Chapter XVIII: Act 18: Geo. II., c. 33, provided, among {50}other things, that the streaks (15)

In the matter of general merchandise, the experiences of the other railway depôts already mentioned are confirmed by those at Bishopsgate, the taking there of the number and weight of all consignments of merchandise forwarded on a particular day having shown the following results:--

Number of consignments 7,932
Average weight per consignment 3 cwt. 2 qrs. 25 lbs.
Number weighing less than 3 cwts 6,056

The total "carriage paid" entries on outwards goods traffic in 1910 numbered over 970,000. For the month of November alone the total was 87,659.

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 {394}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.

Mention might also be made of the fact that the cartage work done at Bishopsgate requires a stud of about 1100 horses and 850 road vehicles, and gives employment to nearly 800 carmen and van-guards; that nine weighbridges have been provided; that a large staff of railway police is always on duty to regulate the traffic in or out of the station and to protect property; that the station has its own steam fire-engine and fire brigade (the company likewise undertaking the fire insurance of goods warehoused); and that the general arrangements include a complete ambulance equipment for the rendering of first aid in the event of accidents to the workers.[58]

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. Other conveniences afforded by the English railway companies to traders include the provision--for hire at cheap rates--of grain sacks, meat hampers and meat cloths. The Great Eastern Railway, for instance, who serve a district mainly agricultural, keep on hand, for the convenience of traders, from 700,000 to 750,000 sacks, 1200 meat hampers, and between 4000 and 5000 meat cloths.

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 {395}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. Of these two elements speed in delivery may often be by far the more important. 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. So far back as 1838, and long, therefore, before goods trains were run at an equivalent to express speed, Nicholas Wood wrote in the third edition of his "Practical Treatise on Rail-roads," in comparing rail and canal transport:--

"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."

Against the various advantages that improved means of transport have thus brought to the British trader must, nevertheless, in his case, be set certain disadvantages. 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 {396}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; though the cost of transport to the foreigner has naturally to be reckoned from the place of origin, and not simply from the English port through which his consignments pass.

The general effect of rail transport on the trade and industry of the country was thus described by Sir John Hawkshaw in his presidential address at the Bristol meeting of the British Association in 1875:--

"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. These calculations were based solely on the amount of traffic carried by the railways and on the difference between the railway rate of charge and the charges by the modes of conveyance anterior to the railways. No credit whatever was taken for the saving of time, though in England pre-eminently time is money. Considering that railway charges on many items have been considerably reduced since that day, it may be safely assumed that the railways in the British Isles now produce, or, rather, save to the nation, a much larger sum annually than the gross amount of all the dividends payable to the proprietors, without at all taking into account the benefit arising from the saving of time. The benefits under that head defy calculation, and cannot with any accuracy be put into money; but it would not be at all over-estimating this question to say that in time and money the nation gains at least what is equivalent to 10 per cent on all the capital expended on railways."

Sir John Hawkshaw, it will be seen, arrived at this result on the basis of the saving in rates and charges and in speed; but one must further allow for those various supplementary services on which the railways enable the traders to effect savings in the carrying on of their business.

{397}Nor have the political and social results of the railway system been in any degree less remarkable than the economic.

Politically, the railway has been a factor in the rise of Democracy.

The construction of railways, by giving employment to large numbers of navvies in various parts of the country, to which they moved freely as occasion required, did much to break down the restrictions to which the labouring classes had so long been subjected under laws of settlement now found to be no longer operative; and this greater freedom of movement, combined with the wider opportunities opened out to them, had effects on the workers far beyond the results accruing to them from an industrial standpoint alone.

Under, again, the influences following on the spread of railways throughout the country, England ceased to be simply a collection of isolated communities, and attained to a greater degree of national life. 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.

Then the railways which rendered this closer communication possible proved to be among the greatest of social levellers. The claims of the third-class passenger were recognised in course of time, in spite of the unwillingness of the pioneer companies to make them due acknowledgment; and the day was to come when the artisan would go by the same express train as the noble lord, arrive at his destination just as soon, and, though not having quite so luxurious a seat, be afforded facilities of travel greater far than those that could once be commanded even by kings and princes. 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. 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, {398}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.

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.

Socially, too, the railway system constitutes a paramount factor in the national life.

