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Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland

by Joseph Tatlow · English · Gutenberg #17299 · 494,397 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland

Author: Joseph Tatlow


        
Release date: December 13, 2005 [eBook #17299]
                Most recently updated: December 13, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17299

Credits: This eBook was prepared by Les Bowler


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIFTY YEARS OF RAILWAY LIFE IN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND AND IRELAND ***






This eBook was prepared by Les Bowler.





FIFTY YEARS OF RAILWAY LIFE IN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND AND IRELAND


by Joseph Tatlow

Director Midland Great Western Railway or Ireland and Dublin and
Kingstown Railway; a Member of Dominions Royal Commission, 1912-1917;
late Manager Midland Great Western Railway, etc.

Published in 1920 by The Railway Gazette, Queens Anne's Chambers,
Westminster, London, S.W.1.

[The Author: tatlow.jpg]




CONTENTS.


I.      Introductory
II.     Boyhood
III.    The Midland Railway and "King Hudson"
IV.     Fashions and Manners, Victorian Days
V.      Early Office Life
VI.     Friendship
VII.    Railway Progress
VIII.   Scotland, Glasgow Life, and the Caledonian Line
IX.     General Railway Acts of Parliament
X.      A General Manager and his Office
XI.     The Railway Jubilee, and Glasgow and South-Western Officers and
        Clerks
XII.    TOM
XIII.   Men I met and Friends I made
XIV.    Terminals, Rates and Fares, and other Matters
XV.     Further Railway Legislation
XVI.    Belfast and the County Down Railway
XVII.   Belfast and the County Down (continued)
XVIII.  Railway Rates and Charges, the Block, the Brake, and Light
        Railways
XIX.    Golf, the Diamond King, and a Steam-boat Service
XX.     The Midland Great Western Railway of Ireland
XXI.    Ballinasloe Fair, Galway, and Sir George Findlay
XXII.   A Railway Contest, the Parcel Post, and the Board of Trade
XXIII.  "The Railway News," the International Railway Congress, and a
        Trip to Spain and Portugal
XXIV.   Tom Robertson, more about Light Railways, and the Inland Transit
        of Cattle
XXV.    Railway Amalgamation and Constantinople
XXVI.   A Congress at Paris, the Progress of Irish Lines, Egypt and the
        Nile
XXVII.  King Edward, a Change of Chairmen, and more Railway Legislation
XXVIII. Vice-Regal Commission on Irish Railways, 1906-1910, and the
        Future of Railways
XXIX.   The General Managers' Conference, Gooday's Dinner, and Divers
        Matters
XXX.    From Manager to Director
XXXI.   The Dominions' Royal Commission, the Railways of the Dominions,
        and Empire Development
XXXII.  Conclusion




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.


The Author
George Hudson, the "Railway King"
Sir James Allport
W. J. Wainwright
Edward John Cotton
Walter Bailey
Sir Ralph Cusack, D. L.
William Dargan
The Dargan Saloon
Sir George Findlay
Sir Theodore Martin
The Gresham Salver




CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY


North-West Donegal.  A fine afternoon in September.  The mountain ranges
were bathed in sunshine and the scarred and seamy face of stern old
Errigal seemed almost to smile.  A gentle breeze stirred the air and the
surface of the lakes lay shimmering in the soft autumnal light.  The blue
sky, flecked with white cloudlets, the purple of the heather, the dark
hues of the bogs, the varied greens of bracken, ferns and grass, the gold
of ripening grain, and the grey of the mountain boulders, together formed
a harmony of colour which charmed the eye and soothed the mind.

I had been travelling most of the day by railway through this delightful
country, not by an express that rushed you through the scenery with
breathless haste, but by an easy-going mixed train which called at every
station.  Sometimes its speed reached twenty-five miles an hour, but
never more, and because of numerous curves and gradients--for it was a
narrow gauge and more or less a surface line--the rate of progress was
much less during the greater part of the journey.

The work of the day was over.  My companion and I had dined at the
Gweedore Hotel, where we were staying for the night.  With the setting
sun the breeze had died away.  Perfect stillness and a silence deep,
profound and all-pervading reigned.  I had been talking, as an old
pensioner will talk, of byegone times, of my experiences in a long
railway career, and my companion, himself a rising railway man, seemed
greatly interested.  As we sauntered along, the conversation now and
again lapsing into a companionable silence, he suddenly said: "Why don't
you write your reminiscences?  They would be very interesting, not only
to us younger railway men, but to men of your own time too."  Until that
moment I had never seriously thought of putting my reminiscences on
record, but my friend's words fell on favourable ground, and now, less
than a month since that night in Donegal, I am sitting at my desk penning
these opening lines.

That my undertaking will not be an easy one I know.  My memory is well
stored, but unfortunately I have never kept a diary or commonplace book
of any kind.  On the contrary a love of order and neatness, carried to
absurd excess, has always led me to destroy accumulated letters or
documents, and much that would be useful now has in the past, from time
to time, been destroyed and "cast as rubbish to the void."

Most autobiographies, I suppose, are undertaken to please the writers.
That this is the case with me I frankly confess; but I hope that what I
find much pleasure in writing my readers may, at least, find some
satisfaction in reading.  Vanity, perhaps, plays some part in this hope,
for, "He that is pleased with himself easily imagines that he shall
please others."

Carlyle says, "A true delineation of the smallest man, and his scene of
pilgrimage through life, is capable of interesting the greatest man; that
all men are to an unspeakable degree brothers, each man's life a strange
emblem of every man's; and that human portraits, faithfully drawn, are of
all pictures the welcomest on human walls."

I am not sure that portraits of the artist by himself, though there are
notable and noble instances to the contrary, are often successful.  We
rarely "see oursels as ithers see us," and are inclined to regard our
virtues and our vices with equal equanimity, and to paint ourselves in
too alluring colours; but I will do my best to tell my tale with strict
veracity, and with all the modesty I can muster.

An autobiographer, too, exposes himself to the charge of egotism, but I
must run the risk of that, endeavouring to avoid the scathing criticism
of him who wrote:--

    "The egotist . . . . . . .
   Whose I's and Me's are scattered in his talk,
   Thick as the pebbles on a gravel walk."

Fifty years of railway life, passed in the service of various companies,
large and small, in England, Scotland and Ireland, in divers' capacities,
from junior clerk to general manager, and ultimately to the ease and
dignity of director, if faithfully presented, may perhaps, in spite of
all drawbacks, be not entirely devoid of interest.




CHAPTER II.
BOYHOOD


I was born at Sheffield, on Good Friday, in the year 1851, and my only
sister was born on a Christmas Day.

My father was in the service of the Midland Railway, as also were two of
his brothers, one of whom was the father of the present General Manager
of the Midland.  When I was but ten months old my father was promoted to
the position of accountants' inspector at headquarters and removed from
Sheffield to Derby.  Afterwards, whilst I was still very young, he became
Goods Agent at Birmingham, and lived there for a few years.  He then
returned to Derby, where he became head of the Mineral Office.  He
remained with the Midland until 1897, when he retired on superannuation
at the age of seventy-six.  Except, therefore, for an interval of about
three years my childhood and youth were spent at Derby.

My earliest recollection in connection with railways is my first railway
journey, which took place when I was four years of age.  I recollect it
well.  It was from Derby to Birmingham.  How the wonder of it all
impressed me!  The huge engine, the wonderful carriages, the imposing
guard, the busy porters and the bustling station.  The engine, no doubt,
was a pigmy, compared with the giants of to-day; the carriages were
small, modest four-wheelers, with low roofs, and diminutive windows after
the manner of old stage coaches, but to me they were palatial.  I
travelled first-class on a pass with my father, and great was my juvenile
pride.  Our luggage, I remember, was carried on the roof of the carriage
in the good old-fashioned coaching style.  Four-wheeled railway carriages
are, I was going to say, a thing of the past; but that is not so.  Though
gradually disappearing, many are running still, mainly on branch lines--in
England nearly five thousand; in Scotland over four hundred; and in poor
backward Ireland (where, by the way, railways are undeservedly abused)
how many?  Will it be believed--practically none, not more than twenty in
the whole island!  All but those twenty have been scrapped long ago.  Well
done Ireland!

From the earliest time I can remember, and until well-advanced in
manhood, I was delicate in health, troubled with a constant cough, thin
and pale.  In consequence I was often absent from school; and prevented
also from sharing, as I should, and as every child should, in out-door
games and exercises, to my great disadvantage then and since, for
proficiency is only gained by early training, and unfortunate is he whose
circumstances have deprived him of that advantage.  How often, since
those early days, have I looked with envious eyes on pastimes in which I
could not engage, or only engage with the consciousness of inferiority.

I have known men who, handicapped in this way, have in after life, by
strong will and great application, overcome their disabilities and become
good cricketers, great at tennis, proficient at golf, strong swimmers,
skilful shots; but they have been exceptional men with a strong natural
inclination to athletics.

The only active physical recreations in which I have engaged with any
degree of pleasure are walking, riding, bicycling and skating.  Riding I
took to readily enough as soon as I was able to afford it; and, if my
means had ever allowed indulgence in the splendid pastime of hunting, I
would have followed the hounds, not, I believe, without some spirit and
boldness.  My natural disposition I know inclined me to sedentary
pursuits: reading, writing, drawing, painting, though, happily, the
tendency was corrected to some extent by a healthy love of Nature's fair
features, and a great liking for country walks.

In drawing and painting, though I had a certain natural aptitude for
both, I never attained much proficiency in either, partly for lack of
instruction, partly from want of application, but more especially, I
believe, because another, more alluring, more mentally exciting
occupation beguiled me.  It was not music, though to music close allied.
This new-found joy I long pursued in secret, afraid lest it should be
discovered and despised as a folly.  It was not until I lived in
Scotland, where poetical taste and business talent thrive side by side,
and where, as Mr. Spurgeon said, "no country in the world produced so
many poets," that I became courageous, and ventured to avow my dear
delight.  It was there that I sought, with some success, publication in
various papers and magazines of my attempts at versification, for
versification it was that so possessed my fancy.  Of the spacious times
of great Elizabeth it has been written, "the power of action and the gift
of song did not exclude each other," but in England, in mid-Victorian
days, it was looked upon differently, or so at least I believed.

After a time I had the distinction of being included in a new edition of
_Recent and Living Scottish Poets_, by Alexander Murdoch, published in
1883.  My inclusion was explained on the ground that, "His muse first
awoke to conscious effort on Scottish soil," which, though not quite in
accordance with fact, was not so wide of the mark that I felt in the
least concerned to criticise the statement.  I was too much enamoured of
the honour to question the foundation on which it rested.  Perhaps it was
as well deserved as are some others of this world's distinctions!  At any
rate it was neither begged nor bought, but came "Like Dian's kiss,
unasked, unsought."  In the same year (1883) I also appeared in
_Edwards_' Sixth Series of _Modern Scottish Poets_; and in 1885, more
legitimately, in William Andrews' book on _Modern Yorkshire Poets_.  My
claim for this latter distinction was not, however, any greater, if as
great, as my right to inclusion in the collection of _Scottish Poets_.  If
I "lisped in numbers," it was not in Yorkshire, for Yorkshire I left for
ever before even the first babblings of babyhood began.  However,
"kissing goes by favour," and I was happy in the favour I enjoyed.

I may as well say it here: with my poetical productions I was never
satisfied any more than with my attempts at drawing.  My verses seemed
mere farthing dips compared with the resplendent poetry of our country
which I read and loved, but my efforts employed and brightened many an
hour in my youth that otherwise would have been tedious and dreary.

