Chapter I: Front Matter

“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

N^{o.} 21.] SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 1850. [PRICE 2_d._

THE RAILWAY WONDERS OF LAST YEAR.

The unblushing individual who inflated the first bubble prospectus in the early days of Railway scheming must regard, if he be still in existence (and we have good reason to believe that he lives, a prosperous gentleman), with superlative amazement the last Report of Her Majesty’s Railway Commissioners.

When in his dazzling document the preposterous “promoter” certified the forthcoming goods transit at six times the amount his most sanguine “traffic-taker” could conscientiously compute; when he quadrupled the boldest calculations of the expected number of passengers—when, in short, he projected his prognostics beyond the widest bounds of probability, and then added a few cyphers at the end of each sum, to make “round numbers”—he was not so mad as to believe that he lied in the least like truth. Mad as he was _not_, he never could have supposed that an after-time would come when his lying prospectus would be pronounced as far short of, as his mendacious imagination endeavoured to make it exceed, the Truth. But that time has arrived.

Let us suppose a friend of his, a far-seeing prophet, reading a proof of the pet prospectus by the aid of magnifying glasses; let us figure the statistical foreteller of future events assuring its author that, twenty years thence, his immeasurable exaggerations would be out-exaggerated by what should actually come to pass; that his brazen bait to catch share-jobbers would shrink—when placed beside the Railway records of eighteen-hundred-and-forty-nine—into a puny, minimised, understatement. How he would have laughed! How immediately his mind would have reverted from the sanguine seer to the terminus of flighty intellects known as Bedlam. With what remarkable unction he would have said, “Phoo! Phoo! My good fellow, you must be lapsing into lunacy. What! Do you mean to say I have not laid it on thick enough? Why, look here!” and he turns to the latest of the Stamp Office stage-coach returns: “Do you mean to tell me—now that coach travelling has arrived at perfection, and that the wonderful average of coach passengers is six millions a year—that, instead of quadrupling the number of travellers who are likely to use my line, I ought to multiply them by a hundred? Why, you may as well try to persuade me that I ought to promise for our locomotives twenty, instead of fifteen, miles an hour; which—Heaven forgive me—I have had the courage to set down. Stuff! If I were to romance at that rate, we should not sell a share.”

And our would-be Major Longbow would have had reason for the faith that was in him. In his highest flights he dared not exceed too violently the statistics of G. R. Porter, or have added too high a premium on the expectations of George Stephenson. The former calculated that up to the end of 1834, when not a hundred miles of Railway were open, the annual average of persons who travelled by coach was about two millions, each going over one hundred and eighty miles of ground in the year.[1] Supposing each individual performed that distance in three journeys, the whole number of _persons_ must have multiplied themselves into six millions of _passengers_. As to speed, Mr. George Stephenson said at a dinner-party given to him at Newcastle in 1844, that when he planned the Liverpool and Manchester line, the directors entreated him, when they went to Parliament, not to talk of going at a faster rate than ten miles an hour, or he “would put a cross upon the concern.” Mr. George Stephenson _did_ talk of fifteen miles an hour, and some of the Committee asked if he were not mad! Mr. Nicholas Wood delivered himself in a pamphlet as follows:— “It is far from my wish to promulgate to the world that the ridiculous expectations, or rather _professions_, of the _enthusiastic speculatist_ will be realised, and that we shall see engines travelling at the rate of twelve, sixteen, eighteen, twenty miles an hour. Nothing could do more harm towards their general adoption and improvement than the promulgation of such NONSENSE!”

Footnote 1:

“Porter’s Progress of the Nation,” vol. ii. p. 22.

It would seem, then, that the Longbow of the aboriginal prospectuses was actually modest in his estimate as to passengers and speed. But only a few years must have made him utterly ashamed of his moderation and modesty. How disgusted he must have felt with his timid prolusions, even when 1843 arrived. For that year revealed travellers’ tales that exceeded his early romances by what Major Longbow himself would have called “an everlasting long chalk.” Within that year, seventy railroads, constructed at an outlay of sixty millions sterling, conveyed twenty-five millions of passengers three hundred and thirty millions of miles, at an average cost of one penny and three quarters per mile, and an average speed of twenty-four miles per hour, with but one fatal accident.

But if our parent of railway proprietors were astonished at what happened in 1843, with what inconceivable amazement he must peruse the details of 1849! We should like to see the expression of his countenance while conning the report of Her Majesty’s Commissioners of Railways for last year. At the end of every sentence he would be sure to exclaim, “Who _would_ have thought it?”

From this unimpeachable record of scarcely credible statistics, it appears that at the end of 1849 there were, in Great Britain and Ireland, five thousand five hundred and ninety-six miles of railway in active operation; upwards of four thousand five hundred and fifty-six of which are in England, eight hundred and forty-six in Scotland, and four hundred and ninety-four in Ireland. Besides this, the number of miles which have been authorised by Parliament, and still remain to be finished is six thousand and thirty; so that, if all the lines were completed, the three kingdoms would be intersected by a net-work of railroad measuring twelve thousand miles: but of this there is only a remote probability, the number of miles in course of active construction being no more than one thousand five hundred, so that by the end of the present year it is calculated that the length of finished and operative railway may be about seven thousand four hundred miles, or as many as lie between Great Britain and the Cape of Good Hope, with a thousand miles to spare. The number of persons employed on the 30th of June, 1849, in the operative railways was fifty-four thousand; on the unopened lines, one hundred and four thousand.

When the schemer of the infancy of the giant railway system turns to the passenger-account for the year 1849, he declares he is fairly “knocked over.” He finds that the railway passengers are put down at _sixty-three million eight hundred thousand_; nearly three times the number returned for 1843, and _a hundred times_ as many as took to the road in the days of stage-coaches. The passengers of 1849 actually double the sum of the entire population of the three kingdoms.

The statement of capital which the six thousand miles now being hourly travelled over represents, will require the reader to draw a long breath;—it is one hundred and ninety-seven and a half millions of pounds sterling. Add to this the cash being disbursed for the lines in progress, the total rises to two hundred and twenty millions! The average cost of each mile of railway, including engines, carriages, stations, &c., (technically called “plant,”) is thirty-three thousand pounds.

Has this outlay proved remunerative? The Commissioners tell us, that the gross receipts from all the railways in 1849 amounted to eleven millions, eight hundred and six thousand pounds; from which, if the working expenses be deducted at the rate of forty-three per cent. (being about an average taken from the published statements of a number of the principal companies), there remains a net available profit of about six millions seven hundred and twenty-nine thousand four hundred and twenty pounds to remunerate the holders of property to the amount of one hundred and ninety-seven millions and a half; or at the rate, within a fraction, of three and a half per cent. Here our parent of railway prospectuses chuckles. _He_ promised twenty per cent. per annum.

In short, in everything except the dividends, our scheming friend finds that recent fact has outstripped his early fictions. He told the nervous old ladies and shaky “half-pays” on his projected line, that Railways were quite as safe as stage-coaches. What say the grave records of 1849? The lives of five passengers were lost during that year and those by one accident—a cause, of course, beyond the control of the victims; eighteen more casualties took place, for which the sufferers had themselves alone to blame. Five lives lost by official mismanagement, out of sixty-four millions of risks, is no very outrageous proportion; especially when we reflect that, taking as a basis the calculations of 1843, the number of miles travelled over per rail during last year, may be set down at eight hundred and forty-five millions; or _nine times the distance between the earth and the sun_.

Such are the Railway wonders of the year of grace, one thousand eight hundred and forty-nine.

THE WATER-DROPS.
A FAIRY TALE.