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. There was no longer the same necessity for each family to brew its own ale, to bake its own bread and make its own cloth, or to provide stores of salt beef and other supplies in the autumn as if for a winter siege. When the railway enabled the village shopkeeper to satisfy promptly all local requirements, in winter as readily as in summer, the whole conditions of rural life were changed.

In towns, as in villages, the railways allowed not alone of a better distribution of domestic necessaries but of distribution at lower prices. The distance at which a commodity was produced or from which it came had, as a rule, comparatively little effect on the actual selling price. The large towns, especially, had the entire country open to them as their sources of supply, and were no longer limited to the produce--and the prices--of, say, a fifteen or a twenty-mile radius.

Following closely on the necessaries came the luxuries, the cheapening of which, mainly owing to the lower cost of transport, gave even to artisans' families alternative food supplies of a kind beyond the reach even of the wealthiest in the land a century ago.

The greater consumption of fruit and vegetables, sold at the lowest possible prices, must have been of incalculable advantage to the health of the community; though this advantage would not have been possible but for the facilities {399}afforded by the railway in the bringing of huge quantities at a low rate from even the most distant corners of the three kingdoms.[59]

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 for the town workers who can afford to live at greater distances, the issue of cheap season tickets and the running of business trains morning and evening have greatly extended the suburbs of London, so that City men now have their homes as far away as Brighton, Folkestone and Southend.

The encouragement thus offered by the railways to the setting up of country or even seaside homes for town workers has further tended to the improvement of the public health, in addition to effecting a complete revolution in social conditions as compared with the days when the merchant or the tradesman lived over his place of business in the very heart of the City of London.

What shall be said, also, of the effect on the national life of that "travel habit" which received its greatest development from the railways, though further encouraged in recent years by the bicycle and the motor-car? 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. It is now only the poorest of families that fail to have an annual holiday at a seaside resort or in the country, and even in their {400}case the children may be provided for by one of the philanthropic organisations established for this purpose.

Nor does the annual summer or autumn holiday now suffice in a vast number of British households. There are supplementary holidays at Easter and Whitsuntide; there are the trips taken on the other bank holidays besides; and, lest all these opportunities may not suffice, the railway companies now enable their patrons to take a little holiday, at reduced fares, every week-end. Thanks, in fact, to the ever-expanding facilities for travel, holiday-making--a former innovation now developed into an established national institution--is no longer confined to a regular holiday season. Winter holidays, also, are coming rapidly into vogue.

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.

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.

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. It is equally clear that the necessary plans should be carefully prepared long in advance by those most competent to make them.

Happily the requisite provisions to this end exist in an {401}organisation known as the "Engineer and Railway Staff Corps," concerning which Mr C. H. Jeune says in the "Great Eastern Railway Magazine" for June, 1911, in an article accompanying a portrait (in uniform) of the general manager of the Great Eastern, Mr W. H. Hyde, who is a Lieutenant-Colonel of the corps in question:--

"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. 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.

"The corps was formed in 1864 by the patriotic exertions of Charles Manby, F.R.S., an eminent civil engineer, who held the post of adjutant with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the corps. It is composed of civil engineers and contractors, also general managers and other officers of railway and dock companies. At present there are, in addition to the Commandant, one honorary Colonel, thirty Lieutenant-Colonels, and twenty-four majors. Their function is to advise on the transport of troops by rail and the construction of defensive works; to direct the application of skilled labour and of railway transport to the purposes of national defence, and to prepare in time of peace a system on which such duties should be conducted."

Selected members of the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps join with representatives of the Admiralty and the War Office in forming the War Railway Council, which {402}deals with transport and other arrangements for mobilisation.

Before leaving this branch of the subject I may, perhaps, be excused if I look still further afield, and turn, for a moment, from what railways have done for the nation to a few examples of what they are doing for the Empire.

In Australia the railways allowed of settlements established on the coast-line of a continent (covering three million square miles) gradually stretching far inland, utilising for agricultural purposes great areas of land that must otherwise have remained little better than barren wastes.

Canada, as we know it to-day, owes her existence to the railways. "Without them," said Mr E. T. Powell, in a paper read before the Royal Colonial Institute on February 14, 1911, "the vast dominion which we are proud to call the Canadian Empire would have remained a loose aggregate of scattered agricultural communities. Quebec and Alberta must have known as much of each other as do Donegal and Kamschatka.... A few thousand miles of steel rail ... have saved Canada for the Empire.... Every year they draw the Dominion into closer cohesion as a self-governing unit, while at the same time they cement it more firmly into the Imperial fabric."