Ours was a large family, nine children in all; nothing unusual in those
days.  "A quiver full" was then a matter of parental pride.  Woman was
more satisfied with home life then than now.  The pursuit of pleasure was
not so keen.  Our parents and our grandparents were simpler in their
tastes, more easily amused, more readily impressed with the wonderful and
the strange.  Things that would leave us unmoved were to them matters of
moment.  Railways were new and railway travelling was, to most people, an
event.

Our fathers talked of their last journey to London, their visit to the
Tower, to Westminster Abbey, the Monument, Madame Tussauds; how they
mistook the waxwork policeman for a real member of the force; how they
shuddered in the _Chamber of Horrors_; how they travelled on the new
Underground Railway; and saw the wonders of the Crystal Palace,
especially on fireworks night.  They told us of their visit to the _Great
Eastern_, what a gigantic ship it was, what a marvel, and described its
every feature.  They talked of General Tom Thumb, of Blondin, of Pepper's
Ghost, of the Christy Minstrels.  Nowadays, a father will return from
London and not even mention the Tubes to his children.  Why should he?
They know all about them and are surprised at nothing.  The picture books
and the cinemas have familiarised them with every aspect of modern life.

In those days our pleasures and our amusements were fewer, but impressed
us more.  I remember how eagerly the coloured pictures of the Christmas
numbers of the pictorial papers were looked forward to, talked of,
criticised, admired, framed and hung up.  I remember too, the excitements
of Saint Valentine's Day, Shrove Tuesday, April Fool's Day, May Day and
the Morris (Molly) dancers; and the Fifth of November, Guy Fawkes Day.  I
remember also the peripatetic knife grinder and his trundling machine,
the muffin man, the pedlar and his wares, the furmity wheat vendor, who
trudged along with his welcome cry of "Frummitty!" from door to door.
Those were pleasant and innocent excitements.  We have other things to
engage us now, but I sometimes think all is not _gain_ that the march of
progress brings.

Young people then had fewer books to read, but read them thoroughly.  What
excitement and discussion attended the monthly instalments of Dickens'
novels in _All the Year Round_; how eagerly they were looked for.  Lucky
he or she who had heard the great _master_ read himself in public.  His
books were read in our homes, often aloud to the family circle by
paterfamilias, and moved us to laughter or tears.  I never now see our
young people, or their elders either, affected by an author as we were
then by the power of Dickens.  He was a new force and his pages kindled
in our hearts a vivid feeling for the poor and their wrongs.

Scott's _Waverley Novels_, too, aroused our enthusiasm.  In the early
sixties a cheap edition appeared, and cheap editions were rare things
then.  It was published, if I remember aright, at two shillings per
volume; an event that stirred the country.  My father brought each volume
home as it came out.  I remember it well; a pale, creamy-coloured paper
cover, good type, good paper.  What treasures they were, and only two
shillings!  I was a little child when an important movement for the
cheapening of books began.  In 1852 Charles Dickens presided at a meeting
of authors and others against the coercive regulations of the
Booksellers' Association which maintained their excessive profits.
Herbert Spencer and Miss Evans (George Eliot) took a prominent part in
this meeting and drafted the resolutions which were passed.  The ultimate
effect of this meeting was that the question between the authors and the
booksellers was referred to Lord Campbell as arbitrator.  He gave a
decision against the booksellers; and there were consequently abolished
such of the trade regulations as had interdicted the sale of books at
lower rates of profit than those authorised by the Booksellers'
Association.

Practically all my school days were spent at Derby.  As I have said, ours
was a large family.  I have referred to an only sister, but I had step-
sisters and step-brothers too.  My father married twice and the second
family was numerous.  His salary was never more than 300 pounds a year,
and though a prudent enough man, he was not of the frugal economical sort
who makes the most of every shilling.  It may be imagined, then, that all
the income was needed for a family that, parents included, but excluding
the one servant, numbered eleven.  The consequence was that the education
I received could not be described as liberal.  I attended a day school at
Derby, connected with the Wesleyans; why I do not know, as we belonged to
the Anglican Church; but I believe it was because the school, while cheap
as to fees, had the reputation of giving a good, plain education suitable
for boys destined for railway work.  It was a good sized school of about
a hundred boys.  Not long ago I met one day in London a business man who,
it turned out, was at this school with me.  We had not met for fifty
years.  "Well," said he, "I think old Jessie, if he did not teach us a
great variety of things, what he did he taught well."  My new-found old
schoolmate had become the financial manager of a great business house
having ramifications throughout the world.  He had attained to position
and wealth and, which successful men sometimes are not, was quite
unspoiled.  We revived our schooldays with mutual pleasure, and lunched
together as befitted the occasion.

"Jessie" was the name by which our old schoolmaster was endeared to his
boys; a kindly, simple-minded, worthy man, teaching, as well as
scholastic subjects, behaviour, morals, truth, loyalty; and these as much
by example as by precept, impressing ever upon us the virtue of
thoroughness in all we did and of truth in all we said.  Since those days
I have seen many youths, educated at much finer and more pretentious
schools, who have benefited by modern educational methods, and on whose
education much money has been expended, and who, when candidates for
clerkships, have, in the simple matters of reading, writing, arithmetic,
composition and spelling, shown up very poorly compared to what almost
any boy from "old Jessie's" unambitious establishment would have done.
But, plain and substantial as my schooling was, I have ever felt that I
was defrauded of the better part of education--the classics, languages,
literature and modern science, which furnish the mind and extend the
boundaries of thought.

"Jessie" continued his interest in his boys long after they left school.
He was proud of those who made their way.  I remember well the warmth of
his greeting and the kind look of his mild blue eyes when, after I had
gone out into the world, I sometimes revisited him.

But my school life was not all happiness.  In the school there was an
almost brutal element of roughness, and fights were frequent; not only in
our own, but between ours and neighbouring schools.  Regular pitched
battles were fought with sticks and staves and stones.  I shrunk from
fighting but could not escape it.  Twice in our own playground I was
forced to fight.  Every new boy had to do it, sooner or later.
Fortunately on the second occasion I came off victor, much to my
surprise.  How I managed to beat my opponent I never could understand.
Anyhow the victory gave me a better standing in the school, though it did
not lessen in the least my hatred of the battles that raged periodically
with other schools.  I never had to fight again except as an unwilling
participant in our foreign warfare.




CHAPTER III.
THE MIDLAND RAILWAY AND "KING HUDSON"


In the year 1851 the Midland Railway was 521 miles long; it is now 2,063.
Then its capital was 15,800,000, against 130,000,000 pounds to-day.  Then
the gross revenue was 1,186,000 and now it has reached 15,960,000 pounds.
When I say _now_, I refer to 1913, the year prior to the war, as since
then, owing to Government control, non-division of through traffic and
curtailment of accounts, the actual receipts earned by individual
companies are not published, and, indeed, are not known.

Eighteen hundred and fifty-one was a period of anxiety to the Midland and
to railway companies generally.  Financial depression had succeeded a
time of wild excitement, and the Midland dividend had fallen from seven
to two per cent.!  It was the year of the great Exhibition, which Lord
Cholmondeley considered _the_ event of modern times and many
over-sanguine people expected it to inaugurate a universal peace.  On the
other hand Carlyle uttered fierce denunciations against it.  It certainly
excited far more interest than has any exhibition since.  Then, nothing
of the kind had ever before been seen.  Railway expectations ran high;
immense traffic receipts, sorely needed, ought to have swelled the
coffers of the companies.  But no! vast numbers of people certainly
travelled to London, but a mad competition, as foolish almost as the
preceding _mania_, set in, and passenger fares were again and again
reduced, till expected profits disappeared and loss and disappointment
were the only result.  The policy of Parliament in encouraging the
construction of rival railway routes and in fostering competition in the
supposed interest of the public was, even in those early days, bearing
fruit--dead sea fruit, as many a luckless holder of railway stock learned
to his cost.

Railway shareholders throughout the kingdom were growing angry.  In the
case of the Midland--they appointed a committee of inquiry, and the
directors assented to the appointment.  This committee was to examine and
report upon the general and financial conditions of the company, and was
invested with large powers.

About the same time also interviews took place between the Midland and
the London and North-Western, with the object of arranging an
amalgamation of the two systems.  Some progress was made, but no formal
_engagement_ resulted, and so a very desirable union, between an
aristocratic bridegroom and a democratic bride, remained unaccomplished.

Mr. Ellis was chairman of the Midland at this time and Mr. George Carr
Glyn, afterwards the first Lord Wolverton, occupied a similar position on
the Board of the London and North-Western.  Mr. Ellis had succeeded Mr.
Hudson--the "_Railway King_," so christened by Sydney Smith.  Mr. Hudson
in 1844 was chairman of the first shareholders' meeting of the Midland
Railway.  Prior to that date the Midland consisted of three separate
railways.  In 1849 Mr. Hudson presided for the last time at a Midland
meeting, and in the following year resigned his office of chairman of the
company.

The story of the meteoric reign of the "_Railway King_" excited much
interest when I was young, and it may not be out of place to touch upon
some of the incidents of his career.

George Hudson was born in 1800, served his apprenticeship in the
cathedral city of York and subsequently became a linendraper there and a
man of property.

Many years afterwards he is reported to have said that the happiest days
of his life passed while he stood behind his counter using the yardstick,
a statement which should perhaps only be accepted under reservation.  He
was undoubtedly a man of a bold and adventurous spirit, possessed of an
ambition which soared far above the measuring of calicoes or the
retailing of ribbons; but perhaps the observation was tinged by the
environment of later and less happy days when his star had set, his
kingly reign come to an end, and when possibly vain regrets had
embittered his existence.  It was, I should imagine, midst the fierceness
of the strife and fury of the _mania_ times, when his powerful
personality counted for so much, that he reached the zenith of his
happiness.

[George Hudson: hudson.jpg]

Whilst conducting in York his linendraper business, a relation died and
left him money.  The railway boom had then begun.  He flung his yardstick
behind him and entered the railway fray.  The Liverpool and Manchester
line and its wonderful success--it paid ten per cent.--greatly impressed
the public mind, and the good people of York determined they would have a
railway to London.

A committee was appointed to carry out the project.  On this committee
Mr. Hudson was placed, and it was mainly owing to his energy and skill
that the scheme came to a successful issue.  He was rewarded by being
made chairman of the company.

This was his entrance into the railway world where, for a time, he was
monarch.  He must have been a man of shrewdness and capacity.  It is
recorded that he acquired the land for the York to London railway at an
average cost of 1,750 pounds per mile whilst that of the North Midland
cost over 5,000 pounds.

On the 1st July, 1840, this linendraper of York had the proud pleasure of
seeing the first train from York to London start on its journey.

From this achievement he advanced to others.  He and his friends obtained
the lease, for thirty-one years, of a rival line, which turned out a
great financial success.  His enterprise and energy were boundless.

It is said that his bold spirit, his capacity for work and his great
influence daunted his most determined opponents.  For instance, the North
Midland railway, part predecessor of _the_ Midland, was involved in
difficulty.  He appeared before the shareholders, offered, if his advice
and methods were adopted, to guarantee double the then dividend.  His
offer was accepted and he was made chairman, and from that position
became chairman, and for a time dictator, of the amalgamated Midland
system.  Clearly his business abilities were great; his reforms were bold
and drastic, and success attended his efforts.  He soon became the
greatest railway authority in England.  For a time the entire railway
system in the north was under his control, and the confidence reposed in
him was unbounded.  He was the lion of the day: princes, peers and
prelates, capitalists and fine ladies sought his society, paid homage to
his power, besought his advice and lavished upon him unstinted adulation.

