apportion the receipts from, the traffic that might pass over more than one line, under agreements made by the several companies; and to keep the records of the movements of waggons and carriages when these might pass off the lines of the company to which they belonged, to the lines of other companies. This Railway Clearing House was a purely voluntary association at first, but in 1850 it was incorporated by Act of Parliament and had become a very important feature in preserving amicable relations among the various roads.

The width of gauge was another important problem which came up for consideration in 1846. When the Great Western Railway was constructed, the engineer, I. K. Brunel, constructed the road with the rails seven feet apart, while other roads generally had the rails only four feet eight and one-half inches apart1. This diversity of gauge was a serious barrier to interchange of traffic, and in the above year, before the Committee of the House of Lords, railway engineers and others were in perfect agreement that the width of gauge should be uniform2. The settlement of this was important on account of the enormous number of lines that were then in progress and in prospect. In the session of 1846 the Gauge Act was passed, which enacted that unless it should be otherwise specified in the special Acts all future railways in Great Britain should be constructed upon the gauge of four feet eight and one-half inches, with the exceptions of railways forming branches of the Great Western, or those situated in the counties of Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall3.

In a former connexion we spoke of the advantages which were anticipated from the development of railways, and we have referred to some of the results which were actually obtained in the cases of the Stockton and Darlington and the Liverpool and Manchester railways. A few words more as to the benefits that were definitely conferred by railways may not be out of place. Of course, the greatest results came

1 There were also mixed gauge lines, that is, roads with part of one gauge and part of another. In 1854, out of a total of 6114 miles of railway in England, there were 206 miles of mixed gauge, 647 miles of broad gauge, and 5261 miles of narrow gauge (i.e., 4 ft. 8 in.). See Brit. Doc. 1854–5 [1965], XLVIII, 1, 'Report of Railway Department of Board of Trade' for 1854, p. xii.

2 Brit. Doc. 1846 (489), XIII, 217, 'Report of Select Committee of the House of Lords on Railways, Minutes of Evidence,' pp. 106-7. See also Brit. Doc. 1846 (353), XXXVIII, 371, 'Copy of Minute of the Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council for Trade, on the Report of the Commissioners for inquiring into the Gauge of Railways, June 6, 1846.' This has some good things on the subject of gauge.

3 Brit. Doc. 1854 (139), LXII, 441, 'Report of the Board of Trade to the General Committee on Railway and Canal Bills, on the Railway Bills of 1854, p. 26; also Brit. Doc. 1867 [3844], xxxvIII, 1, 'Report of the Royal Commission on the Railways of the United Kingdom,' Part 1, p. xv.

J. T. II.

9

through the development of traffic, consequent upon the reduced cost and the increased speed of conveyance. Before the Stockton and Darlington was constructed, the number of passengers travelling between these two places was scarcely sufficient to pay for the running of a coach three or four times a week1. Between 1825 and 1832, when there were separate coaches running on the line, belonging to different individuals, the average number of passengers did not exceed 520 per week; so that the growth of the passenger traffic was slow but steady2. After that, the company took over the passenger business and so greatly increased the comfort and speed of their trains that, according to the statement of F. W. Cundy, a celebrated engineer, in 1834, 600 passengers per day were frequently conveyed along this line, where, formerly, by the coach, there were not more than ten passengers per day3. On the Liverpool and Manchester railway, in 1832, according to the evidence of the treasurer of the company, there were almost three times as many passengers conveyed as had been carried by the twenty-two regular coaches before the railway was opened. In the case of the Leeds and Selby line, the number of passengers who travelled between these places during the first year of the operation of the railway increased, we are informed, from about 400 to about 3500 per week. It is difficult to believe that there could have been as much as a nine-fold increase here in that short time, and yet we must remember that Leeds was flourishing as an industrial centre and Selby as a shipping centre. Perhaps some of this increase may have been merely experimental, indicative of the popular curiosity to try this new agency of travel, and may not have represented anything like as great a gain in the substantial, permanent increase of the business. But if passenger traffic increased so much there was a corresponding gain in the freight traffic and many a place was galvanized into new life by the advent of the railway. For example, during the first quarter of the nineteenth century the port of Stockton seemed to be subject to a gradual decline, but after the railway was built to connect with that port there was almost immediate reversal to a condition of steady progress. At the Tees ports the number of ships which cleared outwards in 1830 were three British ships of 262 tons and four foreign ships of 318 tons; but in 1841

