Edwin A. Pratt

“ Under the combined influences of fast trains, corridor carriages, dining, luncheon and sleeping cars and cheap fares, whether for day excursions, short-date or long-date periods, tours at home or abroad, or any other of the various combinations for which facilities are offered, the making of pleasure trips has entered so thoroughly into the habits and customs of all grades of society that the social and domestic conditions of to-day offer a complete contrast from those that prevailed in the pre-railway period. ”

“ In our comparison of the two systems of transit, we must not lose sight of the very important consequences, resulting to the commerce of the country, by the rapidity of communication effected by the railways, which far outweighs any trifling balance of economy in favour of canals, even if such do exist; and, therefore, we presume, whenever the balance between the two modes in any degree approach each other, a preference will be given to railway communication. ”

“ In the case of the great Continental powers, with their system of compulsory military service and the State ownership of railways, immediately war is declared practically the whole of the efficient male population, including the railway staff, is ready to place itself under military discipline; the effect being that the transport or railway department, like the infantry or artillery, becomes an integral part of the armed forces of the country. But in England the transport arrangements must of necessity be largely carried out by the railway companies with the aid of their civilian employés. ”

“ Railways, as developed in England, have thus done more than increase the facilities and decrease the cost of actual transport. They have, in various ways, increased the facilities for, and decreased the cost of the exchange of, commodities, since there is many a trader in the country who conducts his business much more with the help of a railway company's capital than he does with his own. It is not alone that trade and industry have vastly increased in volume as the result of railway operation. ”

“ Trade and industry have, also, completely changed in method, while thousands of men can carry on a business of their own to-day who, in the pre-railway epoch, must have been content to be little more than hewers of wood and drawers of water.
The economy in time, also, due to the speed at which the general merchandise traffic of the country is carried, has been of no less importance than the economy in cost of transport. ”

“ On the general trade of the country the railway was to produce results no less striking than those that related to individual industries.
When the facilities for distributing domestic and other necessaries throughout the inland districts, and even in the most remote parts of the country, were so greatly increased, the reason for the fairs which had for many centuries played so all-important a part in English trade and commerce no longer existed, and the country hastened to deserve Napoleon's sarcasm by becoming "a nation of shopkeepers." ”

“ In addition to doing so much to re-establish our industries, our trade and our social life and manners on the new bases here indicated, the railway companies have also sought to play their part in the great and responsible question of national defence. The gravity of the issues that, in case of invasion, would depend on the railways being able to arrange for the rapid and safe movement of troops, of war material and of supplies from one part of the country to another is self-evident. ”

“ Cheap excursion trains gave to artisan and agriculturist the opportunity of visiting great towns or pleasure resorts to which, in the old coaching days, the well-to-do would alone have thought of travelling. In the same way the advantages of a concentration of life, of thought and of movement in the capital were spread by the easier means of communication to country districts, and brought the population in general into closer touch with the leaders of public opinion. ”

“ While it is true that many rural centres suffered a decline in population when the railways led indirectly to so many agricultural workers leaving the fields for the attractions and the supposed advantages of urban life, it is no less true that the expansion of the towns gave to those who remained in the rural centres greater markets for the sale there of such produce—and especially for such market-garden produce, eggs and poultry—as they could supply to advantage. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Leaving medical authorities and social reformers to decide on the questions just raised, one may, at least, safely affirm that the railway has been a great promoter of friendship and family life, since visits can now readily be exchanged between those resident in distant parts of the country, and ties can thus be maintained that, at one time, would have been in danger of complete severance by the difficulties or the undue cost of journeys by road. ”

“ The average builder saves yard expenses and cartage by ordering from time to time the exact quantities of timber or the precise number of bricks he wants for the particular work, or for a certain stage of the work, on which he is engaged. The coal merchant orders forward from day to day, or at intervals according to the state of business, only the particular quantities of coal he requires for present or prospective early needs, since the railway arrangements generally render it unnecessary for him to provide for more than a few days' supply at a time. ”

“ As compared with the earlier conditions of life, when households were mainly self-supporting, each providing for its own needs from its own fields, pasture or garden, the average urban family to-day is dependent on the trader for practically all domestic necessaries, and the same is mostly the case in suburban or even in country districts except, it may be, in regard to vegetables, eggs and table poultry. ”

“ Slowness in transport, as is the case on canals, may cause no inconvenience where time is immaterial and large, or comparatively large, stocks can be kept on hand; but these considerations do not apply to the great bulk of English trading and industrial enterprises as carried on under present-day conditions. Hence to the direct saving in the cost of transport, and to the greater advantages in the exchange and distribution of commodities brought about by railways, must be added a fair allowance for gains secured indirectly through this further saving of time. ”

“ The towns and the industrial centres expanded further as rail transport afforded increased facilities for the conveyance of raw materials to works which, thanks to the steam-engine, could be set up in any part of the country, regardless of the once indispensable water power; and the procuring of these raw materials not only gave a further great expansion to national wealth, but led to the opening up to industrial activity of many a district previously isolated and undeveloped. ”