In South Africa the railways have rendered invaluable service from the point of view alike of trade, of commerce, of colonial expansion, and of Imperial policy. Rhodesia, especially, will have been indebted to her railways for much of the future greatness to which she hopes to attain; and no one would yet venture to limit the possible results of the Cape-to-Cairo line, when that bold undertaking shall at last have been completed.

Less generally known, perhaps, is the story of what the railway is doing both for the Empire and for civilisation on the West Coast of Africa.

Little more than a dozen years ago no railways at all had been constructed there, and most of the colonies were in a more or less disturbed condition, even if they had not been the scene of successive massacres, of sanguinary wars, of much expenditure thereon, and of human sacrifices in districts steeped in slavery, barbarism and superstition.

This was especially the case on the Gold Coast, where the {403}Ashantis waged wars against us in 1875, 1896 and 1901. Two years after the last of these wars the Gold Coast main line of railway was taken up to Coomassie, the capital of Ashanti. To-day the Ashantis carry on strife with us no longer. They work in the gold mines instead; and the railway that brings the gold down to the coast has paid a five-per-cent dividend from the day it was opened.[60]

Of "Sierra Leone and Its Commercial Expansion" Mr T. J. Alldridge said, in a paper he read before the Royal Colonial Institute on March 21, 1911 (reported in "United Empire," May, 1911):--

"The extraordinary increase in the revenue of Sierra Leone during the last few years fills one who knows the circumstances of the Colony with amazement. It could never have been achieved had communication by railway into oil-palm belts, formerly quite unworked, not been introduced by the Government. The results have been extraordinary, although as yet hardly more than the fringe of these rich forests has been reached.... Only since the putting down of railways into our Protectorate has the Colony of Sierra Leone made such noticeable or commercial progress. 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."

Southern Nigeria and Northern Nigeria--the former having an area of 77,000 square miles and a population of 6,500,000 Africans, and the latter an area of 256,400 square miles and an estimated population of 8,000,000--are both of them countries of enormous natural resources which are being steadily developed by railways already built or in course of construction. A writer in "United Empire" for July, 1911, says of South Nigeria: "The trade returns of 1910 have surpassed even the most optimistic expectations, but there is good reason to look forward to further considerable increases in view of railway developments, harbour improvements, road {404}construction, river clearing," etc., while of Northern Nigeria he says: "When we remember that a densely-populated area, twice as large as the United Kingdom, and little more than a decade removed from the horrors of slavery, savage warfare and wholesale human sacrifices, is run by about 300 Europeans on £500,000 a year, and is rapidly arriving at conditions favourable to a great development of commerce"--such conditions including the fact that a trader can now travel from Lagos to Zaria in three days by rail, instead of taking three weeks, as before--"it is, perhaps, a record in the annals of British expansion."

As for the civilising effects of railways in West Africa, Mr P. A. Renner, an educated native, said at a Royal Colonial Institute meeting on May 24, 1910: "In the few years I have lived on the coast I have seen an improvement which has so astonished us as to make us almost worship the white man. Previously to the introduction of railways the clan feeling and tribal strifes and feuds were very rife, and the people of one village would scarcely visit those of another. Now all this is changed."

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. From the colliery rail-way along which John Buddie's "waggon-man" led his horse, encouraging it to greater exertion with a handful of hay, to the railway that conveys, not only passengers, but goods, at express speed, that has revolutionised our industrial, our commercial and our social conditions, and is now consolidating our Imperial interests and effecting the civilisation of once barbarian lands, it is, indeed, a far cry; yet the sequence of events can readily be traced, while all has been done within a century and a half of the world's history.

{405}CHAPTER XXVIII

RAILWAYS A NATIONAL INDUSTRY

Having seen the part that railways have played in helping to develop the industrial interests of the country in general, we may now consider (1) to what extent the railways themselves constitute a national industry, and (2) various conditions relating thereto.