In 1845 the railway mania was at its height.  It is said that during two
or three months of that year as much as 100,000 pounds per week were
expended in advertisements in connection with railway promotions, railway
meetings and railway matters generally.  Scarcely credible this, but so
it is seriously stated.  Huge sums were wasted in the promotion and
construction of British railways in early days, from which, in their
excessive capital cost, they suffer now.  In the _mania_ period railways
sprang into existence so quickly that, to use the words of Robert
Stephenson, they "appeared like the realisation of fabled powers or the
magician's wand."  The _Illustrated London News_ of the day said:
"Railway speculation has become the sole object of the world--cupidity is
aroused and roguery shields itself under its name, as a more safe and
rapid way of gaining its ends.  Abroad, as well as at home, has it proved
the rallying point of all rascality--the honest man is carried away by
the current and becomes absorbed in the vortex; the timid, the quiet, the
moral are, after some hesitation, caught in the whirlpool and follow
those whom they have watched with pity and derision."

Powers were granted by Parliament in the year 1845 to construct no less
than 2,883 miles of new railway at an expenditure of about 44,000,000
pounds; and in the next year (1846) applications were made to Parliament
for authority to raise 389,000,000 pounds for the construction of further
lines.  These powers were granted to the extent of 4,790 miles at a cost
of about 120,000,000 pounds.

Soon there came a change; disaster followed success; securities fell;
dividends diminished or disappeared altogether or, as was in some cases
discovered, were paid out of capital, and disappointment and ruin
followed.  King Hudson's methods came under a fierce fire of criticism;
adulation was succeeded by abuse and he was disgraced and dethroned.  A
writer of the day said, "Mr. Hudson is neither better nor worse than the
morality of his time."  From affluence he came to want, and in his old
age a fund was raised sufficient to purchase him an annuity of 600 pounds
a year.

About this time, that most useful Institution the Railway Clearing House
received Parliamentary sanction.  The _Railway Clearing System Act_ 1850
gave it statutory recognition.  Its functions have been defined thus: "To
settle and adjust the receipts arising from railway traffic within, or
partly within, the United Kingdom, and passing over more than one railway
within the United Kingdom, booked or invoiced at throughout rates of
fares."  The system had then been in existence, in a more or less
informal way, for about eight years.  Mr. Allport, on one occasion, said
that whilst he was with the Birmingham and Derby railway (before he
became general manager of the Midland) the process of settlement of
receipts for through traffic was tedious and difficult, and it occurred
to him that a system should be adopted similar to that which existed in
London and was known as the Bankers' Clearing House.  It was also said
that Mr. Kenneth Morrison, Auditor of the London and Birmingham line, was
the first to see and proclaim the necessity for a Clearing House.  Be
that as it may, the Railway Clearing House, as a practical entity, came
into being in 1842.  In the beginning it only embraced nine companies,
and six people were enough to do its work.  The companies were:--

   London and Birmingham, Midland Counties, Birmingham and Derby, North
   Midland, Leeds and Selby, York and North Midland, Hull and Selby,
   Great North of England, Manchester and Leeds.

Not one of these has preserved its original name.  All have been merged
in either the London and North-Western, the North-Eastern, the Midland or
the Lancashire and Yorkshire.

At the present day the Clearing House consists of practically the whole
of the railway companies in the United Kingdom, though some of the small
and unimportant lines are outside its sphere.  Ireland has a Railway
Clearing House of its own--established in the year 1848--to which
practically all Irish railway companies, and they are numerous, belong;
and the six principal Irish railways are members of the London Clearing
House.

The English house, situated in Seymour Street, Euston Square, is an
extensive establishment, and accommodates 2,500 clerks.  As I write, the
number under its roof is, by war conditions, reduced to about 900.
Serving with His Majesty's Forces are nearly 1,200, and about 400 have
been temporarily transferred to the railway companies, to the Government
service and to munition factories.

In 1842, when the Clearing House first began, the staff, as I have said,
numbered six, and the companies nine.  Fifty-eight railway companies now
belong to the House, and the amount of money dealt with by way of
division and apportionment in the year before the war was 31,071,910
pounds.  In 1842 it was 193,246 pounds.




CHAPTER IV.
FASHIONS AND MANNERS, VICTORIAN DAYS


The boy who is strong and healthy, overflowing with animal spirits,
enjoys life in a way that is denied to his slighter-framed, more delicate
brother.  Exercise imparts to him a physical exuberance to which the
other is a stranger.  But Nature is kind.  If she withholds her gifts in
one direction she bestows them in another.  She grants the enjoyment of
sedentary pursuits to those to whom she has denied hardier pleasures.

During my schooldays I spent many happy hours alone with book or pen or
pencil.  My father was fond of reading, and for a man of his limited
means, possessed a good collection of books; a considerable number of the
volumes of _Bohn's Standard Library_ as well as _Boswell's Life of
Johnson, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Butler's Hudibras, Bailey's
Festus, Gil Blas, Don Quixote, Pilgrim's Progress, the Arabian Nights,
Shakespeare_, most of the poets from _Chaucer_ down; and of novels,
_Bulwer Lytton's, Scott's, Dickens_' and _Thackeray's_.  These are the
books I best remember, but there were others of classic fame, and I read
them all; but not, I fear to much advantage, for though I have read many
books it has been without much method, just as fancy led, and study,
memory and judgment have been little considered.  Still, unsystematic
reading is better than no reading, and, as someone has said, "a phrase
may fructify if it falls on receptive soil."

I never in my boyhood or youth, except on short visits to relatives,
enjoyed the advantage, by living in the country, of becoming intimate
with rural life.  We resided at Derby in a terrace on the outskirt of the
town, much to my dislike, for monotonous rows of houses I have ever
hated.  One's home should be one's friend and possess some special
feature of its own, even in its outward aspect, to love and remember.  As
George Eliot says: "We get the fonder of our houses if they have a
physiognomy of their own, as our friends have."

In my schooldays, country walks, pursued as far as health and strength
allowed, were my greatest pleasure, sometimes taken alone, sometimes with
a companion.  The quiet valley of the Trent at Repton, Anchor Church,
Knoll Hills, the long bridge at Swarkestone, the charming little country
town of Melbourne, the wooded beauties of Duffield and Belper, the ozier
beds of Spondon; how often have I trod their fields, their woods, their
lanes, their paths; and how pleasantly the memory of it all comes back to
me now!

In those days fashions and manners differed greatly from those of to-day.
Ladies wore the crinoline (successor to the hoop of earlier times),
chignons and other absurdities, but had not ventured upon short skirts or
cigarettes.  They were much given to blushing, now a lost art; and to
swooning, a thing of the past; the "vapours" of the eighteenth century
had, happily, vanished for ever; but athletic exercises, such as girls
enjoy to-day, were then undreamed of.  Why has the pretty art of blushing
gone?  One now never sees a blush to mantle on the cheek of beauty.  Does
the blood of feminine youth flow steadier than it did, or has the more
unrestrained intercourse of the sexes banished the sweet consciousness
that so often brought the crimson to a maiden's face?  The manners of
maidens had more of reserve and formality then.  The off-hand style, the
nod of the head, the casual "how d'ye do," were unknown.  Woman has not
now the same desire to appear always graceful; she adopts a manly gait,
talks louder, plays hockey, rides horseback astride, and boldly enters
hotel smoking rooms and railway smoking compartments without apology.

When walking with a lady, old or young, in those days, the gentleman
would offer his arm and she would take it.  The curtsey was still
observed but gradually disappearing.  When about nineteen years of age, I
remember being introduced to one of the young beauties of the town, who I
had long secretly admired.  She made me a profound and graceful
curtsey--feminine homage to my budding manhood.  The first curtsey I
remember receiving, except of course in the stately ceremonies of the
dance.  For many a day afterwards my cheek glowed with pleasure at the
recollection of that sweet obeisance.  She became my sweetheart,
temporarily; but a born butterfly, she soon fluttered away, leaving me
disconsolate--_for a time_!

Women then wrote a sloping hand, delicate penmanship, to distinguish them
from men; crossed and re-crossed their letters, and were greatly addicted
to postscripts.

The men?  Well, they wore mutton chop whiskers, or, if Nature was
bountiful, affected the Dundreary style, which gave a man great
distinction, and, if allied to good looks, made him perfectly
irresistible.  They wore "Champagne Charley" coats, fancy waistcoats,
frilled-fronted shirts, relic of the lace and ruffles of Elizabeth's
days; velvet smoking caps, embroidered slippers, elastic-side boots and
chimney pot hats.

At eighteen years of age I had my first frock coat and tall hat.  Some of
my companions, happy youths! enjoyed this distinction at sixteen or
seventeen.  These adornments were of course for Sunday wear; no weekday
clothes were worn on Sundays then.  My frock coat was of West of England
broadcloth, shiny and smooth.  Sunday attire was incomplete without light
kid gloves, lavender or lemon being the favourite shade for a young man
with any pretension to style.

Next in importance to my first frock coat ranked my first portmanteau; it
was a present, and supplanted the carpet bag which, up to then, to my
profound disgust, I had to use on visits to my relatives.  The
portmanteau was the sign of youth and progress; old-fashioned people
stuck to the carpet bag.

Man's attire has changed for the better; and woman's, with all its
abbreviations and shortcomings, is, on the whole, more rational; though
in the domain of Fashion her _vagaries_ will last no doubt as long
as--woman is woman; and if ever that shall cease to be, the charm of life
will be over.

With man the jacket suit, the soft hat, the soft shirt, the turn-down
collar, mark the transition from starch and stiffness to ease and
comfort; and Time in his course has brought no greater boon than this;
except, perhaps, the change that marks our funeral customs.  In those
days, hatbands, gloves and scarves were provided by the bereaved family
to the relatives and friends who attended the obsequies; and all of
kinship close or remote, were invited from far and near.  Hearse and
coaches and nodding plumes and mutes added to the expense, and many a
family of moderate means suffered terrible privation from the costliness
of these burial customs, which, happily, now are fast disappearing.

Beds, in those days, were warmed with copper warming pans, and nightcaps
adorned the slumbering heads of both sexes.  Spittoons were part of
ordinary household furniture.  To colour a meerschaum was the ambition of
smokers, swearing was considered neither low nor vulgar, and snuffing was
fashionable.  Many most respectable men chewed tobacco, and to carry
one's liquor well was a gentlemanly accomplishment.

Garrotters pursued their calling, deterred only by the cat-o'-nine tails,
pickpockets abounded and burglaries were common.

The antimacassar and the family album; in what veneration they were held!
The antimacassar, as its name implies, was designed to protect chairs and
couches from the disfiguring stains of macassar oil, then liberally used
in the adornment of the hair which received much attention.  A parting,
of geometrical precision, at the back of the head was often affected by
men of dressy habits, who sometimes also wore a carefully arranged curl
at the front; and manly locks, if luxuriant enough, were not infrequently
permitted to fall in careless profusion over the collar of the coat.

Of the family album I would rather not speak.  It is scarcely yet
extinct.  A respectable silence shall accompany its departing days.

Perhaps these things may to some appear mere trivialities; but to recall
them awakens many memories, brings back thoughts of bygone days--days
illumined with the sunshine of Youth and Hope on which it is pleasant to
linger.  As someone has finely said: "We lose a proper sense of the
richness of life if we do not look back on the scenes of our youth with
imagination and warmth."




CHAPTER V.
EARLY OFFICE LIFE


In the year 1867, at the age of sixteen, I became a junior clerk in the
Midland Railway at Derby, at a salary of 15 pounds a year.

From pre-natal days I was destined for the railway service, as an oyster
to its shell.  The possibility of any other vocation for his sons never
entered the mind of my father, nor the mind of many another father in the
town of Derby.

My railway life began on a drizzling dismal day in the early autumn.  My
father took me to the office in which I was to make a start and presented
me to the chief clerk.  I was a tall, thin, delicate, shy, sensitive
youth, with curly hair, worn rather long, and I am sure I did not look at
all a promising specimen for encountering the rough and tumble of railway
work.

