RAILWAY RECEIPTS, WORKING EXPENSES, AND PROFITS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM—DELAYS AND ACCIDENTS.

However vastly the United Kingdom has been benefited by railways, we shall show presently that it is far otherwise with those who have invested their money in their construction. Those first opened in England were, no doubt, profitable to their shareholders, because they were great arterial lines that connected the leading places of the Kingdom together. Along such lines there always had been large traffic, and it was no doubt greatly stimulated by the facilities which the new mode of locomotion afforded for its expansion. But as fresh railways were completed, and as the capital invested in them increased, the profits receded. Even at the present time, with larger receipts per mile than have ever been taken, the position of railway investment is almost from every point of view, unsatisfactory.

The tide of the early prosperity of railways began to turn in 1840.

Proceeding at once to the middle of 1843, we learn that at that date the amount of capital invested was £76,280,000, and the gross traffic receipts were only £4,535,189. If 45 per cent. be deducted for working expenses, the amount for division among investors was only £2,494,358. If one-third of the capital invested be considered debenture capital bearing an interest of not more than 4 per cent., it leaves only £1,391,360 for dividend upon £51,000,000, or a little more than 2½ per cent.

In 1848 the capital invested in British railways was £152,640,000, the gross traffic receipts were £9,933,552. Deducting 45 per cent. for working expenses—amount £4,660,097,—a balance of £5,273,455 is available for division among investors. Taking one-third of the capital paid up as debenture capital, bearing interest at only 4 per cent., it leaves £3,021,455 for dividend upon £100,760,000 of share capital, or at the rate of less than 3 per cent.

At the end of 1853, the capital paid up was £273,324,514 and the traffic receipts had risen to £18,035,879. The working expenses, at 45 per cent. of the receipts, were £8,116,151, leaving £9,919,728 available for division, but between 1848 and 1853 the rate of interest upon debentures rose to fully 5 per cent. Taking, as before, one-third of the capital paid up, as debenture capital, it leaves £5,364,320 for dividend upon £182,216,343 of share capital, or at the rate of a little less than 3 per cent.

Five years later—at the end of 1858—the capital paid up was £325,375,507; the traffic receipts were £23,956,749; the working expenses, £11,668,225. Taking the debenture capital as one-third of the whole, it leaves £6,245,310 for dividend upon £216,917,205 share capital—or a very little less than 3 per cent. But as by 1858, fully 25 per cent. of the share capital was preferential, and bore a dividend on the average of 5 per cent., there remains, after payment of a dividend upon this capital of £2,711,450, only £3,533,860 for division upon the £162,687,905 “ordinary” or unguaranteed share capital, that was then invested in railways—not quite 2¼ per cent.

On the 31st December, 1863, the capital paid up was £404,215,802; the traffic receipts were £31,156,397; the working expenses, £15,027,234. The amount of debenture capital, taken as usual at a third of the total capital, was £134,738,600, the interest upon it, at 5 per cent., £6,736,930. Deducted from £16,129,163, the amount of the total net receipts, £9,392,233 remains for dividend upon £269,477,202 share capital, or nearly 3½ per cent. This would be satisfactory, as compared with the amount divisible upon share capital in previous years; but, unfortunately, the amount of preferential, in proportion to total share capital, had not only increased considerably between 1853 and 1863, but the rate of dividend had also advanced. The London and North-Western issued some at 5, the Lancashire and Yorkshire at 6; so also the London, Brighton and South Coast, then one of the most highly thought of companies for investment; and the London and South-Western, a company established, apparently, upon a very solid basis, had to issue preference capital at as high as 7 per cent. Nevertheless, although for present calculation, and for that of 1865, next to follow, one-third of the share capital is considered as preference capital, the rate is taken as not raised higher than 5½ per cent. £4,940,414 must therefore be deducted as dividend on preference capital, leaving only £4,451,819 for division upon £179,651,468, or at the rate of just under 2½ per cent. But as several of the companies—many of them large ones—paid dividends of 4, 5, 5½, 6, 6½, and some few as high as 7 per cent., a considerable portion of ordinary share capital received at the rate of 1 and 1½ per cent., and an equally large portion did not receive, as is well known, any dividend at all.