The latest available statistics as to the number of all classes of railway servants connected with the working of railways, and including, as I understand, both salaried and wages staffs with the exception of heads of departments, are to be found in "Returns of Accidents and Casualties" as reported to the Board of Trade by the railway companies of the United Kingdom for the year ending December 31, 1910 [Cd. 5628]. These figures give a total of 608,750 persons, classified as follows:--

No. of Persons
NATURE employed on
OF EMPLOYMENT. 31st Dec., 1910.
1. Brakesmen. (_See Goods Guards._)
2. Capstan-men and Capstan-lads:
(1) Men 1,421
(2) Boys 140
3. Carmen and Van-guards:
(1) Men 18,382
(2) Boys 6,604
4. Carriage-cleaners:
(1) Men 6,572
(2) Boys 286
5. Carriage and waggon examiners 3,811
6. Checkers:
(1) Men 9,112
(2) Boys 77
7. Chockers, Chain-boys and Slippers:
(1) Men 288
(2) Boys 271
8. Clerks:
(1) Men 61,361
(2) Boys 9,044
9. Engine-cleaners:
(1) Men 13,912
(2) Boys 4,267
10. Engine-drivers & Motormen 27,330
11. Firemen 25,419
12. Gatekeepers 3,543
13. Greasers:
(1) Men 943
(2) Boys 753
14. Guards (Goods) and Brakesmen 15,339
15. Guards (Passenger) 8,239 {406}
16. Horse drivers 1,159
17. Inspectors:
(1) Permanent-way 1,029
(2) Others 8,603
18. Labourers:
(1) Men 54,981
(2) Boys 1,333
19. Lamp-men and lamp-lads:
(1) Men 1,655
(2) Boys 418
20. Loaders & Sheeters 4,274
21. Mechanics & Artisans:
(1) Men 78,389
(2) Boys 8,294
22. Messengers:
(1) Men 1,124
(2) Boys 2,468
23. Number-takers:
(1) Men 1,252
(2) Boys 671
24. Permanent-way-Men 66,305
25. Pointsmen 708
26. Policemen 2,130
27. Porters:
(1) Men 53,388
(2) Boys 4,501
28. Shunters 13,281
29. Signal Fitters and Telegraph Wiremen 3,905
30. Signalmen 28,653
31. Signal-box lads 1,894
32. Station-masters 8,684
33. Ticket-Collectors and Examiners 3,904
34. Watchmen 1,151
35. Yardsmen 1,299
36. Miscellaneous:
(1) Adults 33,620
(2) Boys 2,563
-------
Total 608,750

The foregoing table serves to show the great extent of the railway industry from the point of view of the number of persons directly employed therein, and it also suggests a great variety in the occupations or grades of those employed. In the latter respect, however, the information given fails to offer a complete idea of the actual situation, since over 36,000 men and boys (that is, persons under eighteen years of age) are, as will be seen, classed as "miscellaneous."

Whatever the further variety in the particular occupations included under this head, it is certain that the railway service affords employment for a greater range and diversity of talent, skill, ability or effort than probably any other single industry or enterprise on the face of the earth. 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.

Over and above the employees, of all grades, concerned in {407}"the working of railways," as here shown, there is a very considerable body of men employed by the railway companies in the building of rolling stock, the making of rails, in the provision of many other requirements, or in the doing of much other work, necessary in the construction, equipment and operation of their lines. The smaller companies are content to buy their rolling stock, and they mostly have repairing shops only; but the larger companies have their own locomotive, carriage and waggon works in which a very considerable volume of employment is afforded to mechanics and labourers who would hardly come under the ordinary designation of "railwaymen" proper; while in this respect the companies concerned may be regarded as not only providers of transport but as, also, in effect, engineers and manufacturers.

In order to give the reader some idea of the extent of the employment afforded by these subsidiary branches of what is still actual railway work, I give on the next page a table--for the data of which I am indebted to the companies mentioned--showing the actual or the approximate number of men employed in the leading railway works of the type in question; though it should be added that the figures relate only to the particular works mentioned, and do not include men who may be engaged in engineering or productive work elsewhere on the same company's system.

Information as to the extent to which the railway companies of the United Kingdom in general afford employment in the directions here in question will be found in the "Census of Production (1907)" [Cd. 5254], issued in 1910, included in these returns being three tables which are given under the heading "Railways (Construction, Repair and Maintenance of Permanent Way, Plant, Rolling Stock, etc.)," and relate to (1) output; (2) cost of materials used; and (3) number of persons {408}employed.