The chief clerk handed me over to one of his assistants, who without
ceremony seated me on a tall stool at a high desk, and put before me, to
my great dismay, a huge pile of formidable documents which he called _Way
Bills_.  He gave me some instructions, but I was too confused to
understand them, and too shy to ask questions.  I only know that I felt
very miserable and hopelessly at sea.  Visions of being dismissed as an
incompetent rose before me; but soon, to my great relief, it was
discovered that the Way Bills were too much for me and that I must begin
at more elementary duties.

A few weeks afterwards, when I had found my feet a little, I was promoted
from the simple tasks assigned to me in consequence of my first failure
and attached to the goods-train-delays clerk, a long-bearded elderly man
with a very kind face.  He was quite fatherly to me and took a great deal
of trouble in teaching me my work.  With him I soon felt at ease, and was
happy in gaining his approbation.  One thing found favour in his eyes; I
wrote a good clear hand and at fair speed.  In those days penmanship was
a fine art.  No cramped or sprawling writing passed muster.  Typewriting
was not dreamed of, and, at Derby, shorthand had not appeared on the
scene.

One or two other juniors and myself sedulously practised imitating the
penmanship of those senior clerks who wrote fine or singular hands.  At
this I was particularly successful and proud of my skill, until one day
the chief clerk detained me after closing time, gave me a good rating,
and warned me to stop such a dangerous habit which might lead, he said,
to the disgrace of forgery.  He spoke so seriously and shook his head so
wisely that (to use Theodore Hook's old joke) "I thought there must be
something in it," and so, for a long while, I gave up the practice.

Office hours in those days were nominally from nine till six, but for the
juniors especially often much longer.  In 1868 or 1869, 1 do not remember
which, a welcome change took place; the hours were reduced to from nine
till five, and arrangements made for avoiding late hours for the juniors.
This early closing was the result of an "appeal unto Caesar."  The
clerical staff in all the offices had combined and presented a petition
in the highest quarter.  The boon was granted, and I remember the wave of
delight that swept over us, and how we enjoyed the long summer evenings.
It was in the summer time the change took place.

Combined action amongst railway employees was not common then, not even
in the wage-earning class, but Trade Unionism, scarcely yet legalised,
was clamouring for recognition.  Strikes sometimes occurred but were not
frequent.

In 1867 Mr. James Allport was general manager of the Midland Railway, Mr.
Thomas Walklate the goods manager and Mr. William Parker head of the
department in which I began my railway life.  Ned Farmer was a notable
Midland man at that time; notable for his bucolic appearance, his genial
personality, and, most of all, for the well-known songs he wrote.  He was
in charge of the company's horses, bought them, fed them, cared for them.
He was a big-bodied, big-hearted, ruddy-faced, farmerlike man of fifty or
so; and the service was proud of him.  He had a great sense of humour and
used to tell many an amusing story.  One morning, he told us, he had been
greatly tickled by a letter which he had received from one of his
inspectors whose habit it was to conclude every letter and report with
the words "to oblige."  The letter ran: "Dear Sir, I beg to inform you
that Horse No. 99 died last night to oblige Yours truly, John Smith."  He
wrote the fine poem of "_Little Jim_," which everyone knew, and which
almost every boy and girl could recite.  His then well-known song, "_My
old Wife's a good old cratur_," was very popular and was sung throughout
the Midlands.  The publication of his poems and songs was attended with
great success.  His Muse was simple, homely, humorous, pathetic and
patriotic, and made a strong appeal to the natural feelings of ordinary
folk.  Often it was inspired by incidents and experiences in his daily
life.  His desk was in the same office as that in which I worked, and I
was very proud of the notice he took of me, and grateful for many
kindnesses he showed to me.

After spending twelve months or so in Mr. Parker's office, I was removed
to another department.  The office to which I was assigned had about
thirty clerks, all of whom, except the chief clerk, occupied tall stools
at high desks.

I was one of two assistants to a senior clerk.  This senior was middle-
aged, and passing rich on eighty pounds a year.  A quiet, steady,
respectable married man, well dressed, cheerful, contented, he had by
care and economy, out of his modest salary, built for himself a snug
little double-breasted villa, in a pleasant outskirt of the town, where
he spent his spare hours in his garden and enjoyed a comfortable and
happy life.

Except the chief clerk, whose salary was about 160 pounds, I do not
believe there was another whose pay exceeded 100 pounds a year.  The real
head of the office, or _department_ it was called, was not the chief
clerk but one who ranked higher still and was styled _Head of
Department_, and he received a salary of about 300 pounds.  Moderate
salaries prevailed, but the sovereign was worth much more then than now,
while wants were fewer.  Beer was threepence the pint and tobacco
threepence the ounce, and beer we drank but never whiskey or wine; and
pipes we smoked but not cigars.

This chief clerk was an amiable rather ladylike person, with small hands
and feet and well-arranged curly hair.  He was quick and clever and work
sat lightly upon him.  Quiet and good natured, when necessity arose he
never failed to assert his authority.  We all respected him.  His young
wife was pretty and pleasant, which was in his favour too.

The office was by no means altogether composed of steady specimens of
clerkdom, but had a large admixture of lively sparks who, though they
would never set the Thames on fire, brightened and enlivened our
surroundings.

There was one, a literary genius, who had entered the service, I believe
by influence, for influence and patronage were in those days not unknown.
He wrote in his spare time the pantomime for a Birmingham theatre; and
there constantly fluttered from his desk and circulated through the
office, little scraps of paper containing quips and puns and jokes in
prose or verse, or acrostics from his prolific pen.  One clever acrostic
upon the office boy, which has always remained in my memory, I should
like for its delicate irony (worthy of Swift himself) to reproduce; but
as that promising youth may still be in the service I feel I had better
not, as irony sometimes wounds.  For some time we had in the office an
Apollo--a very Belvidere.  He was a glory introduced into railway life by
I know not what influence and disappeared after a time I know not where
or why.  A marvel of manly strength and grace and beauty, thirty years of
age or so, and faultlessly dressed.  Said to be aristocratically
connected, he was the admiration of all and the darling of the young
ladies of Derby.  He lodged in fashionable apartments, smoked expensive
cigars, attended all public amusements, was affable and charming, but
reticent about himself.  Why he ever came amongst us none ever knew; it
was a mystery we never fathomed.  He left as he came, a mystery still.

There was an oldish clerk whom we nicknamed _Gumpots_.  This bore some
resemblance to his surname, but there were other reasons which led to the
playful designation and which I think justified it.

There was another scribe of quite an elegant sort: a perambulating
tailor's dummy; a young man, well under thirty.  He was good-looking, as
far as regularity of features and a well-formed figure went, but mentally
not much to boast of.  He lounged about the station platform and the town
displaying his faultlessly fitting fashionable clothes.  They always
looked new, and as his salary was not more than 70 pounds a year, and his
parents, with whom he lived, were poor, the story that he was provided
gratis by an enterprising tailor in town with these suits, on condition
that he exhibited himself constantly in public, and told whenever he
could who was his outfitter, received general credence, and I believe was
true.  He was never known to hurry, mingled little with men and less with
women, but moved along in a stiff tailor-dummy fashion with a sort of
self-conscious air which seemed to say, "Look at my figure and my
clothes, how stylish they are!"

I remember a senior clerk in the office where I first worked to whom
there was a general aversion.  He was the only clerk who was really
disliked, for all the others, old or young, serious or gay, steady or
rackety, had each some pleasant quality.  This unfortunate fellow had
none.  He was small, mean, cunning, a sneak and a mischief maker.  He
carried tales, told lies, and tried to make trouble, for no reason but to
gratify his inclinations.  He was a dark impish looking fellow, as lean
as Cassius and as crafty and envious as Iago.  The chief clerk, to his
credit be it said, gave a deaf ear to his tales, and his craft and
cunning obtained him little beyond our detestation.

In our own office about half our number were youths and single men and
about half were married.  Our youngest benedict was not more than
eighteen years of age, and his salary only 45 pounds a year.  On this
modest income for a time the young couple lived.  It was a runaway match;
on the girl's part an elopement from school.  They lived in apartments,
kept by an old lady, a widow who, being a woman, loved a bit of romance,
and was very kind to them.  He was a manly young fellow, a sportsman and
renowned at cricket, and she was amiable and pretty, a little blonde
beauty.  The parents were well to do, and in due time forgave the
imprudent match.  At this we all rejoiced for he was a general favourite.

Looking back now it seems to me the office staff was in some ways a
curious collection and very different to the clerks of to-day.  Many of
them had not entered railway life until nearly middle-age and they had
not assimilated as an office staff does now, when all join as youths and
are brought up together.  They were original, individual, not to say
eccentric.  Whilst our office included certain steady married clerks, who
worked hard and lived ordinary middle-class respectable lives, and some
few bachelors of quiet habit, the rest were a lively set indeed, by no
means free from inclinations to coarse conviviality and many of them
spendthrift, reckless and devil-may-care.  At pay-day, which occurred
monthly, most of these merry wights, after receiving their pay, betook
themselves to the _Midland Tap_ or other licensed house and there
indulged, for the remainder of the afternoon, in abundant beer, pouring
down glass after glass; in Charles Lamb's inimitable words: "the second
to see where the first has gone, the third to see no harm happens to the
second, a fourth to say there is another coming, and a fifth to say he is
not sure he is the last."  Some of the merriest of them would not return
to the office that day but extend their carouse far into the night; to
sadly realise next day that it was "the morning after the night before."

I do not think our ladylike chief clerk ever indulged in these orgies,
but I never knew more than the mildest remonstrance being made by him or
by anyone in authority.

Pay-day was also the time for squaring accounts.  "The human species,"
Charles Lamb says, "is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow
and the men who lend."  This was true of our office, but no equal
division prevailed as the borrowers predominated and the lenders, the
prudent, were a small minority.  A general settlement took place monthly,
after which a new period began--by the borrowers with joyous unconcern.
"Take no thought for the morrow" was a maxim dear to the heart of these
knights of the pen.

Swearing, as I have said, was not considered low or vulgar or unbecoming
a gentleman.  There was a senior clerk of some standing and position, a
married man of thirty-five or forty years of age, who gloried in it.  His
expletives were varied, vivid and inexhaustible, and the turbid stream
was easily set flowing.  Had he lived a century earlier he might have
been put in the stocks for his profanity, a punishment which magistrates
were then, by Act of Parliament, empowered to inflict.  He was a strange
individual.  _Long Jack_ he was called.  He is not in this world now so I
may write of him with freedom.

No one's enemy but his own, he was kindly, good-natured, generous to a
fault, but devil-may-care and reckless; and, at any one's expense, or at
any cost to himself, would have his fling and his joke.

It was from his lankiness and length of limb that he was called "_Long
Jack_."  He stood about six feet six in his boots.  He must have had
means of his own, as he lived in a way far beyond the reach of even a
senior clerk of the first degree.  How he came to be in a railway office,
or, being in, retained his place, was a matter of wonder.  Sad to tell,
he had a little daughter, five or six years of age; his only child, a
sweet, blue-eyed golden-haired little fairy, who, never corrected,
imitated her father's profanity, and apparently to his great delight.  He
treated it as a joke, as he treated everything.  _Long Jack_ loved to
scandalise the town by his eccentricities.  He would compound with the
butcher, to drive his fast trotting horse and trap and deliver their
joints, their steaks and kidneys to astonished customers, or arrange with
the milkman to dispense the early morning milk, donning a milkman's
smock, and carrying two milk-pails on foot.  I remember one _Good Friday_
morning when he perambulated the town with a donkey cart and sold, at an
early hour, hot cross buns at the houses of his friends, afterwards
gleefully boasting of having made a good profit on the morning's
business.  In the sixties and early seventies throughout the clerical
staff of the Midland Railway were many who had not been brought up as
clerks, who, somehow or other had drifted into the service, whose early
avocations had been of various kinds, and whose appearance, habits and
manners imparted a picturesqueness to office life which does not exist to-
day, and among these.  _Long Jack_ was a prominent, but despite his
joviality, it seems to me a pathetic figure.