We close our recapitulations with the year 1865, the latest to which the published returns of the Board of Trade extend. On the 31st of December of that year the total capital paid up was £455,478,143; the traffic receipts[53] were £35,890,113; the working expenses, £17,149,073; the amount of the debenture capital, taken, as before, at a third of the whole, was £151,826,044, the interest upon it, at five per cent. was £7,591,302. Deducted from £18,602,582 the amount of the total net receipts, £11,011,280 remains for dividend upon the total share capital, which amounted to £303,652,099, equal to £3. 13s. per hundred pounds.[54] But deducting £5,566,900, dividend upon £101,218,000 as preference share capital, 5½ per cent., there remain only £5,444,380 for dividend upon £192,434,000, or at the rate of £2. 16s. 10d. for each £100 invested. What was stated at the conclusion of the calculations of 1863 applies with at least equal force to 1865, very small dividends for a very considerable portion of railway share capital, and none at all for at least an equal amount.

On the 31st of March, 1866, the National Debt of the United Kingdom was composed as follows: funded, £773,313,219; the estimated capital of terminable annuities £23,351,043; unfunded, £7,956,800; total, £804,842,949,[55] or only £349,364,806 more than the total of railway investments at that period. The “interest and management” of the national debt in the year ending the 31st March, 1866, was £26,233,288; but as the Banks of England, of Ireland, and of Scotland, are the chief managers of the debt, in exchange for privileges accorded to them, the item for management cannot be great—not sufficient to reduce the average rate of interest below £3. 5s. per £100 invested. The case, therefore, stands thus, if viewed as between the creditors of the British nation and the investors (apart from debenture and preference shareholders) in the railway capital of the United Kingdom: the former receive interest guaranteed on the faith, credit, and honour of the most powerful nation—at all events commercially—in the world, eight shillings per cent. per annum more than those who have embarked their money in commercial enterprises that, in our opinion at all events, have been second only to Free Trade[56] in achieving the present commercial grandeur of England.

There is not an article of commerce that the railway cannot move—does not move; there is not an article of commerce that the railway does not move at speed never less than eight and generally ten times as great as it was by canal, until competition stimulated the pace of the latter. To what extent? From the once normal rate of two to that of three miles an hour—no more. But now, the merchant of London, who a few years ago could not have what he required from the manufacturing towns of the north in less than ten days, receives in the morning, goods that were in the warehouses of Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, or any other of such-like towns in the north of England on the previous afternoon. The important consumers of timber, 150 to 180 miles from London attend sales there, in preference to places nearer home, and purchase largely, with such advantage that the difference of price pays the difference of railway carriage three and four times over. We once saw chests of tea, that on a fluctuation of markets to the extent of a half-penny a pound, passed twice from Liverpool to London and twice back again. They were enabled to be moved about in this way because collection, carriage and delivery cost £1. 10s. a ton, or at the rate of a fourth of a half-penny a pound for 200 miles. Fish circulates through the small as well as the great arterial systems of the kingdom with the regularity and precision of the post, because it is unceasingly carried from the fishing ports inland by the fastest trains and by those that convey the mail bags. The Irish railways alone transported 1,092 tons of salmon last year—301 tons more than in 1865,—and now, with our protected fisheries, this amount will be rapidly added to. Ice, an article of modern commerce, is already beginning to find its way south by means of the railway, and there is not the slightest reason why elevated Northern Scotland should not grow the commodity, just as it has for many years been made to grow in Massachusetts, and more recently in Norway.[57] It is unnecessary to pursue this subject, for we each of us see, know, and feel that the railway is the great and grand distributor of whatever we require for our wants, and of all that energy and enterprise require for the development of national industry.