“ A large proportion of the commodious and well-lighted warehouse level on the top storey is let off to individual traders in what are known as "fixed spaces," the demand for which is always in excess of the supply. Goods of great variety and of great value are stored here. The warehouse is found especially useful in connection with the extensive goods traffic carried by the Great Eastern Railway Company between England and the Continent. ”

“ The question might well be asked if indulgence in the holiday habit is not often carried too far, especially when trips unduly long for the time at the tripper's disposal leave it doubtful whether the holiday-maker should not have a second holiday in which to rest after the fatigues of the first; though if English people are indeed giving themselves up far too much to pleasure, sport and recreation, the railways must certainly share the responsibility for what is happening. ”

“ Railways add enormously to the national wealth. More than twenty-five years ago it was proved to the satisfaction of the House of Commons, from facts and figures which I then adduced, that the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway, of which I was the engineer, and which then formed the principal railway connection between the populous towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, effected a saving to the public using the railway of more than the whole amount of the dividend which was received by the proprietors. ”

“ Another respect in which railway facilities have influenced the course of trade lies in the fact that the large warehouses, provided by the railway companies at certain of their goods depôts enable a large number of merchants, agents or other traders to dispense with warehouses of their own and carry on their business from a city office, whence they send their instructions to the railway companies as to the destination of particular consignments when these are to be despatched to the purchaser. ”

“ The railways were the greatest disseminators of intelligence through the newspapers or books carried by train or by the post, itself no less dependent, in turn, on the railway for the facilities it conferred on the country. Without the railway a cheap and widely distributed newspaper press, such as exists to-day, would have been impossible. ”

“ The Stratford market, located immediately alongside lines of railway bringing produce from the most important agricultural districts of the Eastern Counties, has conferred great advantages alike on traders and on residents in the East of London. The basement arches at Bishopsgate are to-day let mainly to potato salesmen and others, who find them of the greatest convenience because loaded trucks arriving on the rail level can be lowered into the basement, there to be moved by hydraulic power to the particular arch for which the consignment is destined. ”

“ If, again, the railways had to share with invention and industrial expansion the responsibility for the great increase in town life, and for the overcrowding of many an urban centre, they have, on the other hand, helped the towns to spread out into healthy suburbs, or have otherwise relieved them of much of their overcrowding by providing workmen's trains for the conveyance of artisans and labourers between their place of labour and entirely new centres of population in what once were country districts. ”

“ As a link between the army and the companies there is an organisation, the existence of which is not widely known, designated the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps. One of the peculiar features of this body is that it consists of officers only, many of whom we dare to say have no practical knowledge of the goose step. It never drills, no band of music heralds its approach, yet its members are men of high technical ability, and the duties it performs are of great value in the schemes of national defence. ”

“ Apart from the provision of depôts and warehouses, the railway companies facilitate the operations of traders by giving them certain free periods in respect to the unloading of coal, potatoes, hay, straw and various other commodities from the railway trucks, which serve the purposes of warehouses on wheels and involve the trader in no further cost, in addition to the railway rate, provided he can find a customer and arrange for the unloading to be done within the free period allowed to him, thus escaping the alternative charge for demurrage. ”

“ Even when the traders own extensive mills or factories they often find it convenient to allow the railway company to warehouse most of their raw material for them, sending on supplies to them as needed, a saving thus being effected in respect alike to capital outlay on land and buildings for store rooms and to rates and taxes thereon. ”

“ Better communication helped to make men better acquainted with one another, to broaden their sympathies, to spread a better knowledge of public events at home and abroad and to establish closer links between town life and country life. ”

“ On the other hand, the same transport facilities which gave these opportunities to the small trader are now, to a certain extent, operating to his disadvantage, since there is an increasing tendency for retail trade to be done by the large houses which are to-day more and more dealing direct with the public, consigning to retail customers either by rail or by parcel post. In this way many of the small traders are sharing the fate of the small masters who had already been suppressed by the factory system. ”

“ In these circumstances village stores are to be found to-day in rural districts where shops had been non-existent down to the Railway Age, while the conditions of retail trade in probably every country town have no less changed, and have altered to a proportionate extent the conditions, also, of wholesale trade. ”

“ When one looks back from the work the railway is doing to-day, in all these different directions, to those very primitive beginnings of which I have told in earlier chapters, the whole story appears to be far more suggestive of romance than of sober fact and reality. ”

“ If he can forward his commodities with greater ease, at lower rates, and in less time, to the leading markets of the country than his grandfather before him could do, he finds that, in practice, the foreigner can do the same. Where the foreigner produces at lower cost, gets the lowest available rates by reason of size of consignment, style of packing, etc., has the benefit of an earlier season and so on, he may well be able, under a system of free imports, to compete with the home producer on his own markets ”

“ Thanks to the greater facilities the railways afforded for the distribution of commodities, and thanks, also, to the greater division of labour following on the changed economic conditions, there was no need in the Railway Age for householders to practise the same domestic arts that had been more or less obligatory in the case of their forefathers. ”

“ Increased congestion in the towns was thus none the less supplemented by a widespread development of the interior resources of the country; and in this respect the railways accomplished results that could not have been attained by the most complete system either of canals or of turnpike roads. There certainly were losses, besides those in the rural districts, and this was notably the case in some of the county, market, or smaller towns which no longer command the same distinction in the social and economic world as before ”