1 Jeans, op. cit., p. 79.

2 Ibid., p. 86. The details are given in pp. 85-86. See also Birmingham Journal, July 8, 1826, p. 2.

3 Sheffield Iris, Oct. 14, 1834, p. 3.

4 ‘London and Birmingham Railway Bill. Extracts from Minutes of Evidence given before the Committee of the Lords,' evidence of Henry Booth, pp. 53–55. 5 Sheffield Iris, Sept. 29, 1835, p. 3, editorial comment on the Leeds and Selby Railway.

there were 454 British ships of 80,139 tons and 596 foreign ships of 44,392 tons1. The export figures for the coal trade are also instructive, since this railway was designed to tap the great coalfield behind Darlington. The total shipments of coal from Stockton, both coastwise and foreign, amounted to 1224 tons in 1822; 10,754 tons in 1826; 66,051 tons in 1828; 704,781 tons in 1835; and 1,500,374 tons in 18402. Of course, it is possible that the railway was not the only cause of the great development of this traffic; but the fact that the great upward trend synchronized with the opening of the railway furnishes a strong presumption that the railway was the chief cause of this development. The Liverpool and Manchester, in addition to saving cotton manufacturers and others large amounts on the conveyance of goods3, and increasing greatly the amount of business carried on in this locality, increased also the value and the extent of the traffic of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, although the latter, fearing injury to their property, had opposed the railway at a very large expense1. The influence of the Manchester and Birmingham and the London and Birmingham lines in the development of traffic along that route was such that, in 1846, these lines were regarded as no longer capable of handling the immense amount of freight that was offered to them; and the manufacturers of both Manchester and Birmingham wanted to see a direct line constructed to connect them with London 5. The great development of industry and agriculture which gave rise to the above-mentioned increase of traffic was one of the accompaniments of the railways.

Another of the immediate effects of the railway was the enhanced value that was given to land adjacent to it. The fact that by this means good markets could be brought nearer to the farmer made the land more valuable; and since the cultivator could secure a larger net return from

1 Jeans, op. cit., pp. 173-4, gives the statistics for each intervening year. 2 Ibid., pp. 174-5. Ibid., p. 176, gives comparative statistics of coal exports from Newcastle, Sunderland and Stockton, in the period before 1850, showing the extremely rapid growth of the exports from Stockton from 1821 to 1850, as compared with the exports from the other two ports.

See evidence of many witnesses on the London and Birmingham Railway Bill before both Commons and Lords, 1832.

4 London and Birmingham Railway Bill. Extracts from Minutes of Evidence given before the Committee of the Lords,' evidence of James Forster, p. 44.

Brit. Mus. 8235. ee. 12 (1), 'Reasons in favour of a Direct Line of Railroad from London to Manchester,' pp. 8-11. The writer of this pamphlet says: "The trains are now frequently of such vast size as to render it impossible for the Company to keep time. These facts can be abundantly established, even by the testimony of their own admissions and declarations."

it he could pay a larger amount for his use of the land1. Land which formerly had been of little or no value, such as Chat Moss along the Liverpool and Manchester line, soon became veritable garden spots, and the proximity to large consuming centres, effected by the railway, made the land valuable for gardening and other agricultural purposes2. Its value for building and industrial purposes also was soon recognized, and if the railway company, after its line was constructed, wished to purchase more land adjoining what they already had, they had to pay twice to five times as much for this subsequent purchase as for the first3. When land was advertised as being for sale or to let, if it were at all possible the advertisement would stipulate that the railway either passed through the estate or near to it, for under these conditions a higher price would be paid. After railways had been carrying on their work for a few years, and it became known that they had paid at times large sums for the real estate they required, the contemplated formation of railways in different parts was the signal to put up the price of land. In some instances exorbitant prices were asked by landowners, and, as the railway companies were not willing to accede to these prices, juries were summoned to assess the value and decide between the two parties. In these cases the almost invariable result was that the jury assessed the value of the land at a lower figure than that offered by the railway