NO. OF
PERSONS
COMPANY. WORKS. WHERE SITUATED. EMPLOYED.
Great Central Locomotive Gorton 2512

" " Carriage and waggon Dukinfield 1741

Great Eastern Loco. and carriage Stratford, E. 4578

" " Waggon Temple Mills, E. 618

Great Northern Loco., carriage Doncaster 6000
and waggon

Great Western Loco., carriage Swindon 11,700
and waggon

Lancashire and Locomotive Horwich 3850
Yorkshire

" " Carriage and waggon Newton Heath 1960

London and Locomotive Crewe 9000
North-Western

" " Carriage Wolverton 4000

" " Waggon Earlstown 1800

London and Loco., carriage Eastleigh 3600
South-Western and waggon

London, Brighton Loco., carriage Brighton 2035
and South Coast and waggon

" " " " " " " Lancing 129

Midland Locomotive Derby 3988

" Carriage and waggon " 4300

North-Eastern Locomotive Gateshead and 3953
Darlington

" Carriage and waggon York and Heaton 2932

" Waggon Shildon 1161

South-Eastern Locomotive Ashford, Kent 733
and Chatham

" " Carriage and Waggon " " 1211

Caledonian Loco., carriage St. Rollax, Glasgow 2695
and waggon

Glasgow and Locomotive Kilmarnock 986
South-Western

" " Carriage and waggon Barassie 269

North British Loco., carriage Cowlairs, Glasgow 2297
and waggon

Great Northern Loco., carriage Dundalk 576
(Ireland) and waggon

Midland Great Loco., carriage Broadstone Station,
Western (Ireland) and waggon Dublin 549

{409}It is shown that the total value of all goods manufactured or of the work done by railway companies' employees in construction, maintenance and repair of permanent way, works, buildings, plant, rolling stock, etc. (such values being sums representing only the actual cost of manufacture or work done, and made up of wages, materials and a portion of the establishment charges), amounted for the year 1907 to £34,703,000. The details are grouped under seven different heads, as follows:--

Value.
£
I. Engineering Department
(New Works, Repairs, and Maintenance):--
Permanent Way 9,346,000
Roads, Bridges, Signals, and Other Works 2,686,000
Station and Buildings 1,749,000
Docks, Harbours, Wharves, and Canals 745,000
----------
Total--Engineering Department 14,526,000

II. Locomotive Department:--
Engines, Tools, &c. (Construction and Repairs) 7,917,000
Buildings (New Works, Repairs, and Maintenance)--not
included under Head I. 175,000
----------
Total--Locomotive Department 8,092,000

III. Carriages, Waggons, &c.:--
Carriages (Construction and Repairs) 4,454,000
Waggons (Construction and Repairs) 3,701,000
Road Vehicles for Passengers and Goods (Construction
and Repairs) 272,000
Buildings (New Works, Repairs, and Maintenance)--not
included under Head I. 33,000
----------
Total--Carriages, Waggons, &c. 8,460,000

IV. Waterworks (Repairs and Maintenance) 155,000

V. Electric Works:--
Buildings and Lines (New Works, Repairs, and
Maintenance) 148,000

VI. Steamboats (Repairs) 323,000

VII. Other Productive Departments:--
Lamps and Fittings for Lighting Purposes 150,000
Saddlery and Harness 32,000
Tarpaulins, Waggon Covers, &c. 345,000
Clothing 19,000
Printing 69,000
Hoists and Cranes (if not previously returned under
Head I.): Construction and Repairs 303,000
Gas manufactured for Companies' use (not included
under other Heads) 286,000
Electricity for Stations, &c. 128,000
Telegraphs and Telephones 481,000
Buildings (not returned under other Heads): New {410}
Works, Repairs, and Maintenance 92,000
Provender 308,000
Iron and Steel Manufactures 178,000
Grease 115,000
Trucks, Barrows, &c. 39,000
Other Manufactures and Work Done 454,000
----------
Total--Other Productive Departments 2,999,000
----------
Grand Total--Goods Made and Work Done 34,703,000

The cost of the materials used was £17,600,000. Deducting this amount from the total of the foregoing table, there is left a net sum of £17,103,000 to represent wages and establishment charges; though it may fairly be assumed that a good deal even of the £17,600,000 which stands for cost of materials was on account of wages previously paid for the procuring or the preparation of those materials by other than non-railway servants.

