I have already spoken in Chapter VII. of some of the chief differences between Continental and English conditions, but I revert to the latter because it is essential that, before approving of any scheme of canal restoration here, the British public should thoroughly understand the nature of the task that would thus be undertaken.

The sections of actual canal routes, given opposite page 98, will convey some idea of the difficulties which faced the original builders of our artificial waterways. The wonder is that, since water has not yet been induced to flow up-hill, canals were ever constructed over such surfaces at all. Most probably the majority of them would not have been attempted if railways had come into vogue half a century earlier than they did. Looking at these diagrams, one can imagine how the locomotive—which does not disdain hill-climbing, and can easily be provided with cuttings, bridges, viaducts, and tunnels—could follow the canal; but one can hardly imagine that in England, at least, the canal would have followed the railway.

The whole proposition in regard to canal revival would be changed if only the surfaces in Great Britain were the same as they are, say, between Hamburg and Berlin, where in 230 miles of waterway there are only three locks. In this country there is an average of one lock for every 1¼ mile of navigation. The sum total of the locks on British canals is 2,377, each representing, on an average, a capitalised cost of £1,360. Instead of a "great central plain," as on the Continent of Europe, we have a "great central ridge," extending the greater length of England. In the 16 miles between Worcester and Tardebigge on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal, there are fifty-eight locks to be passed through by a canal boat going from the Severn to Birmingham. At Tardebigge there is a difference in level of about 250 feet in 3 miles or so. This is overcome by a "flight" of thirty locks, which a 25-ton boat may hope to get through in four hours. Between Huddersfield and Ashton, on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, there are seventy-four locks in 20 miles; between Manchester and Sowerby Bridge, on the Rochdale Canal, there are ninety-two locks in 32 miles, to enable the boats to pass over an elevation 600 feet above sea level; and at Bingley, on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, five "staircase" locks give a total lift of 59 feet 2 inches.

Between London and Liverpool there are three canal routes, each passing through either ten or eleven separate navigations, and covering distances of from 244 to 267 miles. By one of these routes a boat has to pass through such series of locks as ninety in 100 miles on the Grand Junction Canal, between Paddington and Braunston; forty-three in 17 miles on the Birmingham Canal, between Birmingham and Aldersley; and forty-six in 66 miles on the Shropshire Union Canal, between Autherley and Ellesmere Port. Proceeding by an alternative route, the boat would pass through fifty-nine locks in 67 miles on the Trent and Mersey; while a third route would give two hundred and eighty-two locks in a total of 267 miles. The number of separate navigations is ten by Routes I. and II., and eleven by Route III.

Between London and Hull there are two routes, one 282 miles with one hundred and sixty-four locks, and the other 305 miles with one hundred and forty-eight locks. On the journey from London to the Severn, a boat would pass through one hundred and thirty locks in 177 miles in going to the Avonmouth Docks (this total including one hundred and six locks in 86 miles between Reading and Hanham, on the Kennet and Avon Canal); and either one hundred and two locks in 191 miles, or two hundred and thirty in 219 miles, if the destination were Sharpness Docks. Between Liverpool and Hull there are one hundred and four locks in 187 miles by one route; one hundred and forty-nine in 159 miles by a second route; and one hundred and fifty-two in 149 miles by a third. In the case of a canal boat despatched from Birmingham, the position would be—to London, one hundred and fifty-five locks in 147 miles; to Liverpool (1) ninety-nine locks in 114 miles, (2) sixty-nine locks in 94 miles; to Hull, sixty-six locks in 164 miles; to the Severn, Sharpness Docks (1) sixty-one locks in 75 miles, (2) forty-nine locks in 89 miles.