CHAPTER VI.
FRIENDSHIP


Delicate health, as I have said, was my lot from childhood.  After about
eighteen months of office work I had a long and serious illness and was
away from duty for nearly half a year.  The latter part of the time I
spent in the Erewash Valley, at the house of an uncle who lived near Pye
Bridge.  I was then under eighteen, growing fast, and when convalescing
the country life and country air did me lasting good.  Though a colliery
district the valley is not devoid of rural beauty; to me it was pleasant
and attractive and I wandered about at will.

One day I had a curious experience.  In my walk I came across the
Cromford Canal where it enters a tunnel that burrows beneath coal mines.
At the entrance to the tunnel a canal barge lay.  The bargees asked would
I like to go through with them?  "How long is it?" said I, and "how long
will it take?"  "Not long," said bargee, "come on!"  "Right!" said I.  The
tunnel just fitted the barge, scarcely an inch to spare; the roof was so
low that a man lying on his back on a plank placed athwart the vessel,
with his feet against the roof, propelled the boat along.  This was the
only means of transit and our progress was slow and dreary.  It was a
journey of Cimmerian darkness; along a stream fit for Charon's boat.
About halfway a halt was made for dinner, but I had none.  Although I was
cold and hungry the bargees' hospitality did not include a share of their
bread and cheese but they gave me a drink of their beer.  The tunnel is
two miles long, and was drippingly wet.  Several hours passed before we
emerged, not into sunshine but into the open, under a clouded sky and
heavy rain which had succeeded a bright forenoon.  I was nearly five
miles from my uncle's house, lightly clad, hungry and tired.  To my
friends ever since I have not failed to recommend the passage of the
Butterley tunnel as a desirable pleasure excursion.

When I returned to work my health was greatly improved and a small
advancement in my position in the office made the rest of my time at
Derby more agreeable, though, to tell the truth, I often jibbed at the
drudgery of the desk and the monotony of writing pencilled-out letters
which was now my daily task.  Set tasks, dull routine, monotonous duty I
ever hated.

About this time shorthand was introduced into the railway.  A public
teacher of Pitman's phonography had established himself in Derby, and the
Midland engaged him to conduct classes for the junior clerks.  It was not
compulsory to attend the classes, but inducements to do so were held out.
A special increase of salary was promised to those who attained a certain
proficiency, and a further reward was offered; the two clerks who earned
most marks and, in the teacher's opinion, reached the highest
proficiency, were to be appointed assistants to the teacher and paid
eight shillings weekly during future shorthand sessions, in addition to
the special increase of salary.  It was a great prize and keen was the
contest.  I had the good fortune to be one of the two; and the praise I
got, and the benefit of the money made me contented for a time.  My
companion in this success, I am glad to know, is to-day alive and well,
and like myself, a superannuated member of society.  In his day he was a
notable athlete, at one time bicycling champion of the Midland counties;
and his prowess was won on the obsolete velocipede, with its one great
wheel in front and a very small wheel behind.

A shorthand writer, my work was now to take down letters from dictation,
a remove only for the better from the old way of writing from pencilled
drafts.

Now it was that I made my first sincere and lasting friendship, a
friendship true and deep, but which was destined to last for only ten
short years.  Tom was never robust and Death's cold hand closed all too
soon a loveable and useful life.  Our friendship was close and intimate,
such as is formed in the warmth of youth and which the grave alone
dissolves.  To me, during those short years, it lent brightness and
gaiety to existence; and, in the days that have followed, its memory has
been, and is now, a rich possession.

With both Tom and me it was friendship at first sight, and nothing until
the final severance came ever disturbed its course.  He came from Lincoln
and joined the office I was in.  He was two years my senior and had the
advantage of several years' experience in station work which I had not.
We were much alike in our tastes and habits, yet there was enough of
difference between us to impart a relish to our friendship.  Indifferent
health, for he was delicate too, was one of the bonds between us.  We
were both fond of reading, of quiet walks and talks, and we hated crowds.
He was a good musician, played the piano; but the guitar was the
favourite accompaniment to his voice, a clear sweet tenor, and he sang
well.  I was not so susceptible to the "concord of sweet sounds" as he
was, but could draw a little, paint a little, string rhymes together; and
so we never failed to amuse and interest each other.  He was impulsive,
clever, quick of temper, ingenuous, and indignant at any want of truth or
candour in others; generous to a fault and tender hearted as a woman.  I
was more patient than he, slower in wrath, yet we sometimes quarrelled
over trifles but, like lovers, were quickly reconciled; and after these
little explosions always better friends than ever.

At Derby, for three years or so, we were inseparable.  What walks we had,
what talks, "what larks, Pip!"  Dickens we adored.  How we talked of him
and his books!  How we longed to hear him read, but his public readings
had ended, his voice for ever become mute and a nation mourned the loss
of one who had moved it to laughter and to tears.  Tom had a wonderful
memory.  He would recite page after page from _Pickwick, David
Copperfield, Barnaby Rudge_ or _Great Expectations_, as well as from
_Shakespeare_ and our favourite poets.  He was fond of the pathetic, but
the humorous moved him most, and his lively gifts were welcome wherever
we went.

Our favourite walk on Saturday afternoons was to the pleasant village of
Kedleston, some five miles from Derby, and to its fine old inn, which to
us was not simply the _Kedleston Inn_ and nothing more but Dickens'
_Maypole_ and nothing less.  We revelled in its resemblance, or its
fancied resemblance to the famous old hostelry kept by old John Willet.
Something in the building itself, though I cannot say that, like the
_Maypole_, it had "more gable ends than a lazy man would like to count on
a sunny day," and something in its situation, and something in the
cronies who gathered in its comfortable bar, and something in the bar
itself combined to form the pleasant illusion in which we indulged.  The
bar, like the _Maypole_ bar, was snug and cosy and complete.  Its rustic
visitors were not so solemn and slow of speech as old John Willet and Mr.
Cobb and long Phil Parkes and Solomon Daisy, "who would pass two mortal
hours and a half without any of them speaking a single word, and who were
firmly convinced that they were very jovial companions;" but they were as
reticent and stolid and good natured as such simple country gaffers are
wont to be.

I remember in particular one Saturday afternoon in late October.  It was
almost the last walk I had with Tom in Derby.  The day was perfect; as
clear and bright, as mellow and crisp, as rich in colour, as only an
October day in England can be.  We reached the _Maypole_ between five and
six o'clock.  No young Joe Willet or gipsy Hugh was there to welcome us,
but we were soon by our two selves in a homely little room, beside a
cheerful fire, at a table spread with tea and ham and eggs and buttered
toast and cakes--our weekly treat.

When this delightful meal was over, a stroll as far as the church and the
stately Hall of the Curzons, back to the inn, an hour or so in the snug
bar with the village worthies, who welcomed our almost weekly visits and
the yarns we brought from Derby town; then back home by the broad
highway, under the star-lit sky--an afternoon and an evening to be ever
remembered.

The _Kedleston Inn_, I am told, no longer exists; no longer greets the
eye of the wayfarer, no longer welcomes him to its pleasant bar.  Now it
is a farmhouse.  No youthful enthusiast can now be beguiled into calling
it _The Maypole_; and, indeed, in these unromantic days, though it had
remained unchanged, there would be little danger of this I think.

Soon after this memorable day Tom left the service of the Midland for a
more lucrative situation with a mercantile firm in Glasgow, and I was
left widowed and alone.  For six months or more we had been living
together in the country, some four miles from Derby, in the house of the
village blacksmith.  It was a pretty house, stood a little apart from the
forge, and was called Rock Villa.  I wonder if the present Engineer-in-
Chief of the Midland Railway recollects a little incident connected with
it.  He (now Chief Engineer then a well grown youth of eighteen or
nineteen) was younger than I, and was preparing for the engineering
profession in which he has succeeded so well.  He lived with his parents
very near to Rock Villa, and one day, for some reason or other, we said
we would each of us make a sketch of Rock Villa, afterwards compare them,
and let his sister decide which was the better, so we set to work and did
our best.  In the matter of correct drawing his, I am sure, far surpassed
mine, but the young lady decided in my favour, perhaps because my
production looked more picturesque and romantic than his!

When Tom had gone I became dissatisfied with my work, and a
disappointment which I suffered at being passed over in some office
promotions increased that dissatisfaction.  I was an expert shorthand
writer and this seemed to be the only reason for keeping me back from
better work, so at least I thought, and I think so still.  My sense of
injustice was touched; and I determined I would, like Tom, if the
opportunity served, seek my fortune elsewhere.  The chance I longed for
came.  I paid a short visit to Tom, and whilst in Glasgow, obtained the
post of private clerk to the Stores Superintendent of the Caledonian
Railway, and on the last day of the year 1872, I left the Midland
Railway, to the service of which I had been as it were born, in which my
father and uncles and cousins served, against the wish of my father, and
to the surprise of my relatives.  But I had reached man's estate, and
felt a pride in going my own way, and in seeking, unassisted, my fortune,
whatever it might be.

What had I learned in my first five years of railway work?  Not very
much; the next few years were to be far more fruitful; but I had acquired
some business habits; a practical acquaintance with shorthand, which was
yet to stand me in good stead; some knowledge of rates and fares, their
nature and composition, which was also to be useful to me in after life;
some familiarity with the compilation of time-tables and the working of
trains; but of practical knowledge of work at stations I was quite
ignorant.

Thus equipped, without the parental blessing, with little money in my
purse, with health somewhat improved but still delicate, I bade good-bye
to Derby, light-hearted enough, and hopeful enough, and journeyed north
to join my friend Tom, and to make my way as best I could in the
commercial capital of "bonnie Scotland."




CHAPTER VII.
RAILWAY PROGRESS


Before entering upon any description of the new life that awaited me in
Glasgow, I will briefly allude to the principal events connected with the
Midland and with railways generally which took place during the first
five years of my railway career.

Closely associated with many of these events was Mr. James Allport, the
Midland general manager, one of the foremost and ablest of the early
railway pioneers, regarding whom it is fit and proper a few words should
be said.  Strangely enough I never saw him until nearly two years after I
entered the Midland service, and this was on the occasion of a visit of
the Prince and Princess of Wales to Derby.  We clerks were allowed good
positions on the station platform to witness the arrival of their Royal
Highnesses by their special train from London.  Mr. Allport accompanied
them along the platform to the carriages outside the station.  Probably
the chairman and directors of the company were also present, but our eyes
were not for them.  Directors were to us junior clerks, remote
personalities, mythical beings dwelling on Olympian heights.

[Sir James Allport: allport.jpg]

It was a great thing to see the future King and Queen of England, and our
loyalty and enthusiasm knew no bounds.  They were young and charming, and
beloved by the people; but, hero worshipper as I was, our great general
manager was to me even more than royalty.  I little thought, as I looked
on Mr. Allport then, that, twenty years later, I should appear before him
to give evidence concerning Irish railways, when he was chairman of an
important Royal Commission.