And, as regards personal locomotion, how grand and sublime are the powers of the railway. We leave Edinburgh to-night. We travel warmly in the cold season; luxuriously at all seasons, and with complete unconsciousness of the fact that as each hour passes, we are nearly forty miles farther from our starting point. The break at London in the morning gives us the margin necessary for ablution and refreshment; that evening we are in Paris, in ample time, and some to spare, for starting by any of the rapid trains that convey passengers and mails east, south, and west. If our destination be the Mediterranean, we are at Marseilles at noon the next day, exactly 41 hours from the time we had left Edinburgh; yet, Edinburgh, by railway, combined with a short sea passage, and Marseilles, are exactly 1,239 miles apart. Our pace, including breaks and stops, has been over thirty miles an hour, whilst getting over the whole distance; excluding the breaks and stops, five and thirty. We can commence the ascent of an Alpine pass, or one across the Pyrenees, precisely at the same time as we should reach the Mediterranean, had our destination been in that direction.

In 1834, when the late Duke of Wellington despatched Mr. Hudson, belonging to one of the Government offices, to Rome, to inform Sir Robert Peel that he had been called upon by King William IV. to form a Ministry on the compulsive retirement of Lord Melbourne and his colleagues,[58] it was thought a marvel that the messenger was able to complete his journey on the twelfth day from that on which he left London. Bound on an analagous mission, a Mr. Hudson of the present day, would be a sluggard indeed, if he occupied even a quarter of twelve days. Without the superscription, such as our ancestors (who could write) put on their letters, “Haste! post haste!”[59] one put quietly into a London post office “receptacle” on a Monday morning, would, as the clock of St. Peter’s[60] was tolling 9·45 on Wednesday evening, be found within the precincts of the Eternal City. The distance? 1,355 miles.

But why need we multiply instances. Let us then pass to say a word or two about what railways have done for the humbler part of our population. Have they not attained facilities for their pursuits as well as for their enjoyments that were not dreamt of thirty,—twenty years ago? How prosperous the working classes now are; their labour is at a premium, and in demand such as it has never before experienced. They have never been remunerated so handsomely, and they have earned their pay with shorter hours, better ventilation, better food and more of it, than they ever had before. Unions and combinations, however deplorable in their course of action, at all events, are signs and manifestations of power;[61] and, now-a-days, we find combinations and strikes extended even to agricultural labourers. Why? Because they know—stupid, heavy, unintelligent, and unenlightened though they may be—that, thanks to the railway, they can get at least as good employment elsewhere as in their own villages and hamlets. The farmer knows—feels—and, farmer-like, grumbles at this, but he also knows, that, thanks to free trade, and thanks to cheap railway conveyance, he is enabled to obtain, in the first instance, the highest possible fertilisation for his land, and, in the second, when his crops are gathered, that he can dispose of them, notwithstanding immense cereal and other eatable imports, in markets far distant, and at prices which not only leave him nothing to complain of, but much to be satisfied with. We no longer hear the old party cries, “Protection to native industry,” and such like. The modern cultivator does not require the protection which the old law gave him. He finds he can protect himself in a far better manner without it.

Material prosperity is spread broad-cast over the land. It is true we have recently had a financial crash, and a financial crisis; but we have had no crush, nor are we going to have one. It is also true that our exports for the first six months of this year are, as a consequence of somewhat diminished trade, less than they were in the corresponding period of 1866. But, how much are they less? Not 7 per cent. of their gross aggregate. They are, however, 3 per cent. better than they were for the like time one year previously; and, note also, that they are in those six months, £2,000,000 more than they were in the whole twelve months of fifteen years ago.