Early in 1906 a correspondent of The Standard made an experimental canal journey from the Thames, at Brentford, to Birmingham, to test the qualities of a certain "suction-producer gas motor barge." The barge itself stood the test so well that the correspondent was able to declare:—"In the new power may be found a solution of the problem of canal traction." He arrived at this conclusion notwithstanding the fact that the motor barge was stopped at one of the locks by a drowned cat being caught between the barge and the incoming "butty" boat. The journey from London to Birmingham occupied, "roughly," six and a half days—a journey, that is, which London and North-Western express trains accomplish regularly in two hours. The 22½ miles of the Warwick and Birmingham Canal, which has thirty-four locks, alone took ten hours and a half. From Birmingham the correspondent made other journeys in the same barge, covering, altogether, 370 miles. In that distance he passed through three hundred and twenty-seven locks, various summits "several hundred feet" in height being crossed by this means.

At Anderton, on the Trent and Mersey Canal, there is a vertical hydraulic lift which raises or lowers two narrow boats 50 feet to enable them to pass between the canal and the River Mersey, the operation being done by means of troughs 75 feet by 14½ feet. Inclined planes have also been made use of to avoid a multiplicity of locks. It is assumed that in the event of any general scheme of resuscitation being undertaken, the present flights of locks would, in many instances, be done away with, hydraulic lifts being substituted for them. Where this could be done it would certainly effect a saving in time, though the provision of a lift between series of locks would not save water, as this would still be required for the lock below. Hydraulic lifts, however, could not be used in mining districts, such as the Black Country, on account of possible subsidences. Where that drawback did not occur there would still be the question of expense. The cost of construction of the Anderton lift was £50,000, and the cost of maintenance is £500 a year. Would the traffic on a particular route be always equal to the outlay? In regard to inclined planes, it was proposed some eight or ten years ago to construct one on the Birmingham Canal in order to do away with a series of locks at a certain point and save one hour on the through journey. Plans were prepared, and a Bill was deposited in Parliament; but just at that time a Board of Trade enquiry into canal tolls and charges led to such reductions being enforced that there no longer appeared to be any security for a return on the proposed expenditure, and the Bill was withdrawn.

In many instances the difference in level has been overcome by the construction of tunnels. There are in England and Wales no fewer than forty-five canal tunnels each upwards of 100 yards in length, and of these twelve are over 2,000 yards in length, namely, Standidge Tunnel, on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, 5,456 yards; Sapperton, Thames and Severn, 3,808; Lappal, Birmingham Canal navigations, 3,785; Dudley, Birmingham Canal, 3,672; Norwood, Chesterfield Canal, 3,102; Butterley, Cromford, 3,063; Blisworth, Grand Junction, 3,056; Netherton, Birmingham Canal, 3,027; Harecastle (new), Trent and Mersey, 2,926; Harecastle (old), Trent and Mersey, 2,897; West Hill, Worcester and Birmingham, 2,750; and Braunston, Grand Junction, 2,042.

The earliest of these tunnels were made so narrow (in the interests of economy) that no space was left for a towing path alongside, and the boats were passed through by the boatmen either pushing a pole or shaft against the roof or sides, and then walking from forward to aft of the boat, or else by the "legging" process in which they lay flat on their backs in the boat, and pushed with their feet against the sides of the tunnel. At one time even women engaged in work of this kind. Later tunnels were provided with towing paths, while in some of them steam tugs have been substituted for shafting and legging.

Resort has also been had to aqueducts, and these represent some of the best work that British canal engineers have done. The first in England was the one built at Barton by James Brindley to carry the Bridgewater Canal over the Irwell. It was superseded by a swing aqueduct in 1893, to meet the requirements of the Manchester Ship Canal. But the finest examples are those presented by the aqueducts of Chirk and Pontcysyllte on the Ellesmere Canal in North Wales, now forming part of the Shropshire Union Canal. Each was the work of Telford, and the two have been aptly described as "among the boldest efforts of human invention of modern times." The Chirk aqueduct (710 feet long) carries the canal over the River Ceriog. It was completed in 1801 and cost £20,898. The Pontcysyllte aqueduct, of which a photograph is given as a frontispiece, carries the canal in a cast-iron trough a distance of 1,007 feet across the valley of the River Dee. It was opened for traffic in 1803, and involved an outlay of £47,000. Another canal aqueduct worthy of mention is that which was constructed by Rennie in 1796, at a cost of £48,000, to carry the Lancaster Canal over the River Lune.

