The life of George Stephenson, railway engineer - Lighthouse ...

RAILWAY SYSTEM AND ITS RESULTS. 483
stage-coach, a journey of 1 2 miles would have occupied an hour and a
half. Here is a direct saving of one hour upon every average journey
performed by 111,000,000 of persons annually. These 111,000,000
hours saved are equal to 14,000,000 days or 38,000 years, supposing
the working man to labour eight hours a day ; and allowing at the rate
of 3s. a day for his labour, the annual saving to the nation, on this
low average scEile, is not less than £2,000,000 per annum.
Regard some of the moral results of the railway system. Observe
how it operates in equalizing the value of land. Railways enable the
farmer in Scotland to send his beasts to Smithfield, and gardeners in
the West of England to send their early fruits to Covent Garden.
Distant properties, therefore, become as valuable as those nearer to the
centres of consumption. Nor is this all. Railways, by facilitating the
transit of artificial manures, enable the farmers of poor land to compete
with those who till superior soils ; thus tending still further to equalize
the value of the land, and thereby giving increased employment to, and
improving the condition of all classes of the population.
People are too apt to think and talk of railways as mere machines,
whereby the speed of conveyance from one point to another is in-
creased. You have seen them to-night in other and more important
points of view. Let us look at them in other phases.
As stimulating national industry, perhaps the most familiar illus-
tration will be the hard-metal trade. Look at the boiler-plate
manufacture—comparatively insignificant before iron vessels and
steam locomotion came into existence, and now one of the most
important elements of the trade to which it appertains. Such is
the extent of this branch of manufacture, that, extensive as they
are, the iron-works are not even yet able to render the supply equal to
the demand.
Again, before railways existed, the inland counties of England were
imsupplied with fish from the coast. Now, fresh sea-fish enters into
the consumption of almost every family of the middle class, in every
considerable town. In the fish trade, indeed, railways have caused
and are causing a prodigious revolution. Large fishing establishments
have been formed at difierent parts of the east coast. Before the Norfolk
railway was constructed, the conveyance of fish from Yarmouth
to London was entirely conducted in light vans with post-horses, and
was represented by a bulk of about 2,000 tons a year. At present
2,000 tons offish are, not unfrequently, carried on the Norfolk railway,
not in a year, but in a fortnight.
But perhaps there is no respect in which railways contribute so
greatly to the public advantage as in the inland coal traffic ; still in its