The twin sisters of progress in our day, are free trade and the railway. Both are universal as regards application; both are expansive and ever expanding. They always advance, they never recede. Free Trade, however, is, so to speak, national, or of the nation as an abstract. It requires for its world-spread development no more than that trade shall avail itself of the advantages which unfettered intercourse between nations imparts. The railway is the commercial reality of everyday life. Its existence cannot be started without aggregated capital. It then becomes the earnest, visible, and ever-working bee in the hive, and by the means which it places at the disposal of all, not only are intercourse and interchange facilitated between nations, but among ourselves movement is giant-like and unceasing, not only for ourselves actually, but for everything that pertains to us in our wants and necessities, no matter under what classification they may be placed. A grand prosperity has been achieved for the nation, but the gold to which much of its accomplishment is due has proved unfruitful. The fact, undoubted, need only thus be recorded. Others can say of it what they please as a grievance.

It may be said, and no doubt it is said, that want of success in railway investments has arisen from extravagance and mismanagement. Undoubtedly the assertion is in part correct as regards both the origination and the construction of most of our railways, but the incompetence of Parliament, its unfitness as a tribunal (notably so in the case of Lord Libeller), and the false system it has fostered, have contributed a much larger share than the other two elements to the present ill-favoured and unsatisfactory position of railways.

“Ah! but the working of railways! There, at all events, we have you.” “See how defective it is. See the innumerable complaints constantly appearing in the papers about want of punctuality. See the frightful accidents that are occurring.” “Yes; it is quite true that delays occur to trains. Nay, more, let it be granted that they are frequent—but frequent in proportion to what?—to the number of trains that are running night and day throughout every part of the kingdom?” “Yes.” But the answer to that is—in 1865 3,448,509 passenger trains ran in the United Kingdom, which is at the rate of 10,387 trains each week day, and half that number is assumed as the number on Sundays, and on Christmas Day and Good Friday. Fewer long trains travel on Sundays than on week days, but on short urban and suburban railways the trains are, except during the hours of divine service, as numerous as on week days. Besides the passenger trains there were, in 1865, 2,108,198 goods trains, heavily laden with merchandise and minerals, or at the rate of 6,060 trains on each week day, and half that number on Sundays, Christmas Day and Good Friday, making a total each day of 16,447. At the end of 1865 there were, as has been frequently stated in these pages, 13,289 miles of railway open for traffic; at present (October, 1867) the number of miles is fully 14,300, and there cannot be less than 13,000 passenger trains a day. The proportion of trains arriving late to trains arriving to time is not three per cent. throughout the whole kingdom, and of those, nine-tenths are not more than fifteen minutes behind time. The average number of persons travelling each week day throughout the year is nearly 800,000; of these the very utmost that are detained beyond fifteen minutes is 3,000; so that for every 300 persons who travel per diem one must expect, on the doctrine of averages, to be over fifteen minutes late, and one out of every thirty-four passengers may be a few minutes over time. Judging by the tone and the language of many of the letters of complaint which appear in newspapers, if we could suppose such a person as one utterly ignorant of everything relating to railways, he would believe that the officials experience a special pleasure and enjoyment when trains are irregular. Let us, in reply, assure that excellent and ignorant person that there is nothing more abhorrent (with only one exception, to which we shall refer immediately) to railway nature than want of regularity and precision. They are to him precisely as the vacuum abhorendum of Nature, Pan-Anglican and Pan-Mundal.[62] In everyday life, if things go punctually and precisely with us, the whole of our machinery, both corporeal and physical, works pleasantly, without trouble and without difficulty. And so it is on the railways—as long as there are punctuality and regularity all goes right. It is, therefore, the fact that the unceasing efforts of the staff of every railway company in the kingdom are unremittingly directed to ensuring punctuality to trains, as far as human nature can ensure it. It is the interest of the officials of every grade to have everything on the line working with the precision and fidelity of clockwork. The slightest irregularity at any part of a line at once brings an accession of labour and of responsibility upon the shoulders of every official, be he high or low, connected with it. But happily Englishmen, among whom, of course, we include Scotchmen and Irishmen, placed in positions of trust and responsibility have always acted, and always will act, as Englishmen ought to act—from a consideration that influences them above all other considerations, a sense of duty. Hence no effort that railway officials can make is wanting when irregularities occur. But human means and human appliances break down at the moment least expected; no ingenuity, no foresight can prevent them. The weather, a slight shower of rain, which renders rails slippery at starting; a heated axle, caused by a few particles of grit getting into an axle box, notwithstanding the minute precautions taken to prevent such an incident; the delays, confusion, and blunders of passengers themselves,—an old lady insisting vehemently that she gave her little box with “my best bonnet in it,” to the guard, whilst she had taken it into the compartment, and in her flurry, agitation, or absence of mind[63] at the prospect of her coming to her station, had forgotten that she had at starting placed it on the seat beside her; at ticket collecting and ticket examining platform—for, alas! the prevalence of fraud and dishonesty among—we regret to say, and the remark only applies to a very few as compared with the general mass of travellers—all classes of ticket holders—renders occasional examination of them necessary;[64] but, of course, the most frequent cause of delay on railways proceeds from—without which the railway would he nothing at all—the engines. As is well known, all engines are made of the best materials of every description; but it is not so generally known that—according to the testimony of Sir Francis Head in 1849, and of the late Mr. Robert Stephenson, M.P., in 1866—a locomotive consists of 5,416 pieces, all of which, although indebted to machinery for a large portion of the work of their construction, have, nevertheless, each and every one of them, to pass through human hands, and they have to be fitted and put together as carefully as the machinery of a first-class watch. From the moment that a locomotive commences duty she is examined daily by competent and skilled men, whose object is to detect, not only the slightest flaw, but the slightest indication that may lead to one; and if either be detected, to substitute another locomotive which has successfully gone through the ordeal of rigid examination. The engine-driver and firemen are also on the alert, for they know what the consequences may be to them if a break down or accident take place. Yet, in spite of unceasing watchfulness, portions of the machinery of an engine will give way, at places, too, never expected. An engine may apparently be doing her duty admirably, when all of a sudden a tube—a great artery of her internal organisation—bursts. With us weak mortals an internal artery bursting lays us low for ever; and, although so dire a fate does not attend the engine, she is, for all the purposes that she was engaged upon at the moment of her disaster, as practically dead as if she had never been gifted with motive power. No human foresight can prevent these and similar, although minor, accidents to engines, no more than we can tell whether the apparently healthy and vigorous man of the morning may not be the cold and lifeless corpse of the afternoon.