The total number of persons employed by the railway companies in the manufacture of the goods or in the execution of the work comprised in the statement was 241,526, in the proportion of 232,736 wage-earners and 8790 salaried persons. This figure of 241,526, however, is not necessarily to be added to the 608,750 previously given as the number of railway servants connected with the working of railways. There is nothing to show to what extent the two tables overlap, though overlapping there obviously is, since the first table includes 66,305 permanent-way men, while the second table evidently includes the persons employed on permanent-way work, since the value of that work is put down at £9,346,000. On the other hand, some classes of servants included in the Census of Production returns are excluded from the Railway Accidents return, so that although the exact number of persons directly employed by the railway companies of the United Kingdom cannot be stated, it must be somewhere between 608,750, the total of the one return, and 850,276, the sum of the totals for both returns.

All the figures thus far given relate to work done by persons directly employed by the railway companies themselves; but there is, in addition, a vast amount of work done for the {411}railways by independent companies or manufacturers. Taking, for instance, railway-carriage and waggon-building factories in the United Kingdom, providing for the wants of the smaller companies at home or for railway companies in the colonies or abroad, I find from the Census of Production that this particular phase of "the railway industry" (for it must needs be regarded as included therein, notwithstanding the fact that a few of the items relate to tramcars, horse vehicles, etc.), led in 1907 to an output of goods made or of work done valued at £9,609,000. The items are:--

£
Railway carriages for passengers, and parts thereof 1,676,000
Railway waggons, trucks, etc. 5,340,000
Parts and accessories of railway carriages and waggons,
not distinguished 129,000
Railway wheels and axles complete 771,000
Tramcars and parts thereof 572,000
Vehicles for goods, horse-drawn 75,000
Machinery and accessories 135,000
Iron and steel manufactures and structural work 174,000
Other products 93,000
----------
Total value of goods made 8,965,000
Repair work (including repairing contracts) 644,000
----------
Total value of goods made and work done 9,609,000

The number of persons engaged in these railway-carriage and waggon-building factories when the census in question was taken was 28,193, namely, 26,492 wage-earners, and 1701 salaried staff.

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.

In many respects the railway service proper--that is to say, the particular branches thereof which deal with actual {412}transport, as distinct from construction and manufacture--offers features that are unique in their way, even if they do not, also, bring about types of workers of a class distinct from those to be found in the majority of other industries.

In the latter dependence is being placed more and more on the efficiency of the machinery employed, and the person of greatest importance to them is the machinery-inventor or the machinery-improver. The one who works the machine may require to have a certain degree of skill or dexterity in carrying on the necessary process, but the more nearly he can approach the perfection of his machine and become, as it were, part and parcel of it, the greater will often be his degree of success as a worker. In his case the personal equation hardly counts. He is merely the penny put into the slot in order that the figures may work, and any other man, or any other penny, that fulfilled the requisite conditions might be expected to produce the same results.

In railway operation great importance must certainly be attached to the efficiency of the machinery, or of the system; but final success may depend to a very material extent on the efficiency of the unit. Everything that human foresight and railway experience can suggest may be done--both in the provision of complex machinery and in the drawing-up of the most perfect rules and regulations--to ensure safe working; yet the ultimate factor in grave issues on which safety or disaster will depend may be a worker who has either risen to, or has failed to meet, a sudden emergency. In this way, not only does the individual unit count, but the individual unit in railway operation may be the Atlas upon whose shoulders the railway world does, in a sense, rest. A blunder in an ordinary factory or workshop may involve no more than the spoiling of a machine or the waste of so much material. A blunder on the railway may involve a terrible loss of human life.

Railway operation is thus calculated to give to the workers engaged in transport a keener sense of responsibility, and to develop therewith a greater individuality, than any other of our national industries. The railway man concerned in operation requires to be capable both of foresight and of initiative. It is said of a certain railway in India that a telegraphic message was one day received at head-quarters from {413}a station down the line to the following effect: "Tiger on platform. Send instructions." In England there is no probability of railway-station platforms being taken possession of by wandering tigers; but if anything equivalent thereto, in the form of a sudden and dangerous emergency not provided for by rules and regulations did arise, the officials on duty would be expected to show alike resource and energy in meeting the circumstances promptly and efficiently, so far as they could, instead of waiting to ask the district superintendent or the superintendent of the line for instructions.

Independently of the ever-present dangers of actual operation, to which I shall revert later on, the fact of having to deal with such varied types of humanity as are met with on the platforms of a busy railway station, under conditions ranging between the extremes of amiability and irritability, must also tend to sharpen the wits of the average railway worker, and make a different man of him than he would be if he were to spend his working days in feeding a machine in a factory with bits of tin or leather to be shaped into a particular form. Nor, whether the railway man be concerned in passenger traffic, in goods transport, or in checking claims and accounts in the general offices, must he fail to be ever on the look-out for those who, though they may be the most honest of men in the ordinary affairs of life, never scruple to defraud a railway company when they can.