These facts must surely convince everyone who is in any way open to conviction of the enormous difference between canal construction as carried on in bygone days in Great Britain—involving as it did all these costly, elaborate, and even formidable engineering works—and the building of canals, or the canalisation of rivers, on the flat surfaces of Holland, Belgium, and Northern Germany. Reviewing—even thus inadequately—the work that had been already done, one ceases to wonder that, when the railways began to establish themselves in this country, the canal companies of that day regarded with despair the idea of practically doing the greater part of their work over again, in order to carry on an apparently hopeless struggle with a powerful competitor who had evidently come not only to stay but to win. It is not surprising, after all, that many of them thought it better to exploit the enemy by inducing or forcing him to buy them out!

The average reader who may not hitherto have studied the question so completely as I am here seeking to do, will also begin by this time to understand what the resuscitation of the British canal system might involve in the way of expense. The initial purchase—presumably on fair and equitable terms—would in itself cost much more than is supposed even by the average expert.

This looks very simple. But is the original cost of construction of canals passing through tunnels, over viaducts, and up and down elevations of from 400 to 600 feet, calculated here on the same basis as canals on the flat-lands? Is allowance made for costly pumping apparatus—such as that provided for the Birmingham Canal—for the docks and warehouses recently constructed at Ellesmere Port, and for other capital expenditure for improvements, or are these omitted from the calculation of so much "per mile of length"? Items of this kind might swell even "cost of construction" to larger proportions than those assumed by Mr Thwaite. That gentleman, also, evidently leaves out of account the very substantial sums paid by the present owners or controllers of canals for the mining rights underneath the waterways in districts such as Staffordshire or Lancashire.

This last-mentioned point is one of considerable importance, though very few people seem to know that it enters into the canal question at all. When canals were originally constructed it was assumed that the companies were entitled to the land they had bought from the surface to the centre of the earth. But the law decided they could claim little more than a right of way, and that the original landowners might still work the minerals underneath. This was done, with the result that there were serious subsidences of the canals, involving both much loss of water and heavy expenditure in repairs. The stability of railways was also affected, but the position of the canals was much worse on account of the water.

To maintain the efficiency of the canals (and of railways in addition) those responsible for them—whether independent companies or railway companies—have had to spend enormous sums of money in the said mining districts on buying up the right to work the minerals underneath. In some instances the landowner has given notice of his intention to work the minerals himself, and, although he may in reality have had no such intention, the canal company or the railway company have been compelled to come to terms with him, to prevent the possibility of the damage that might otherwise be done to the waterway. The very heavy expenditure thus incurred would hardly count as "cost of construction," and it would represent money sunk with no prospect of return. Yet, if the State takes over the canals, it will be absolutely bound to reckon with these mineral rights as well—if it wants to keep the canals intact after improving them—and, in so doing, it must allow for a considerably larger sum for initial outlay than is generally assumed.

But the actual purchase of canals and mineral rights would be only the beginning of the trouble. There would come next the question of increasing the capacity of the canals by widening, and what this might involve I have already shown. Then there are the innumerable locks by which the great differences in level are overcome. A large proportion of these would have to be reconstructed (unless lifts or inclined planes were provided instead) to admit either the larger type of boat of which one hears so much, or, alternatively, two or four of the existing narrow boats. Assuming this to be done, then, when a single narrow boat came up to each lock in the course of the journey it was making, either it would have to wait until one or three others arrived, or, alternatively, the water in a large capacity lock would be used for the passage of one small boat. The adoption of the former course would involve delay; and either would necessitate the provision of a much larger water supply, together with, for the highest levels, still more costly pumping machinery.

The water problem would, indeed, speedily become one of the most serious in the whole situation—and that, too, not alone in regard to the extremely scanty supplies in the high levels. The whole question has been complicated, since canals were first built, by the growing needs of the community, towns large and small having tapped sources of water supply which otherwise might have been available for the canals.