Yes, as long as we are human, and must depend upon human means (no matter how apparently complete and perfect they may be) for the fulfilment of our purposes, unrehearsed and unexpected incidents, leading to disappointment, annoyance, and vexation, are alike inevitable and unceasing. And so it is we have not, and never can have, Perfection on railways; but we have the nearest possible approach to it in all that relates to their working. This is a sentence that may possibly—nay, more probably will—excite the terrible susceptibility of the genus which, without being “of the poets,” is, nevertheless, vastly irritable—the great and magnificent British public. Why, the very losses of temper we display whilst we exact perfection in others, is proof that we are a long way from possessing it ourselves. Should we not remember one of the earliest lessons taught us by our Saviour, from whom nothing but goodness and wisdom could ever flow?—“He that is without sin among you let him first cast a stone.” Cast the stone when you yourselves are perfect; without sin of thought or sin of action. But do we not witness daily, hourly, at each instant, that perfection does not belong to any of us? But let all men be assured of this—not on the testimony of quacks and nostrum-mongers, but on the undoubted evidence of fact—fact which is truth, pure, consistent, and unadulterated—that there does not exist in any one of the innumerable organisations, ramifications, aggregations, or embodiments throughout the empire a class of men that is more earnestly devoted to produce that near approach to perfection just referred to than among the well, yet often unjustly, abused humble servants of the railway community; for it is upon these men, in its last resource, that the public must depend for everything. At the stations of large towns and cities their individuality is naturally not so much noticed—or it might perhaps be more correctly stated, not so much known—as at smaller stations, being more completely mixed up in the immense human leaven of great populations. Still those of the public who frequent large stations know some of the men—inspectors, guards, and porters. They respect them; and if inquiry be made of the minister of the faith to which each man belongs, he will be able to assert of more than nine-tenths of them, that each carries the moral discipline which he has learned on the railway into the transactions of his inner life. Besides attending at his place of worship, his little home is clean and respectable; his children are brought up—as they should be brought up—with respect for religion, with steady attendance at the school; and when the hours of play come round they are not the less ready, on occasion, to give or to receive the pummelling which every real English boy is ready to give or to receive, and is all the better therefor into the bargain.