The great abilities which enable a man to win and hold such a position as
his fired my fancy.  I look at men and men's affairs with different eyes
now; but Mr. Allport was a great personality, and youthful enthusiasm
might well be excused for placing him on a high pedestal.  He was tall
and handsome, with well-shaped head, broad brow, large clear keen eyes,
firm well-formed mouth, strong nose and chin, possessed of an abundant
head of hair, not close cropped in the style of to-day, but full and
wavy, and what one never sees now, a handsome natural curl along the
centre of the head with a parting on each side.  This suited him well,
and added to his distinctive individuality.  When I entered the Midland
service he was fifty-six years of age and in the plenitude of his power,
for those were days when the company was forcing its way north and south
and widely extending its territory.  He was the animating spirit of all
the company's enterprises.  No opposition, no difficulties ever daunted
him.  His nature was bold and fitted to command, and to him is due, in a
large degree, the proud position the Midland holds to-day.  It was not
until late in life, 1884 I think, when he had reached the age of seventy-
two, that his great qualities were accorded public recognition.  He then
received the honour of knighthood but had retired from active service and
become a director of his company.

There was another personality that loomed large, in those years, on the
Midland--Samuel Swarbrick, the accountant.  His world was finance, and in
it he was a master.  So great was his skill that the Great Eastern
Railway Company, which, financially, was in a parlous condition and their
dividend _nil_, in 1866 took him from the Midland and made him their
general manager, at, in those days, a princely salary.  Their confidence
was fully justified; his skill brought the company, if not to absolute
prosperity, at least to a dividend-paying condition, and laid the
foundation of the position that company now occupies.

His reputation as a man of figures stood as I have just said very high,
but, whilst I was at Derby, and before he moved to the Great Eastern, he
was prominent also as the happy possessor of the best coloured meerschaum
pipes in the county, and this, in those days, was no small distinction.
But a man does not achieve greatness by his own unaided efforts.  Others,
his subordinates, help him to climb the ladder.  It was so with Mr.
Swarbrick.  There was a tall policeman in the service of the company, the
possessor of a fine figure, and a splendid long sandy-coloured beard.  His
primary duty was to air himself at the front entrance of the station
arrayed in a fine uniform and tall silk hat, and this duty he
conscientiously performed.  Secondarily, his occupation was to start the
colouring of new meerschaums for Mr. Swarbrick.  Non-meerschaum smokers
may not know what a delicate task this is, but once well begun the rest
is comparatively easy.  The tall policeman was an artist at the work; but
it nearly brought him to a tragic end, as I will relate.

Outside Derby station was a ticket platform at which all incoming trains
stopped for the collection of tickets.  This platform was on a bridge
that crossed the river.  One Saturday night our fine policeman was airing
himself on this platform, colouring a handsome new meerschaum for Mr.
Swarbrick.  It was a windy night and a sudden gust blew his tall hat into
the river, and after it unfortunately dropped the meerschaum.  Hat and
pipe both!  Without a moment's hesitation in plunged the policeman to the
rescue; but the river was deep and he an indifferent swimmer.  The night
was dark and he was not brought to land till life had nearly left him.  He
recovered, but lost his sight and became blind for the rest of his life.
Mr. Swarbrick provided for him, I believe, by setting him up in a small
public house, where, I am told, despite his loss of sight, he ended his
days not unhappily.

In 1867, compared with 1851, the Midland had made giant strides.  It
worked a thousand miles of railway against five hundred; its capital had
doubled and reached thirty-two millions, about one-fourth of what it is
to-day; its revenue had risen from about a million to over a million and
a half; and the dividend was five and a half compared with two and five-
eighths per cent.

The opening of the Midland route to Saint Pancras; the projection of the
Settle and Carlisle line; the introduction of Pullman cars, parlour
saloons, sleeping and dining cars; the adoption of gas and electricity
for the lighting of carriages; the running of third-class carriages by
all trains; the abolition of second-class and reduction of first-class
fares; and the establishment of superannuation funds were amongst the
most striking events in the railway world during this period.

On the first day of October, 1868, the first passenger train ran into
Saint Pancras station, and the Midland competition for London traffic now
began in earnest, and from that time onward helped to develop those
magnificent rival passenger train services between the Metropolis and
England's busy centres and between England and Scotland and Ireland,
which, for luxury, speed and comfort, stand pre-eminent.  Prior to this,
the Midland access to London had been by the exercise of running powers
over the Great Northern Railway from Hitchin to King's Cross.  The Great
Northern, reluctant to lose the Midland, and fearing their rivalry, had,
a few years previously, offered them running powers in perpetuity.  "No,"
said Mr. Allport, "it is impossible that you can reconcile the interests
of these two great companies on the same railway; we are always only
_second-best_."  Second-best certainly never suited the ambitious policy
of the Midland, and so the offer was rejected, and their line to London
made.  It was at that time thought that the Midland headquarters would be
removed from Derby to London, and I remember how excited the clerical
staff and their wives and sweethearts were at the prospect.  The idea was
seriously considered but, for various reasons, abandoned.

The Settle and Carlisle line, perhaps the greatest achievement of the
Midland, was not completed until sometime after I left their service.  It
was opened in the year 1875.  In 1866 they obtained the Act for its
construction.  For some years their eyes had been as eagerly turned
towards Scotland as the eyes of Scotchmen had ever been towards England,
and for the same reason--the hope of gain.  The Midland had hitherto been
excluded from any proper share of the Scotch traffic, but now having
secured the right to extend their system to Carlisle, they hoped to join
forces with their allies, the Glasgow and South-Western, and secure a
fair share of it.  But "there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip,"
and in 1869 in a fit of timidity--a weakness most unusual with them--they
nearly lost this valuable right.  The year 1867 was a time of great
financial anxiety; the Midland was weighted with heavy expenditure on
their London extension, the necessity for further capital became clamant,
the shareholders were seized with alarm, and a shareholders' consultative
committee was appointed, with the result that, in 1869, the company,
badgered and worried beyond endurance, actually applied to Parliament for
power to abandon the Settle and Carlisle line, and for authority to enter
into an agreement with the London and North-Western for access over that
company's railway to Carlisle.  That power and authority, however,
Parliament, _in its wisdom_, refused to give.

The financial clouds, as all clouds do, after a time dispersed; the
outlook grew brighter, the Midland made the line, and it was opened, as I
have said, throughout to Carlisle in 1875.

In the autumn of 1872 Mr. Allport visited the United States and was
greatly impressed with the Pullman cars.  On his return he introduced
them on the Midland, both the parlour car and the sleeper.  About the
same time the London and North-Western also commenced the running of
sleeping cars to Scotland and to Holyhead.  To which company belongs the
credit of being first in the field with this most desirable additional
accommodation for the comfort of passengers I am not prepared to say;
perhaps honors were easy.

But the greatest innovation of the time were the running by the Midland
of third-class carriages by all trains; and the abolition of second-class
carriages and fares, accompanied by a reduction of the first-class fares.
The first event took place in 1872, but the latter not till 1875.  The
first was a democratic step indeed, and aroused great excitement.
Williams, in his book _The Midland Railway_, wrote, "On the last day of
March, 1872, we remarked to a friend: 'To-morrow morning the Midland will
be the most popular railway in England.'  Nor did we incur much risk by
our prediction.  For on that day the Board had decided that on and after
the first of April, they would run third-class carriages by all trains;
the wires had flashed the tidings to the newspapers, the bills were in
the hands of the printers, and on the following morning the Directors
woke to find themselves famous."  At a later period, Mr. Allport said, if
there was one part of his public life on which he looked back with more
satisfaction than another it was the time when this boon was conferred on
third-class passengers.

When we contemplate present conditions of third-class travel it is hard
to realise what they were before this change took place; slow speed,
delays and discomfort; bare boards; hard seats; shunting of third-class
trains into sidings and waiting there for other trains, sometimes even
goods trains, to pass.  Mr. Allport might well be proud of the part he
played.

Another matter which concerned, not so much the public as the welfare of
the clerical staff of the railways, was the establishment of
Superannuation Funds; yet the public was interested too, for the
interests of the railway service and the general community are closely
interwoven.  Up till now station masters and clerks had struggled on
without prospect of any provision for their old age.  Their pay was
barely sufficient to enable them to maintain a respectable position in
life and afforded no margin for providing for the future.

At last, the principal railway companies, with the consent of their
shareholders, and with Parliamentary sanction, established Superannuation
Funds, which ever since have brought comfort and security to their
officers and clerical staff, and have proved of benefit to the companies
themselves.  A pension encourages earlier retirement from work, quickens
promotion, and vitalises the whole service.  On nearly all railways
retirement is optional at sixty and compulsory at sixty-five.

The London and North-Western was the first company to adopt the system of
superannuation, the London and South-Western second, the Great Western
came third, the Midland fourth, and other companies followed in their
wake.

In 1873 the Railway Clearing House obtained Parliamentary power to form a
fund for its staff, with permission to railway companies not large enough
to successfully run funds of their own, and also to the Irish Railway
Clearing House, to become partners in this fund.  The Irish Clearing
House took advantage of this, as also have many railway companies, and
practically the whole of the clerical service throughout the United
Kingdom can to-day look forward to the benefits of superannuation.




CHAPTER VIII.
SCOTLAND, GLASGOW LIFE, AND THE CALEDONIAN LINE.


On the last day of December, in the year 1872, between seven and eight
o'clock in the evening, I arrived at Glasgow by the Caledonian train from
Carlisle, and was met at Buchanan Street Station by my good friend Tom.

After supper we repaired to the streets to see the crowds that congregate
on _Hogmanhay_, to make acquaintance with the mysteries of
"first-footin'," and to join in ushering in the "guid new year."  It was
a stirring time, for Scotchmen encounter their _Hogmanhay_ with ardent
_spirits_.  They are as keen in their pleasures as in their work.  Compare
for instance their country dances with ours.  As Keats, in his letters
from Scotland says, "it is about the same as leisurely stirring a cup o'
tea and beating up a batter pudding."  The public houses and bars were
driving a lively trade, but "Forbes Mackenzie" was in force, and come
eleven o'clock, though it were a hundred _Hogmanhays_, they all had to
close.  We met some new-made friends of Tom's and joined in their
conviviality.  I was the dark complexioned man of the party, and as a
"first-footer" in great request.  We did not go home till morning, and
reached there a little hilarious ourselves, but it was our first
_Hogmanhay_ and may be forgiven.

Dear reader, did you ever lie in a _concealed bed_?  It is a Scottish
device cunningly contrived to murder sleep.  At least so Tom and I found
it.  It was my fate to sleep, to lie I should say, in one for several
weeks.  Its purpose is to economise space, and like Goldsmith's chest of
drawers, it is "contrived a double debt to pay," a sleeping room by
night, a sitting room by day.

Whilst Glasgow is a city of _flats_ its people are resourceful and
energetic.  Keen and canny, they drive a close bargain but, scrupulous
and conscientious, fulfil it faithfully.  Proud of their city and its
progress, its industries and manufactures, its civic importance, they are
a little disdainful perhaps, perhaps a little jealous, of their beautiful
elder sister, Edinburgh.  Glasgow is the Belfast of Scotland!

Self-contained houses are the exception and are limited to the well-to-
do.  The flat, in most cases, means a restricted number of apartments,
insufficient bedroom accommodation, and the _concealed bed_ is Glasgow's
way of solving the difficulty.

Tom and I did not take kindly to our hole in the wall, and soon found
other lodgings where space was not so circumscribed, and where we could
sleep in an open bed in an open room.

Our new quarters were a great success; a ground-floor flat with a fine
front door; a large well-furnished sitting room with two windows looking
out on to the street, and an equally large double-bedded room at the back
of the sitting room.  Our landlady, a kind, motherly, canny Scotchwoman,
looked after us well and favoured us with many a bit of good advice: "You
must be guid laddies, and tak care o' the bawbees; you maun na eat
butchers' meat twice the week; tak plenty o' parritch and dinna be
extravagant."  Economy with the good old soul was a cardinal virtue,
waste a deadly sin.  I fear she was often shocked at our easy Saxon ways,
though Tom and I thought ourselves models of thrift.

