling of these upstart four-wheeled tortoises.... A coach or carouch is a mere engine of pride, which no one can deny to be one of the seven deadly sins." ”

“ In any case, whether the railway shareholder be a capitalist large or small or only an ordinary thrifty middle-class person who has saved a little money which he seeks to put into something both safe and remunerative, the fact remains that since the advent of the railway era he is the person who, though supplying the means by which this huge system of inland communication has been brought into existence, has had the least consideration of all. ”

“ Thus the great Roman roads, connecting the rising city on the Thames and the commercial centre of Britain with every part of the island, were remarkable, not only because they represented an art which was to disappear with the conquerors themselves, but, also, because they had been directly created, and were directly controlled, by a central authority as the outcome of a State road policy itself fated in turn to disappear no less effectually. ”

“ My own view is that if the State is prepared to find money for the purpose of cheapening the cost of transport, it could do so to better advantage if, instead of spending millions on an impracticable and partial scheme of canal resuscitation, it lightened the burden of taxation now falling on the railway companies, and thus improved their position in regard, not merely to traders in particular districts, but to the trade and industries of the United Kingdom as a whole. ”

“ When one tries to form some idea of the further volume of employment that results from the supply of the thousand and one necessaries which even the most enterprising and independent of railway companies must still procure from outside manufacturers, makers, growers or providers, it is obvious that the railways, both as an industry in themselves and in their dependence, in endless ramifications, on other industries concerned wholly or in part in supplying railway wants, must provide more or less employment for an army of workers vastly in excess even of the aforesaid 600,000 or 800,000. ”

“ The extension in the volume of imported merchandise, the expansion in its export products, and the greatly increased revenue, stand out to-day as an extraordinary revelation of what railway communication is capable of effecting in places that were not long since un-get-at-able, but which Nature has lavishly filled with a never-failing store of indigenous wealth. ”

“ It is extremely interesting to know that the journey from London to Scotland has now been made in quicker time by aeroplane than by the fastest express, and that a 1000-mile flight round England has been accomplished with perfect control of the machinery employed. Yet, even allowing for the greatest possible improvements in the construction of the aeroplane, the number of passengers who could be carried is so limited, and the fares charged to cover capital outlay must needs be so high, that there could be no idea of rivalry between the aeroplane and the railway in regard to passenger traffic. ”

“ No one, however, is likely to suggest that Prussia has shown any lack of enterprise in the construction of strategical lines which would enable her to concentrate great masses of troops on her frontiers with the utmost dispatch. "The rivalry between neighbouring States," writes von der Goltz in "The Conduct of War," "has had the effect of causing perfectly new lines to be constructed solely for military reasons. Strategical railways constitute a special feature of our time"; and in no country has this fact been recognised more clearly, and acted upon more thoroughly, than in Germany. ”

“ But if the easy communication rendered possible by turnpike roads and flying coaches conferred on the country towns a hope of becoming so many little Londons, the day was to come when a still easier communication by means of railway lines and express trains was to take provincial residents just as readily to the great and real London, and so deprive not a few provincial centres of much of that social life and distinction which the improved transport facilities had brought them. ”

“ From the general manager to the railway navvy, and from the chief engineer, working out intricate problems calling for a high degree of skill and scientific knowledge, to the boy who helps in the unpretending but necessary work of cleaning the engines, there is opportunity for almost every possible class or type of labour, whether skilled or unskilled. ”

“ It is difficult to see why, except under pressure, railway directors, who count among the shrewdest of business men, should have incurred such substantial obligations towards canals which, at the time, everyone regarded as doomed to extinction before a superior means of transport. It is equally difficult to believe that, having incurred these costly obligations, the companies deliberately "strangled" the traffic on the canals, instead of allowing them to earn—if they could—at least sufficient to cover the cost of their upkeep. ”

“ Such, for attack or for defence, for good or for evil, is the nature, and such are the possibilities, of that rail-power in warfare which, after eighty years of continuous evolution, was, in the War of the Nations imposed on mankind in 1914, to undergo a development and an application on a wider, more impressive, and more terrible scale than the world had ever seen before. ”

“ Are not the physical conditions of our country such that canal construction here presents exceptional drawbacks, and that canal navigation must always be exceptionally slow? Are not both physical and geographical conditions in Great Britain altogether unlike those of most of the Continental countries of whose waterways so much is heard? Are not our commercial conditions equally dissimilar? ”

“ In the first place it would be going too far to say that the Railway Age inaugurated the Industrial Era. The invention of, or the improvements in, machinery which gave so immense an impetus to our national industries preceded the opening of the particular lines of railway—the Stockton and Darlington and the Liverpool and Manchester—that were more especially to lead to the great development of the railway system on present-day lines. ”

“ But now the amendments of the roads with the many other improvements of travelling have in a manner opened a new communication between the several parts of our island.... Stage-coaches, machines, flys and post chaises are ready to transport passengers to and fro, between the metropolis and the most distant parts of the Kingdom. The lover now can almost literally annihilate time and space, and be with his mistress before she dreams of his arrival. ”

“ There was, in the first place, the question of the transport by rail alike of Volunteers and of the regular forces, either on the occasion of reviews or for the protection of our coasts against an invader. While it was evident that the railways could be efficiently worked only by their own officers, it was no less obvious that plans for the movement of large bodies of men, and especially of troops, with horses, guns, ammunition and stores, should be well considered and prepared long beforehand, and not left for the occasion or the emergency when the need for them would arise. ”

“ Another factor tending to differentiate the railwayman from the ordinary industrial worker is the sense of discipline—and the consequent subordination of each unit to an official superior—which must needs prevail if a great organisation is to be conducted, not simply with success for the shareholders, but with safety for the public. The maintenance of effective discipline is obviously essential to the safety of railway operation, just as it does, undoubtedly, further help to form the special type of the railway servant. ”

“ So the tendency of the railway was not only to advance trade, travel and transport, but to open men's minds, to broaden the intellectual outlook of the artisan and the labourer, to place them more on a level with their social superiors, and to make them better fitted for the exercise of greater political powers. ”