Go to country stations; but before going there let one fact be stated, that the process of “winnowing” on railways, or separating the grist of the staff from the chaff, is always going on; that is, the men who do not come up to the standard—not of height, for on many railways this qualification is not regarded—but of moral and physical quality, are unceasingly being got rid of, or leaving the railway by discharging themselves.

At the country station is there a man of the district, of his sphere of life, that is more respected, or that enlists a larger amount of sympathy among all classes, than the station master? Cordial good feeling and considerate kindness are extended to every one of the persons that are subordinate to him. Why? There is not a man or woman of the land, high or low, rich or poor, “gentle or simple,” who has either visited or who resides adjacent to a country station, that cannot answer the question, in language of the heart, much warmer than any that it would be right for us to make use of.

But accidents? Yes, and let it here be stated broadly that when they do occur, they are, of course, harrowing to the minds of the public, but, it must be added, they are infinitely more so to railway officials. They are of a fearful character when they do happen, but, happily, they are not very frequent.

We proceed to give an account of them for the years from 1861 to 1865, both inclusive.

In the first-named year there were (including the estimation of 100 journeys as taken by each periodical ticket-holder, and they are included in this proportion in the calculation for the subsequent years) 178,929,039[65] passengers, of whom 46, or one in every three and three-quarter millions carried, were killed, and 781, or one in every quarter of a million, were injured from causes beyond their own control; 33, or one for every five millions and a half carried, were killed from their own misconduct or want of caution.

In 1862, 186,094,671 passengers were carried, of whom 26, or one in every seven millions carried, were killed, and 536, or one in every 333,000 persons carried, were injured from causes beyond their own control; and 9, or one in every twenty millions and a quarter carried, from their own misconduct or want of caution.

In 1863, 211,074,175 passengers were carried, of whom 14, or one for every fifteen millions carried, were killed, and 400, or one for every 550,000 carried, were injured, from causes beyond their own control; and 21, or nearly one for every ten millions carried, from their own misconduct or want of caution.

In 1864, 236,922,065 passengers were carried, of whom 15, or one for every fifteen and three-quarter millions carried, were killed, and 698, or one for every 350,000 carried, were injured from causes beyond their own control; and 21, or one for a little more than every eleven millions carried, from their own misconduct or want of caution.

In 1865, 261,577,415 passengers were carried, of whom 23, or 1 in every eleven and a half millions carried, were killed, and 698, or 1 in every 380,000 carried, were injured from causes beyond their own control; and 13, or 1 in every twenty millions carried, from misconduct, or want of caution.

If the several figures above stated be added together, it will be seen, that whilst 1,094,597,385 passengers were carried on English railways in five years, the number of persons killed from causes beyond their own control, that is, through some accident, neglect, omission, or commission on the part of the railway companies, was 124; and the number injured, in consequence of one of the foregoing reasons, was 3,449. Of these persons, although many were serious sufferers, the great bulk received injuries from the effects of which they were cured in a few weeks,—several in a few days. In the same five years, 97 passengers were killed from misconduct or imprudence.

In addition to the numbers enumerated in the foregoing statement, a great many persons, not passengers, are killed, either by trespassing on the railway, walking on it at forbidden places, or by suicide. In 1865, their numbers were—killed, 76; injured, 351. Many railway servants are killed or injured each year, mainly, we regret to say, through their own imprudence. In 1865, 122 were killed, and 83 injured.