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.

The development of the same type is being fostered to an ever-increasing degree by the special training which junior workers undergo with a view to making them, not only better fitted for the particular post they already occupy, but qualified to succeed to higher positions as opportunities for their advancement may arise.

A railway manager is not alone concerned in the working {414}of his line, and in the doings of his staff, day by day. He looks forward to the requirements of the line and to the constitution of the staff at least five or ten years hence, and he wants to make sure that, as the experienced men around him are lost to the service, others will be at hand equally, or even still better, qualified to take their place. He further realises that in an undertaking in which, notwithstanding its magnitude, so much depends on the unit, that unit should be encouraged, and enabled, to attain to the highest practicable stage of efficiency.

This tendency is leading to results that are likely to be both far-reaching and wide-spreading. It is a matter not only of giving to railway workers, and especially to those in the clerical and operative departments, a higher degree of technical knowledge, but, also, of rendering them equal to responsibility, of fostering their efficiency still further through their social, physical and material well-being, and of retaining them for the railway service notwithstanding (in the case of the clerical staff) the allurements of traders who look upon well-trained goods clerks, especially, as desirable assistants in the counting-house, and seek to attract them with the offer of a somewhat better wage.

The training and the higher education of railway workers have undergone important developments alike in the United Kingdom, in the United States, in Germany, in France, and elsewhere.

In the early days of the railway the most eligible person for the position of general manager was thought to be some retired naval or military officer, accustomed to controlling large bodies of men; and the first appointments were based on this principle. But experience soon showed that in undertakings where technical, commercial and economic considerations were all-important, the real recommendations for leading positions were to be found, rather, in proved capacity and in thorough knowledge of railway operation and management.

Under the company system, as it prevails in the United Kingdom and the United States, railwaymen, of whatever class, are now generally taken on as boys, are trained for the position to which they are found to be adapted, and rise to higher posts according to capacity _and_ opportunity--for these must needs go together. In this way it is not unusual for the general {415}manager on an English railway to have started as an office boy. Many a head of department to-day entered the service as junior clerk, and worked his way up to his present position; there are station-masters who began as ticket clerks; there are guards who gained their first knowledge of railway work as station porters, while engine-drivers are recruited from firemen, and firemen from engine-cleaners.

For details as to what the American railway companies are doing in the matter of "Education for Efficiency in Railroad Service" I must refer the reader to a bulletin written by J. Shirley Eaton and published, under this title, by the United States Bureau of Education. Here I can do no more than reproduce the following extract, giving in brief Mr Eaton's view on the general situation as he finds it on the other side of the Atlantic:--

"Railroads, as a whole, through a representative body such as the American Railway Association, should in a comprehensive way take up the matter of the education of railway employees. As they now have committees devoted to standards of construction, maintenance, and operating practice, they should also have a standing committee, of a character to command confidence, who should sedulously foster a closer relation between the railroad and educational agencies. This could be done by roughly grouping railroad service into classes according to the requirements of service, indicating the efficiency required in a broad way, and studying the curricula and course of experience leading up to such efficiency. Such a body should officially gather all railroad literature and accumulate the nucleus of a railroad museum. In various ways the teaching force of educational agencies, training toward railroad employ, could be drawn into study and discussion of the practical everyday problems of railroad work. The large public policies involved in railroad operation are to-day left to the doctrinaire or accidental publicist, when they should be a subject of study and effective presentation by the highest grade of trained experts which the associate railroads could draw into their service. On the other hand, such a standing committee could stimulate and guide the practice of railroads in their methods of handling and instructing apprentices. Between the instruction and practice in the service on the one side, and the instruction outside {416}the service on the other side, they could foster a closer relation, making them mutually supplementary. In developing approved plans for recruiting the service they would necessarily indicate the lines of a more direct access than now exists from the various schools to apprenticeships in the service, and suggest the best methods by which such apprenticeships would be gradually merged into the full status of regular employ at the point of special fitness."

