Part 63 (2/2)

614. Transportation and Communication.

When the Queen ascended the throne (1837), the locomotive (S584) was threatening to supersede the stagecoach; but the progerss of steam as a motor power on land had not been rapid, and England then had less than 200 miles of railway open;[1] but before the end of her reign there were nearly 22,000 miles in operation, and there are now 24,000. At first, the pa.s.senger accommodations were limited. Those who could indulge in such luxuries sometimes preferred to travel in their own private carriages placed on platform cars for transportation. For those who took first-cla.s.s tickets there were excellent and roomy compartments at very high prices. The second cla.s.s fared tolerably well on uncus.h.i.+oned seats, but the unfortunate third cla.s.s were crowded like cattle into open trucks, without seats, and with no roofs to keep the rain out. But time remedied this. Long before the Queen celebrated her first Jubilee (S607) the workingman could fly through the country at the rate of from thirty to fifty miles an hour, for a penny a mile, and could have all the comforts that a reasonable being should ask for.

[1] A part of what is now the London and Northwestern Railway.

Cheap postage (S590) came in (1840) with the extension of railways, and in a few years the amount of mail carried increased enormously.

Every letter, for the first time, carried on it a stamp bearing a portrait of the young Queen, and in this way the English people came to know her better than they had ever known any preceding sovereign.

The London papers now reached the country by train.

The Telegraph began to come into use in January, 1845, between the railway station at Paddington, a western district of London, and Slough, near Windsor. The government eventually purchased all the lines, and reduced the charge on a despatch of twelve words to sixpence to any part of the United Kingdom. The Telephone followed (1876), and then Wireless Telegraphy (1899).

615. Light in Dark Places; Photography; the New Surgery (1834-1895).

The invention of the friction match, 1834 (S584), the abolition of the tax on windows (1851) (S595), with the introduction of American petroleum, speedily dispelled the almost subterraneous gloom of the laborer's cottage. Meanwhile photography, which began to be used in 1839, revealed the astonis.h.i.+ng fact that the sun is always ready not only to make a picture but to take one, and that nothing is so humble as to be beneath his notice.

News came across the Atlantic from Boston, 1846, that Dr. Morton had rendered surgery painless by the use of ether. Before a year pa.s.sed the English hospitals were employing it. Sir James Y. Simpson of Edinburgh introduced chloroform (1847). These two agents have abolished the terror of the surgeon's knife, and have lengthened life by making it possible to perform a cla.s.s of operations which formerly very few patients had been able to bear.

A score of years later Sir Joseph Lister called attention to the important results obtained by antiseptic methods in surgery; next came (1895) the introduction from Germany of the marvelous X ray, by whose help the operator can photograph and locate a bullet or other foreign substance which he is endeavoring to extract. Together, these discoveries have saved mult.i.tudes of lives.

616. Progress of the Laboring Cla.s.ses; Free Trade, 1846.

At the date of the Queen's accession a number of laws existed restricting the free action of workingmen. Only three years before Victoria's coronation six poor agricultural laborers in Dorsets.h.i.+re were transported (1834) to penal servitude at Botany Bay, Australia, for seven years, for peacefully combining to secure an increase of their wages, which at that time were only six s.h.i.+lling a week. In fact, the so-called ”Conspiracy Laws,” which made Labor Unions liable to prosecution as unlawful, if not actually criminal organizations, were not wholly repealed until after the opening of the twentieth century.

Meanwhile Parliament pa.s.sed the Trade Union Acts, in 1871 and 1876, which recognized the right of workingmen to form a.s.sociations to protect their interests by the use of all measures not forbidden by the Common Law.[1] In 1906 the persistent political pressure of organized labor induced a Liberal Cabinet (of which Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was Prime Minister) and the invariably Conservative House of Lords to pa.s.s a still more important act. That measure exempted Trade Unions from liability to pay damages for a certain cla.s.s of injuries which they might commit in carrying on a strike.[2]

During the above period of more than thirty years the unions have gained very largely in numbers and in financial as well as political strength. On the other hand they now have to contend with the radical Socialists who are seeking to convert England into a republic in which the government would carry on all industries and would prohibit private individuals from conducting any business whatever.

[1] One result of the organization of Trades or Labor Unions has been the shortening of the hours of labor. In 1894 the Government established an eight-hour day for workingmen in dockyards and in ordnance factories.

[2] The Trade Disputes Act of 1906. This forbids any suit for tort against a Trade Union. See A. L. Lowell's ”The Government of England,” II, 534; and S. Gompers in _The Outlook_ for February, 1911, p. 269.

The unions will accomplish more still if they succeed in teaching their members to study the condition of industry in England, to respect the action of those workers who do not join a.s.sociations, and to see clearly that ”if men have a right to combine,” they must also ”have an equal right to refuse to combine.”

In 1837 the English Corn Laws (S592) virtually shut out the importation of grain from foreign countries. The population had outgroiwn its food supply, and bread was so dear that even the agricultural laborer cried out. ”I be protected,” said he, ”but I be starving.” The long and bitter fight against the Corn Laws resulted not only in their gradual abolition, 1846, but in the opening of English ports to the products and manufactures of the world. With the exception of tobacco, wines, spirits, and a few other articles, all imports enter the kingdom free.

But though Great Britain carries out the theory that it is better to make things cheap for the sake of those who buy them, than it is to make them dear for the sake of those who produce them, yet all of the great self-governing English colonies impose protective duties[1] even against British products (S625). One of the interesting questions suggested by the Queen's ”Diamond Jubilee” (1897) (S607) was whether England's children in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada would take any steps toward forming a commercial fre-etrade union with the mother country. More than ten years later that point still remained under discussion (S625).

[1] Except in certain cases, where the colonies, e.g. Canada, grant preferential duties, or practical free trade, in certain articles exported to the British Isles.

617. The Small Agricultural Holdings Act; the Agricultural Outlook.

Through the influence of the greatly increased popular vote, which resulted from the Third Reform Act (S600), the farm laborers made themselves felt in the House of Commons. They secured the pa.s.sage of the Small Agricultural Holdings Act (1892). This gave those who worked on the land the privilege of purchasing from one to fifty acres, or of taking it on lease if they preferred.[2] But, notwithstanding the relief granted by this measure, the agricultural problem is to-day one of the most serious England has to solve. Just as New England now depends in large measure on the West for its food supply, so the British Isles depend in great measure on America for breadstuffs. Thousands of acres of fertile soil have gone out of cultivation in the eastern half of the island, mainly because the farmers cannot compete with foreign wheat.

[2] The Small Agricultural Holdings Act enables the County Council (S600) to acquire, by voluntary arrangement, suitable land for the purpose of reletting or reselling it to agricultural laborers and men of small means. Under certain safeguards the Council may advance up to three fourths of the purchase money.

The Royal Agricultural Commission, in a report made a number of years ago (1897), could suggest no remedy, and believed matters must grow worse. A leading English journal,[3] in commenting on the report, said, ”The sad and sober fact is that the English farmer's occupation is gone, or nearly gone, never to return.”

[3] The Bristol _Times and Mirror_, August 5, 1897.

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