The above catalogue is, undoubtedly, a melancholy one; one that it would, of course, have been all the better if it could have been avoided. But this, we say with deep sorrow and regret, is impossible. In the first place, as long as the working details of railways depend upon human hands and human heads, we shall have accidents. Some of the worst accidents that have taken place on railways have been caused by the sudden failure, not of presence of mind, for there was no circumstance of a peculiar nature to require it, but by an utter failure, a total absence, as it were, of mind, just at the very moment that, by no means a great, but still some, mental exertion or exercise of mind was requisite. Signal-men, perhaps the most careful and cautious persons in railway service—men selected for the position, after much previous drill, in consequence of superior steadiness, sobriety, and good conduct—find, too late, from some cause utterly unexplainable, that the lever of “points,” or of a signal has been turned to the left when it should have been turned to the right, or vice versÂ. Fearful accidents occur from the machinery of the engine suddenly giving way, in consequence of which it leaves the rails, and the carriages behind it follow, and pile themselves one above another in a manner that is incredible to those who have not seen them. Other accidents arise from a sudden failure of portions of the permanent way; yet, possibly, the same permanent way has been carefully looked at by completely competent men only half-an-hour previous to the accident; for it may be mentioned, that there is no part of a railway road-bed that is not thoroughly examined every morning. In a line that is well signalled—and it may be taken for fact that there is no railway in the kingdom upon which there are not at present efficient signals—accidents are not the result of delays, although there is a very general belief in the minds of the public that it is otherwise. In two recent instances, accidents of a calamitous nature have been the result of a rail being taken up and not replaced before a train has come upon the spot; this description of accident having been chiefly caused by permanent-way signal-men not going sufficiently far back with the flag danger-signal to enable a train to be brought to a stand-still before arriving at the spot where the line is interrupted, other precautions have been added, which now render an accident from this cause nearly impossible. But many of the fearful collisions, the terrible accounts of which shock the public mind from time to time, are caused by combinations of circumstances and incidents so extraordinary and unusual, that it is hard to conceive, on the doctrine of combinations, how they could occur. They do occur, nevertheless; and all that can be said with respect of them is, that the circumstances of every railway accident are carefully read and studied by every traffic manager, and most station masters, in order that a lesson or a caution may be obtained for future guidance. But these accidents will continue to occur—there are, we fear, no real means yet discovered to prevent them—and all that can be hoped for as regards the future is, that as experience of what are in short almost impossible circumstances is accumulating, we may perhaps arrive at an epoch where no further incidents of this character can be combined together for human destruction on railways.

What has been already said with reference to the earnestness of railway officials to prevent delays, applies with tenfold additional force to their never-ceasing anxiety to avoid accidents. There is no possible precaution that can be taken, which is not taken to endeavour to prevent them. In every way they are disastrous; they not only create intense personal suffering and misery, they are not only a risk to employÉs, because at any moment, from an act of imprudence or forgetfulness, employÉs may be the cause of them, and thereby render themselves liable to punishments that extend even to penal servitude; but even after their occurrence they become to them a source of immediate and immense responsibility. The line must at once, quick almost as the flash of lightning, be protected against trains coming in either direction; the killed and wounded must be removed, and those to whom life still belongs must be attended to with the most earnest solicitude; arrangements must be made, and carried into execution without a moment’s delay, so as to render the line fit for traffic again in the shortest period that human hands, aided with hearty good-will, can accomplish; all these duties must, nevertheless, be executed in the midst of scenes of havoc and misery that are enough to unnerve and prostrate most men, with as much coolness and sang froid as if the man’s services at the moment were not more important than attaching an additional carriage to a train, in consequence of an unusual accession of traffic at a station, or the performance of some other such like formal piece of everyday duty.