1 Manchester Guardian, Dec. 11, 1830, p. 3, showing that occupiers of land and mines volunteered to pay higher rentals if the railway were put within easy reach of them. The Times, Sept. 4, 1835, p. 2. This was also in accord with the testimony of Mr Pease, a director of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, who said that not only had the value of his land along the line been increased, but his rentals had likewise increased, and that amid falling prices (The Times, Feb. 13, 1836, p. 3).

2 Birmingham Journal, May 19, 1832, p. 3, evidence of Messrs Moss, Earle, Lee and Pease; Sheffield Iris, Oct. 7, 1834, p. 1; Cundy, Observations on Railways, 2nd ed., pp. 11-15, 17-24.

3 Sheffield Iris, Oct. 7, 1834, p. 1. Mr J. Moss, Deputy Chairman of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company, said that for the first eight miles outside of Liverpool his company paid 5s. 8d. a yard for the land they needed; but land all around the railway was sold before 1832 at 22s. a yard. The company also bought land at another part of their line for 7s. a yard, but in 1831, when more was wanted, 10s. 8d. a yard had to be paid. At another part of the line the company's subsequent purchase of land had to be made at double the price of the original purchase. Thomas Lee's testimony was that after the construction of the railway, land had been sold for building purposes at from three to five times the sum it would have brought before the establishment of the railway (Birmingham Journal, May 19, 1832, p. 3, evidence of Messrs Moss and Lee).

4 'London and Birmingham Railway Bill. Evidence before the Lords Committee,' p. 46, evidence of Joseph Pease; Birmingham Journal, May 19, 1832, p. 3, evidence of Messrs Moss, Earle and Pease.

company1. What we wish to impress is that either the prospective or the actual construction of a railway was accompanied by a movement toward higher prices for the land in the circumjacent territory.

Of the other immediate benefits secured by railways, we might enumerate a long list. Sometimes they conferred public benefits by reducing overgrown monopolies within reasonable bounds, as was done by the Liverpool and Manchester Railway when it entered the contest against the three navigation companies that operated between these two cities. Sometimes they stimulated the more opulent canal companies to make improvements in their canals and thus contribute to the public welfare instead of dividing among the proprietors the enormous profits that had been made by some of them3. They created an immediate and great demand for labour and thereby eased the burden of the labourers and of the community; they furnished in some cases good investments for English capital, and thus kept these funds within the country for the development of the kingdom, rather than having them seek employment in foreign countries. But why need we go any further, for the history of the remainder of the nineteenth century is the record, in part, of the achievement of the railway.

With all the benefits which accrued from the construction of railways, there were also some evils which were a natural accompaniment of such a great change. In the first place, in railway initiation there were features which were decidedly objectionable. Some lines were formed for no other purpose than pure speculation; their promoters wanted to influence the market in such a way that the prices of their shares would reach a high figure, and then they would unload their holdings upon others who were innocent of the game that was being played. Values were given to shares purely on account of market manipulation, without any reference to the intrinsic value of the property upon which they were based, for in not a few instances they

1 The Times, Oct. 28, 1837, p. 3, gives a number of instances to show the relation of railways to the price of land. For example, in Bath a gentleman claimed £6780 for land taken by the Great Western Railway Company; the company offered him £4500 merely to save litigation, but this would not satisfy him, and the jury awarded him only £4223. Under similar circumstances, Lord Manvers, in Bath, on his claim of £9000, received from the company an offer of £4500; but the jury awarded him only £3375. Many other cases are given in this reference. On five claims of £16,067, the jury gave only £2053. 7s.

2 The same outcome was the result of the Grand Junction and of the London and Birmingham Railway competition with the canals.

3

3 P., A Letter to a Friend, containing Observations on the Comparative Merits of Canals and Railways, pp. 12-13, 29-30. Examples are given to confirm this fact.