Once, it was on a Sunday, Tom and I, with a party of friends, had had a
very long walk, a regular pedestrian excursion, thirty miles, there or
thereabouts, to use a Scotticism, and poor Tom was quite knocked up and
confined to bed for several days.  Our good old landlady was greatly
shocked; a strict Sabbatarian, she knew it was a punishment for "breakin'
the Sabbath; why had na ye gane to the kirk like guid laddies?"  We
modestly reminded her that we always did go, excepting of course on this
particular Sunday.  "Then whit business had ye to stay awa on ony
Sabbath?"  We had nothing to say in answer to this.  The dear old
creature was really shocked at our backsliding; but she nursed Tom very
tenderly all the same.

When the sultry heat of summer came we found Glasgow very trying, and
though sorry to leave our good landlady, moved into the country, to
Cambuslang, a village some four miles from the city, which was then
becoming a favourite residential resort.

At Cambuslang I made the acquaintance and became the friend of _Cynicus_,
the humorous artist whose satirical sketches have, for many years, been
well-known and well sold in England, in Scotland and in Ireland too.  He
was then a youth of about twenty.  Longing to see the world and without
the necessary means, he emulated Goldsmith, made a prolonged tour in
France and Italy supporting himself not by his flute nor by disputations,
but by his brush and palette.  For a few weeks at a time he worked in
towns or cities, sold what he painted, and then, with purse replenished,
wandered on.  He and I were living "doon the watter," at Dunoon, on the
Clyde, one summer month.  A Fancy Dress Bazaar was on at the time.  The
first evening we went to it, and he, unobserved, made furtive sketches of
the most prominent people and the prettiest girls.  We both sat up all
that night, he working at and finishing the sketches.  Next morning by
the first boat and first train, we took them to Glasgow, had six hundred
lithographic copies struck off; back post-haste to Dunoon; in the evening
to the Bazaar, and sold the copies at threepence each.  It was an immense
success; we could have disposed of twice the number; every pretty girl's
admirer wanted a copy of her picture, and the portraits of the presiding
"meenister" and of the good-looking unmarried curate were eagerly
purchased by fond mammas and adoring daughters.  We had our fun, and
cleared besides a profit of nearly four pounds sterling.  This financial
_coup_ would not have come off so well but for the warm-hearted
co-operation of our railway printers, McCorquodale and Coy.  They, good
people, entered into our exploit with a will, did their part well, and
made little if any profit, generously leaving that to _Cynicus_ and
myself.

To his mother, like many another clever son, _Cynicus_ owed his talent.
She was a woman of great intellectual endowment, with highly cultivated
literary tastes.  Her memory was remarkable and her conversational powers
very great.  She read much and thought deeply.  In a modest way her
parlour, which attracted many young people of literary and artistic
leanings, recalled the _Salons_ of France of a century ago.  She
entertained charmingly with tea and cakes and delightful talk.  Of
strong, firm, decided character, she might, perhaps, have been thought a
little deficient in womanly gentleness had not genuine kindness of heart,
motherly feeling, and a happy humour lent a softness to her features and
imparted to them a particular charm.  She exercised an authority over her
household which inspired respect and contrasted strikingly with the easy-
going parental ways of to-day.  There were other sons and there were
daughters also, all more or less gifted, but _Cynicus_ was the genius of
the family--its bright particular star.

The various lodgings of my bachelor days was never quite of the
conventional sort.  The Cambuslang quarters certainly were not.  The
house was large and old-fashioned.  Originally it had been two smallish
houses: the two front doors still remained side by side, but only one was
used.  The rooms on the ground floor were small, the original building
composed of one storey only, but another had been added of quite spacious
dimensions.  We had two excellent, large well-furnished rooms upstairs.
The landlady was an interesting character and so was her husband.  She
was Irish, he Scotch; she about seventy years of age, he under fifty; she
ruddy, healthy, hearty, good-looking; he, pale, nervous, shy, retiring.
But on the last Thursday of each month he was quite another man.  On that
day he went to Glasgow to collect the rents of some small houses he
owned; and generally came home rather "fou" and hilarious, when the old
lady would take him in hand, and put him to bed.

They had an only child, a son, a grown up man, an uncouth ill-looking
ungainly fellow, who did no work, smoked and loafed about, but was the
idol of his mother.  He resembled neither parent in the least, and,
except that such vagaries of nature are not unknown, it might have been
supposed that some cuckoo had visited the parental nest.

A gaunt, hard-featured domestic completed this interesting family, and
she was uncommon too.  By no means young, what Balzac calls "a woman of
canonical age," she resembled Pere Grandet's tall Nanon.  Like Nanon, she
had been the devoted servant of the family for nearly a quarter of a
century, and like her, had no interest outside that of her master and
mistress.  She was always working, rarely went out, spoke little, but
ministered to the wants of Tom and myself, and waited on us with
unremitting attention.

Despite all drawbacks, however, they were fine lodgings.  The old lady
was a wonderful cook and had all the liberality of her race.

New Year's Day, the great Scotch holiday, Tom and I spent in Edinburgh,
and returned much impressed with its stately beauty.

The next morning I entered upon my work at St. Rollox, where the stores
department of the Caledonian Railway is situated.  The head of the
department was styled Stores Superintendent.  I thought him the most
impressive looking man I had ever seen.  He overpowered me; in his
presence I never felt at ease.  He was a big man, and looked bigger than
he was; good-looking too; ruddy, portly, well-dressed and formal.  An
embodiment of commercial energy and dignity.  In his face gravity,
keenness, and good health were blended.  Soon after I joined his staff he
left the Caledonian to become General Manager of Young's Paraffin Oil
Company, and subsequently its Managing Director.  Success, I believe,
always attended him.  No position could lose any of its importance in his
hands.  When he left St. Rollox a great blank was felt; he filled so
large a space.  He has lately gone to his rest full of years and honors.

I fear he never liked me, nor had any great opinion of my abilities.  This
was not to be wondered at, for I am sure I did not display any excessive
zeal for the work on which I was then employed, and which I found
monotonous and uninteresting.

He confided to his chief clerk, who was my friend, that one day he had
seen me, in business hours, in the city, smoking a cigarette and looking
at the girls, and was sure I would never do much good.  He had very
strict business notions.  I confessed to the cigarette, but not to the
graver charge.  It was a wholesome tonic, however, and pulled me up.  I
wanted to get on in life; ambition was stirring within me; and I formed
some good resolutions which, as time went on, I kept more or less
faithfully.

At St. Rollox one's daily lunch was a matter of some difficulty.  It was
a district of factories, and the only restaurants were the Great Western
Cooking Depots, where one could get a steak and bread and cheese for
fivepence, but the rooms and tables and accessories were, to say the
least, unappetising.  Hunger had to be satisfied, however, and I had to
swallow my pride and my five-pennyworth.  I varied this occasionally by
bringing with me my own sandwiches and eating them seated on a tombstone
in Sighthill cemetery, which was less than a quarter of a mile distant
from the stores department.

My work, as I have said, was monotonous enough: writing letters from
dictation, an occupation which gave but little exercise to one's
faculties.  I obtained some variation by occasionally taking a turn
through the various stores and getting into touch with the practical men
in charge.  They were always very civil and ready to talk of their
business, and so I learned something of the nature, quality, uses and
cost of many things necessary to the working of a railway, which I
afterwards found very useful.  Occasionally also I visited the
laboratory, in which an analytical chemist was regularly engaged.

The event which, in my short service of two years with the Caledonian,
seemed to me of the greatest moment, was that, after six months or so, I
became a taxpayer!  This was an event indeed.  In the offices at Derby it
was only, as a rule, middle-aged or old men who attained this proud
distinction; and here was I, not yet twenty-two, with my salary raised to
100 pounds a year, paying income tax at the rate of _threepence_ in the
pound on forty pounds, for an abatement of sixty pounds was allowed.
Until I got used to the novelty I was as proud as Lucifer.

The office in which I now worked had no Apollos, no literary geniuses, no
Long Jacks, no boy benedicts, such as adorned our desks at Derby, but it
rejoiced in one _rara avis_, who came a few months after and left a few
months before me.  He was a middle-aged, aristocratic, kind,
good-hearted, unbusinesslike man, and was brother to a baronet.  He
professed a knowledge of medicine and brought a bottle, a bolus or a
plaster, whichever he deemed best, whenever any of us complained of cold
or cough, of headache or backache or any ailment whatever.  When he left
we all received from him a parting gift.  Mine was a handsome, expensive,
red-felt chest protector.  I wore it constantly for a year or two and,
for aught I know, it may be that by its protecting influence against the
rigour of Glasgow winters, the bituminous atmosphere of St. Rollox and
the smoke-charged fogs of the city, I am alive and well to-day.  Who can
tell?  It is certain that I then had a bad cough nearly always; and this
I am sure was what decided the form of his parting gift to me.

It was about this time that I attended my first public dinner and made my
first speech in public.  Several days before the event I was told that,
being in the Volunteer Force, I had been placed on the toast list to
reply for the Army, Navy and Volunteers.  It was a railway dinner, for
the purpose of celebrating the departure to England, on promotion, of the
chief clerk in the Midland Railway Company's Scottish Agency Office.  The
dinner was largely attended.  The idea of having to speak filled me with
trepidation.  But to my great surprise I acquitted myself with credit.
Once on my legs I found that nervousness left me, words came freely and I
even enjoyed the novel experience.  To suddenly discover oneself
proficient where failure had been feared increases self esteem and adds
to the sum of happiness.  At this dinner I also made my first
acquaintance with that "Great chieftain o' the puddin' race," the
_Haggis_, which deserves the pre-eminence it enjoys.

One night, towards the end of December, in 1874, when skating by
moonlight, not far from Cambuslang, I chanced to meet a young friend, a
clerk in the Glasgow and South-Western Railway, who, like myself, was
enjoying the pleasures of the ice.  Tom was not with me, for he, poor
fellow! was not well enough to be out o' nights in winter.  My young
friend gave me, with great eagerness, a rare piece of news.  Mr.
Johnstone, the Glasgow and South-Western general manager, was retiring
and Mr. Wainwright was to succeed him!  Well, that did not excite me, and
I wondered at his earnestness; but more was to follow.  Mr. Wainwright,
as general manager, required a principal clerk and there was, it seemed,
no one in the place quite suitable.  He must be good at correspondence,
and expert at shorthand.  I was, my young friend said, the very man; I
must apply.  Mr. Wainwright was English, so was I; I came from the
Midland, and the Midland and the Glasgow and South-Western were hand and
glove.  How lucky we had met; he had not thought of me till this very
moment.  It was fate.  Would I write tonight?  By this time I was as
eager as himself.  No more skating for me that night.  I hurried home,
Tom and I composed a careful and judicious letter.  I posted it in Her
Majesty's pillar box hard by; went to bed, but was too excited to sleep.
An answer soon came, and an interview with Mr. Wainwright followed.  I
received the appointment, at a salary of 120 pounds a year to begin with;
and in the early days of the new year, two years after my first
appearance in Scotland, entered upon my duties, not at Saint Enoch
Station, where the headquarters of the Glasgow and South-Western now are,
but at Bridge Street Station on the south side of the river, where the
office staff of the company was then accommodated.




CHAPTER IX.
GENERAL RAILWAY ACTS OF PARLIAMENT


Such unromantic literature as Acts of Parliament had not, it may be
supposed, up to this, formed part of my mental pabulum.  I knew that an
Act was a necessary preliminary to the construction of a railway, and
this was all I knew concerning the relations between the railways and the
State.  Whilst a little learning may be a dangerous thing, in my new
situation, I soon discovered that a general manager's clerk would be the
better of possessing some knowledge of the numerous Acts of Parliament
that affected railway companies.  Almost daily questions arose in which
such knowledge was useful; so I determined to become acquainted with
them, and in my leisure hours made as profound a study as I could of that
compilation which, in railway offices was then in general use--_Bigg's
General Railway Acts_.  I found the formidable looking volume more
readable than I had imagined and less difficult to understand than I had
expected.