Even as these lines are being written, I see from The Times of March 17, 1906, that, because the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway Company are sinking a well on land of their own adjoining the railway near the Carshalton springs of the River Wandle, with a view to getting water for use in their Victoria Station in London, all the public authorities in that part of Surrey, together with the mill-owners and others interested in the River Wandle, are petitioning Parliament in support of a Bill to restrain them, although it is admitted that "the railway company do not appear to be exceeding their legal rights." This does not look as if there were too much water to spare for canal purposes in Great Britain; and yet so level-headed a journal as The Economist, in its issue of March 3, 1906, gravely tells us, in an article on "The New Canal Commission," that "the experience of Canada is worth studying." What possible comparison can there be, in regard to canals, between a land of lakes and great rivers and a country where a railway company may not even sink a well on their own property without causing all the local authorities in the neighbourhood to take alarm, and petition Parliament to stop them![11]

On this question of water supply, I may add, Mr John Glass, manager of the Regents Canal, said at the meeting of the Institution of Civil Engineers in November 1905:—

Not only the ordinary waterway and the locks, but the tunnels and viaducts, also, might require widening. Then the adoption of some system of mechanical haulage is spoken of as indispensable. But a resort to tugs, however propelled, is in no way encouraged by the experiments made on the Shropshire Union, as told on p. 50. An overhead electrical installation, with power houses and electric lighting, so that navigation could go on at night, would be an especially costly undertaking. But the increased speed which it is hoped to gain from mechanical haulage on the level would also necessitate a general strengthening of the canal banks to avoid damage by the wash, and even then the possible speed would be limited by the breadth of the waterway. On this particular point I cannot do better than quote the following from an article on "Canals and Waterways" published in The Field of March 10, 1906:—

What the actual cost of reconstruction would be—as distinct from cost of purchase—I will not myself undertake to estimate; and merely general statements, based on the most favourable sections of the canals, may be altogether misleading. Thus, a writer in the Daily Chronicle of March 21, 1906, who has contributed to that journal a series of articles on the canal question, "from an expert point of view," says:—

How can the Aire and Calder possibly be taken as a model—from the point of view of calculating cost of improvements or reconstruction? Let the reader turn once more to the diagrams given opposite p. 98. He will see that the Aire and Calder is constructed on land that is almost flat, whereas the Rochdale section on the same trunk route between the Mersey and the Humber reaches an elevation of 600 feet. How can any just comparison be made between these two waterways? If the cost of "improving" a canal of the "model" type of the Aire and Calder be put at the rate of £1,000,000 per 100 miles, what would it come to in the case of the Rochdale Canal, the Tardebigge section of the Worcester and Birmingham Canal, or the series of independent canals between Birmingham and London? That is a practical question which I will leave—to the experts!

Supposing, however, that the canals have been purchased, taken possession of, and duly improved (whatever the precise cost) by State, municipalities, or public trust, as the case may be. There will then be the almost exact equivalent of a house without furniture, or a factory without machinery. Before even the restored canals could be adapted to the requirements of trade and commerce there would have to be a very considerable expenditure, also, on warehouses, docks, appliances, and other indispensable adjuncts to mere haulage.

After all the money that has been spent on the Manchester Ship Canal it is still found necessary to lay out a great deal more on warehouses which are absolutely essential to the full and complete development of the enterprise. The same principle would apply to any scheme of revived inland navigation. The goods depÔts constructed by railway companies in all large towns and industrial centres have alone sufficed to bring about a complete revolution in trade and commerce since the days when canals were prosperous. There are many thousands of traders to-day who not only order comparatively small quantities of supplies at a time from the manufacturer, but leave even these quantities to be stored locally by the railway company, having delivered to them from day to day, or week by week, just as much as they can do with. A certain "free" period is allowed for warehousing, and, if they remove the goods during that period, they pay nothing to the railway company beyond the railway rate. After the free period a small "rent" is charged—a rent which, while representing no adequate return to the railway company for the heavy capital outlay in providing the depÔts, is much less than it would cost the trader if he had to build store-rooms for himself, or pay for accommodation elsewhere. Other traders, as mentioned in the chapter on "The Transition in Trade," send goods to the railway warehouses as soon as they are ready, to wait there until an order is completed, and the whole consignment can be despatched; while others again, agents and commission men, carry on a considerable business from a small office, leaving all the handling of the commodities in which they deal to be done by the railway companies. In fact, the situation might be summed up by saying that, under the trading conditions of to-day, railway companies are not only common carriers, but general warehousemen in addition.