But beyond all these considerations, there is one that cannot, when referring to the subject of railway accidents, be overlooked, or passed by without comment—their cost. In 1865, no less than £333,533 were paid in compensation by railway companies, in consequence of railway accidents. If to this amount be added £200,000, for destruction of rolling stock and road, the heavy expense involved in their re-establishment or replacement, the enormous law costs to which the companies are subjected in settling claims or in defending actions, mounts up the total amount of actual expenditure, owing to these fearful occurrences, to upwards of half-a-million sterling, or nearly 1¼ per cent. on the total capital expended on railways. To this amount might also be added loss of receipts which always occur to a railway immediately after the occurrence of a serious accident. From the one cause of cost, without seeking to find any other reasons, railway companies have good reasons to dread railway accidents.

Yet considering the immense amount of persons carried, the numbers killed or wounded is small as compared with the numbers of those who are sufferers from accidents to which we are all liable all over the kingdom. Taking the metropolis only, there were 375 persons killed in the year 1862, of whom 171 came to sudden death within city limits, the remainder being the casualties of this description for all the other parts of London.[66] If we refer to the Wreck Register of the Board of Trade, for 1866, we will see that, whilst the number of wrecks and casualties to ships[67] from all causes, on or near the coasts of the United Kingdom was 1,860 (just 251 more than the average of shipwrecks for the last five years, and 322 more than the average for ten years), the number of the lives lost was 896.[68] It is estimated that 500,000 persons navigate the ships both foreign going and coasting, in which these lives were lost. Their number would have, beyond all doubt, been greatly added to, but for noble efforts that have been established, as well as increased within very recent years, for saving life from shipwreck. During the last year and the first-half of 1867, no less than 1,600 lives have been saved by means of the 153 boats of the National Life Boat Association. A large number of lives has also been saved by the rocket apparatus which is furnished to the Coast Guard by the Board of Trade, out of the Mercantile Marine Fund.

In 1864 there was one life lost for every 109,715 tons of coal raised in British collieries. In that proportion there would have been 903 persons killed in collieries in 1866.

Accidents by fire are awfully numerous, and no class or rank of life is exempt from them, but they are naturally more numerous among the children of the humbler classes than in the superior stations of life. From the nature of female dress, the sex is not only more exposed to these accidents than men are, and the consequences are less fatal to males than they are to females. Fire-escapes have been a means, under Divine Providence, of saving many lives from destruction in houses on fire.[69]

Distressing and harassing as railway and other accidents are in this country, their number and frequency in the United States are utterly appalling. Of accidents to American railway trains in 1866, there were 82, by which 115 persons were killed and 607 were wounded. “This,” says the writer from whom the foregoing information is derived, “is an improvement over 1865, when there were 183 railroad accidents, killing 335 persons outright, and wounding 1,427 others.” It appears also that 1866 exhibits a better report in this respect than any year since 1861, but it must not be forgotten that in American accidents “persons wounded” means only those who were not “killed outright” at the time of an accident. The great hulk of the wounded die subsequently, and should in reality be included among the killed. Persons who only suffer from minor wounds and injuries are not reported. It is only in England that the slightest injuries are reported and are included in the general account of persons injured. There were 23 steam-boat disasters on the various rivers and inland waters of the United States during 1866, by which 633 persons were killed and 156 wounded. In 1865, by 32 such accidents, 1,788 persons were killed and 265 were injured; but in 1865 a larger number of persons were killed in this way than in any previous year since 1854. What the numbers were in 1854 the writer who imparts the foregoing information does not mention; but he adds:—“These figures do not include any loss of life by disasters on the ocean.” As, until the outbreak of the war of 1862, the mercantile marine of the United States was equal to that of the United Kingdom, we may conclude, even making allowance for its recent diminution, that there must have been more lives lost on the sea than on the lakes, because American-built ships have always been notoriously less solidly built than British, and because the United States does not possess life-boats and other means of saving life such as we happily have in such abundance in this country.

We conclude this chapter by repeating the painful admission that railway accidents are inevitable. It must, however, be added, as an act of justice to railway officials, that their efforts are never-ceasing to prevent them. But, after all, how feeble and powerless is poor humanity!