On this side of the Atlantic the railway servants' education movement has assumed two phases--(1) secondary or technical education of junior members of railway staffs in mechanics' institutions or kindred organisations, created or materially supported by the railway companies, and already carried on during a period of, in some instances, over sixty years; and (2) a "higher education" movement, of a much more advanced type, developed since about 1903, and conducted either in special classes held at the railway offices or in connection with a University, a mechanics' institution, a local educational body, or otherwise.

It is impossible in the space at my command to give a detailed account of what every railway company in the United Kingdom is doing in these directions. Some typical examples must suffice.

To begin with mechanics' institutions and other kindred bodies, these are by no means purely educational in their scheme of operations. They include many social and recreative features which, in effect, should play a no less important part than educational efforts in promoting the general efficiency of the railway worker by helping to give him a sound body, a contented mind, and a cheerful disposition as well as more skilful fingers or a better-cultivated brain. In the United States, judging from what Mr Eaton says on the subject, all such "welfare" work as this, though carefully fostered, is regarded by the railroad companies as a purely business proposition; and he does not attempt to credit them with any higher motive than regard for the almighty dollar. Here, however, while there has been full recognition of the financial value of increased efficiency, the companies have, also, not failed to realise their moral obligations towards their staffs. Hence in seeking to promote the welfare of their employees they have been inspired by motives of humanity, {417}goodwill and honourable feeling in addition to, or even as distinct from, any pecuniary advantage the shareholders themselves might eventually gain therefrom.

Crewe Mechanics' Institution dates back to 1844, when the Grand Junction Railway Company provided a library and reading-room, and, also, gave a donation for the purchase of books for the men employed in the railway works then being set up in what was, at that time, a purely agricultural district. In the following year this library and reading-room developed into a Mechanics' Institution, the primary object of the railway company being to afford to the younger members of their staff at Crewe greater facilities for acquiring theory in classes at the Institution to supplement the practical knowledge they were acquiring in the works, though the benefits of the Institution were also to be open to residents of Crewe who were not in the company's employ. The management was vested in a council elected annually by the directors and the members conjointly; and this arrangement has continued ever since.

Larger premises were provided in 1846, in which year the Grand Junction combined with the London and Birmingham and Manchester and Birmingham Companies to form the London and North-Western Railway Company. The classes were added to from time to time until they covered the whole range of subjects likely to be of service to the students. Beginning, however, with the 1910-11 session, the art, literary and commercial classes which had been held at the Institute for sixty-four years were transferred to the local education authority, the Institute retaining the scientific and technological subjects. In addition to the ordinary work of the classes, the more recent developments of the "higher education" movement have led to systematic courses of instruction--extending over four-year periods--in (1) pure science, (2) mechanical engineering, (3) electrical engineering and (4) building construction. An Institution diploma is given to each student who completes a course satisfactorily. Visits are, also, paid to engineering works, electrical generating stations, etc. Most of the teachers are engaged at the Crewe works, and the instruction given is thus of the most practical kind.

One feature of the Institution is the electrical engineering laboratory, provided by the directors of the London and {418}North-Western Railway, who have further arranged for a number of apprentices to attend at the laboratory one afternoon every week to receive instruction, their wages being paid to them as though they were still on duty in the works. There is, also, a mechanics' shop, with lathes, drilling machines, etc., electrically driven.

Since 1855 the directors of the London and North-Western have given an annual donation of £20 for books to be awarded as prizes to successful students employed in their locomotive department and various other prizes and scholarships, including Whitworth scholarships, are also awarded. The Institution is affiliated with the Union of Lancashire and Cheshire Institutes, the City and Guilds of London Institute and the Board of Education, each of which bodies holds examinations and awards prizes and certificates. The library has now over 12,000 volumes.

In addition to the reading-room the Institution has coffee, smoking and recreation-rooms. Special attention is being paid to the social side of the Institution's work through the appointment of a "Teachers' Committee for Social and Recreative Development," the particular purpose of this committee being to organise sports and entertainments and to secure the formation of a literary society.

At Wolverton there is a Science and Art Institute at which many classes are held, and, although none of these are directly under the management of the London and North-Western Company, as at Crewe, the very successful and numerous courses in engineering subjects and railway-carriage building conducted by the committee of management, working in connection with the Bucks County Council, receive the active support and encouragement of the company's directors.

Science, commercial, art and domestic economy classes are also held at the L. & N.-W. Institute at Earlstown, where definite courses of instruction, in groups of subjects, and extending over at least two years, are given.