If inland canals are to take over any part of the transport at present conducted by the railways, they will have to provide the traders with like facilities. So, in addition to buying up and reconstructing the canals; in addition to widenings, and alterations of the gradients of roads and railways passed under; and in addition to the maintenance of towing paths, locks, bridges, tunnels, aqueducts, culverts, weirs, sluices, cranes, wharves, docks, and quay walls, reservoirs, pumping machinery, and so on, there would still be all the subsidiary considerations in regard to warehousing, etc., which would arise when it became a question with the trader whether or not he should avail himself of the improved water transport thus placed at his disposal.

For the purposes of reasonable argument I will assume that no really sensible person, knowing anything at all of actual facts and conditions, would attempt to revive the entire canal system of the country.[13] I have shown on p. 19, that even in the year 1825 it was recognised that some of the canals had been built by speculators simply as a means of abstracting money from the pockets of foolish investors, victims of the "canal mania," and that no useful purpose could be served by them even at a time when there were no competing railways. Yet to-day sentimental individuals who, in wandering about the country, come across some of these absolutely useless, though still, perhaps, picturesque survivals, write off to the newspapers to lament over "our neglected waterways," to cast the customary reflections on the railway companies, and to join their voice to the demand for immediate nationalisation or municipalisation, according to their individual leanings, and regardless of all considerations of cost or practicability.

Derelicts of the type here referred to are not worth considering at all. It is a pity they were not drained and filled in long ago, and given, as it were, a decent burial, if only out of consideration for the feelings of sentimentalists. Much more deserving of study are those particular systems which either still carry a certain amount of traffic, or are situated on routes along which traffic might be reasonably expected to flow. But, taking even canals of this type, the reader must see from the considerations I have already presented that resuscitation would be a very costly business indeed. Estimates of which I have read in print range from £20,000,000 to £50,000,000; but even these omit various important items (mining rights, etc.), which would certainly have to be added, while the probability is that, however high the original estimate in regard to work of this kind, a good deal more would have to be expended before it was finished.

The remarks I have here made are based on the supposition that all that is aimed at is such an improvement as would allow of the use of a larger type of canal boat than that now in vogue. But, obviously, the expenditure would be still heavier if there were any idea of adapting the canals to the use of barges similar in size to those employed on the waterways of Germany, or craft which, starting from an inland manufacturing town in the Midlands, could go on a coasting trip, or make a journey across to the Continent. Here the capital expenditure would be so great that the cost would be absolutely prohibitive.

Whatever the precise number of millions the resuscitation scheme might cost, the inevitable question would present itself—How is the money to be raised?

The answer thereto would be very simple if the entire expense were borne by the country—that is to say, thrown upon the taxpayers or ratepayers. The problem would then be solved at once. The great drawback to this solution is that most of the said taxpayers or ratepayers would probably object. Besides, there is the matter of detail I mentioned in the first Chapter: if the State or the municipalities buy up the canals on fair terms, including the canals owned or controlled by the railways, and, in operating them in competition with the railways, make heavy losses which must eventually fall on the taxpayers or ratepayers, then it would be only fair that the railway companies should be excused from such direct increase in taxation as might result from the said losses. In that case the burden would fall still more heavily on the general body of the tax or ratepayers, independently of the railway companies.

It would fall, too, with especial severity on those traders who were themselves unable to make use of the canals, but might have to pay increased local rates in order that possible competitors located within convenient reach of the improved waterways could have cheaper transport. It might also happen that when the former class of traders, bound to keep to the railways, applied to the railway companies for some concession to themselves, the reply given would be—"What you suggest is fair and reasonable, and under ordinary circumstances we should be prepared to meet your wishes; but the falling off in our receipts, owing to the competition of State-aided canals, makes it impossible for us to grant any further reductions." An additional disadvantage would thus have to be met by the trader who kept to the railway, while his rival, using the canals, would practically enjoy the benefit of a State subsidy.

The alternative to letting the country bear the burden would be to leave the resuscitated canal system to pay for itself. But is there any reasonable probability that it could? The essence of the present day movement is that the traders who would be enabled to use the canals under the improved conditions should have cheaper transport; but if the twenty, fifty, or any other number of millions sterling spent on the purchase and improvement of the canals, and on the provision of indispensable accessories thereto, are to be covered out of the tolls and charges imposed on those using the canals, there is every probability that (if the canals are to pay for themselves) the tolls and charges would have to be raised to such a figure that any existing difference between them and the present railway rates would disappear altogether. That difference is already very often slight enough, and it may be even less than appears to be the case, because the railway rate might include various services, apart from mere haulage—collection, delivery, warehousing, use of coal depÔt, etc.—which are not covered by the canal tolls and charges, and the cost of which would have to be added thereto. A very small addition, therefore, to the canal tolls, in order to meet interest on heavy capital expenditure on purchase and reconstruction, would bring waterways and railways so far on a level in regard to rates that the railways, with the superior advantages they offer in many ways, would, inevitably, still get the preference.

The revival movement, however, is based on the supposition that no increase in the canal tolls now charged would be necessary.[14] Canal transport, it is said, is already much higher in this country than it is on the Continent—and that may well be so, considering (1) that canals such as ours, with their numerous locks, etc., cost more to construct, operate and maintain than canals on the flat lands of Continental Europe; (2) that British canals are still supposed to maintain themselves; and (3) that canal traffic as well as railway traffic is assessed in the most merciless way for the purposes of local taxation. In the circumstances it is assumed that the canal traffic in England could not pay higher tolls and charges than those already imposed, and that the interest on the aforesaid millions, spent on purchase and improvements, would all be met out of the expanded traffic which the restored canals would attract.

Again I may ask—Is there any reasonable probability of this? Bearing in mind the complete transition in trade of which I have already spoken—a transition which, on the one hand, has enormously increased the number of individual traders, and, on the other, has brought about a steady and continuous decrease in the weight of individual consignments—is there the slightest probability that the conditions of trade are going to be changed, and that merchants, manufacturers, and other traders will forego the express delivery of convenient quantities by rail, in order to effect a problematical saving (and especially problematical where extra cartage has to be done) on the tedious delivery of wholesale quantities by canal?

Nothing short of a very large increase indeed in the water-borne traffic would enable the canals to meet the heavy expenditure foreshadowed, and, even if such increase were secured, the greater part of it would not be new traffic, but simply traffic diverted from the railways. More probably, however, the very large increase would not be secured, and no great diversion from the railways would take place. The paramount and ever-increasing importance attached by the vast majority of British traders to quick delivery (an importance so great that on some lines there are express goods trains capable of running from 40 to 60 miles an hour) will keep them to the greater efficiency of the railway as a carrier of goods; while, if a serious diversion of traffic were really threatened, the British railways would not be handicapped as those of France and Germany are in any resort to rates and charges which would allow of a fair competition with the waterways.

In practice, therefore, the theory that the canals would become self-supporting, as soon as the aforesaid millions had been spent, must inevitably break down, with the result that the burden of the whole enterprise would then necessarily fall upon the community; and why the trader who consigns his goods by rail, or the professional man who has no goods to consign at all, should be taxed to allow of cheaper transport being conferred on the minority of persons or firms likely to use the canals even when resuscitated, is more than I can imagine, or than they, probably, will be able to realise.

The whole position was very well described in some remarks made by Mr Harold Cox, M.P., in the course of a discussion at the Society of Arts in February 1906, on a paper read by Mr R. B. Buckley, on "The Navigable Waterways of India."