Governments have ever kept a watchful eye on railway companies.  Up to
1875, the year at which we have now arrived, no less than 112 general
Acts of Parliament affecting railways had been placed on the Statute Book
of the realm.  They were applicable to all railways alike, and in
addition to and independent of the special Acts which each company must
obtain for itself, first for its incorporation and construction, and
afterwards for extensions of its system, for the raising of capital, and
for various other purposes.

Many of the general Acts have been framed upon the recommendations of
various Select Committees and Royal and Vice-Regal Commissions, which
have been appointed from time to time since railways began.  From 1835
down to the present year of 1918 some score or more of these Committees
and Commissions have gravely sat and issued their more or less wise and
weighty reports.

What are these numerous Acts of Parliament and what are their objects,
scope, and intentions?

Whilst neither time nor space admit of detailed exposition, not to speak
of the patience of my readers, a few observations upon some of the
principal enactments may not be inapposite or uninteresting.

Pride of place belongs to the _Carriers' Act_ of 1830, passed in the
reign of William IV., five years after the first public railway (the
Stockton and Darlington) was opened.  This Act, although in it the word
_railway_ does not appear, is an important Act to railway companies, and
possesses the singular and uncommon merit of having been framed for the
_protection_ of Common Carriers.  It is intituled "_An Act for the more
effectual Protection of Mail Contractors, Stage Coach Proprietors, and
other Common Carriers for Hire, against the Loss or Injury to Parcels or
Packages delivered to them for Conveyance or Custody, the Value and
Contents of which shall not be Declared to them by the Owners thereof_."
The draughtsman of this dignified little Act it is clear was greatly
addicted to _capitals_.  Probably he thought they heightened effect, much
as Charles Lamb spelt plum pudding with a _b_--"plumb pudding," because,
he said, "it reads fatter and more suetty."  At the time this Act came
into being, railways in the eye of Parliament were public highways, upon
which you or I, if we paid the prescribed tolls, could convey our
traffic, our vehicles, or ourselves.  In the years 1838-1840 many of the
companies obtained powers enabling them to act as public carriers; and in
1840 questions having arisen in Parliament as to the rights of the public
in this respect the subject was referred to a Select Committee of the
House of Commons.  The Committee's report disposed of the view which,
until then, Parliament had held, and expressed the opinion that the right
of persons to run their own engines and carriages was a dead letter for
the good reason, amongst others, that it was necessary for railway trains
to be run and controlled by and under one complete undivided authority.

After the _Carriers' Act_, which applied to all carriers as well as to
railways, the first general railway Act of importance was the _Railways
(Conveyance of Mails) Act_ of 1838.  This Act enabled the
Postmaster-General to require railway companies to convey mails by all
trains and to provide sorting carriages when necessary, the Royal Arms to
be painted on such carriages, and in 1844, under the _Railway Regulation
Act_, it was further enacted that the Postmaster-General could require,
for the conveyance of mails, that trains should be run at any rate of
speed, _certified to be safe_, but not to exceed 27 miles an hour!

As I have said, the Select Committee of 1840 reported against the right
of the public to run their own engines and carriages on railways.  They
made recommendations which led to the passing of the _Railway Regulation
Act_ of that year, and in that Act powers were, for the first time,
conferred upon the Board of Trade in connection with railways.  It was
the beginning of that authority, which since has greatly grown, but which
the Board of Trade have in the main exercised with an impartiality, which
public authorities do not always display.  The Act empowered the Board,
before any new railway was opened, to require notice from the railway
company.  This power was repealed by an Act of 1842, and larger powers
granted in its place, including the right to compel the inspection of
such railways before being opened for traffic.  The Act of 1840 also
required the companies, under penalty, to furnish to the Board of Trade
returns of traffic, as well as of all accidents attended with personal
injury; and to submit their bye-laws for certification.

Of the _railway mania_ period I have spoken in a previous chapter.  For a
time enormous success attended some of the lines.  Amongst others the
Liverpool and Manchester and the Stockton and Darlington enjoyed mouth
watering dividends; the former ten, the latter fifteen per cent.!  Said
the Government to themselves, "'Tis time we saw to this," and accordingly
they passed the _Railway Regulation Act_ of 1844.  This Act provided that
if at any time, after twenty-one years, the dividend of any railway
should exceed ten per cent., the Treasury might revise the rates and
fares so as to reduce the profits to not more than ten per cent.  This
expectation of high dividends, I need hardly say, has not been realised,
and the Act in this respect has been a dead letter.  The Act also
conferred an option on the Treasury to acquire future railways at twenty-
five years purchase of the annual profits; or, if such profits were less
than ten per cent., the price was to be left to arbitration.

It is interesting now, when, owing to the war, the railways of the land
are under temporary Government control, and their future all uncertain,
to remember that, on the Statute Book to-day, there is an Act which
provides for State purchase of the railways of the country.  Whether a
solution of the difficulty will be found in State purchase or in State
control it is hard to say, but it is clear that some solution of the
problem will become imperative when the war is ended and normal
conditions return.  Justice and reason demand it.

In the year 1845 three long Acts of Parliament came into force; the
_Companies Clauses_, the _Lands Clauses_ and the _Railway Clauses Acts_.
Between them they contained no less than 483 sections.  Each Act was a
consolidating measure.  The first contained provisions usually inserted
in Acts for the constitution of public companies, the second the same in
regard to the taking of land compulsorily, and the third consolidated in
one general statute provisions usually introduced into Acts of Parliament
authorising the construction of railways.

The _Railway Clauses Act_ authorised railway companies to use locomotive
engines, carriages and wagons; to carry passengers and goods, and to make
reasonable charges not exceeding the tolls authorised by their special
Acts.  Since then the whole of the trade of transit by rail has been
conducted by the companies owning the lines.

The gauge of railways in Great Britain was not fixed upon any scientific
principle.  At first it followed the width of the coal tram-roads in the
north of England, which was adopted simply on account of its practical
convenience (five feet being the usual width of the gates through which
the "way-leaves" led) and so four feet eight and a-half inches became the
ordinary gauge, but in the early days it was by no means the universal
gauge.  Five feet was chosen for the Eastern Counties Railway; seven feet
for the Great Western and five feet six was used in Scotland.  The Ulster
Company in Ireland made twenty-five miles of the line from Belfast to
Dublin on a gauge of six feet two, while the Drogheda Company, which set
out from Dublin to meet the Ulster line, adopted five feet two.  When the
Ulster Company complained of this, the Irish Board of Works, it is said,
admitted that it was a little awkward, but added that, as it was not
likely the intervening part would ever be made, it did not much matter.
The subject was, I believe, in Ireland referred to a General Pasley, who
consulted the authorities (who were many) throughout the kingdom.  He
ultimately solved the question by adding up the various gauges the
authorities favoured, and recommended the mean, which was five feet three
inches; and so, for Ireland, five feet three became the standard gauge.

"The battle of the gauges," as it was styled at the time, was lively and
spirited.  Eventually it was decided by Parliament, which in the year
1846 passed the _Railway Regulation (Gauge) Act_.  This Act ordained that
in Great Britain all future railways were to be constructed on a gauge of
four feet eight and a-half inches, and in Ireland of five feet three
inches, excepting only certain extensions of the broad gauge Great
Western Railway.

Up to this time no action at common law was maintainable against a person
who by his wrongful act, neglect or default caused the immediate death of
another person, and an Act (known as _Lord Campbell's Act_), "for
compensating the Families of Persons Killed by Accidents," became law.
This enactment was due principally to the railway accidents that
occurred.  They were relatively more numerous than they are now, for the
many modern appliances for ensuring safety had not then been introduced.
The Act provided that compensation would be for the benefit of wife,
husband, parent and child of the person whose death shall have been
caused.  The Act did not apply to Scotland.  Perhaps it was because the
laws of the two countries differed more then than now, and the life of
the railways in Scotland was young, England being well ahead.  Probably
England thought she was doing enough when she legislated for herself by
passing this Act.  It must be observed, however, that the Act applies to
Ireland as well as England.

In the year 1854 Parliament considered that _regulations_ were necessary
to further control the companies and passed an important statute, the
_Railway and Canal Traffic Act_.  Known, for short, in railway parlance,
as "the Act of '54," its main provisions dealt with:--

   Reasonable facilities for receiving and forwarding traffic
   The subject of undue preference, which was forbidden
   Railways forming part of continuous lines to receive and forward
   through traffic without obstruction
   The liability of railway companies for loss of, or damage to, goods or
   animals

and it preserved to railway companies the _protection_ of the _Carriers'
Act_, to which I have referred.

The Select Committees of 1858 and 1863 sat on the subject of the great
length of time and the immense cost which railway promotion in those days
entailed, when Bills were fiercely contested, and protracted struggles
before Parliamentary Committees took place.  Two Acts resulted from their
deliberations: the _Railway Companies' Powers Act_, 1864, and the
_Railway Construction Facilities Act_ of the same year.  These Acts
empowered railway companies to enter into agreements with each other in
regard to maintenance, management, running over or use of each others
lines or property and for joint ownership of stations.  They also enabled
powers to be obtained from the Board of Trade to construct a railway
without a special Act of Parliament, subject to the conditions that all
the landowners concerned agreed to part with the requisite land, and that
no objection was raised by any other railway or canal company.  Little
use has ever been made of this well-intentioned enactment.  Landowners
have rarely been disposed to accept terms which the companies thought
fair; and rival railways, in the days gone by, dearly loved a fight.

By the _Companies Clauses Consolidation Act_ of 1845 railway companies
were required to keep full and true accounts of receipts and expenditure,
but it was not until the year 1868 that Parliament placed upon the
companies an obligation to keep their accounts in a prescribed form.  This
form was scheduled to the _Regulation of Railways Act_, 1868.  It
provides for half-yearly accounts, and is the form which has been
familiar to shareholders for many years.  This Act (1868) also ordained
that smoking compartments be provided on all trains, for all classes, on
all railways, except on the railway of the Metropolitan Company.  Up to
then the railway smoker had to obtain the consent of his fellow
passengers in the same compartment before he could light up, or brave
their displeasure; and many were the altercations that ensued.  The Act
also imposed penalties on railways who provided trains for attending
prize fights, which was hard on companies of sporting instincts.  A
clause provided for means of communication between passengers and the
servants of the company in charge of trains running twenty miles without
stopping; and another clause gave the companies power to cut down trees
adjoining their line which might be dangerous.  Prior to 1868, although
railways had then existed for three and forty years, the accounts of one
company could not usefully be compared with those of another, for
scarcely any two companies made up their accounts in the same way.
Variety may be charming, but uniformity has its advantages.

The Board of Trade, in 1871, was endowed with further powers.  By the
_Regulation of Railways Act_ of that year, they were given additional
rights of inspection; authority to enquire into accidents, and further
powers in regard to the opening of additional lines of railway, stations
or junctions.  And by this statute the companies were required to furnish
the Board of Trade with elaborate statistical documents, annually, in a
form prescribed in a schedule to the Act.

The only other important Act down to the year 1875 is the _Regulation of
Railways Act_ of 1873.  This Act was passed for the purpose of making
"better provision for carrying into effect the _Railway and Canal Traffic
Act_ of 1854, and for other purposes connected therewith."  In 1872 a
Joint Committee of both Houses sat and, following upon their report, this
Act was passed.  It established a new tribunal, to be called the _Railway
and Canal Commission_, to consist of three Commissioners, of whom--one
was to be experienced in the law, one in railway business, and it also
authorised the appointment of not more than two _assistant_
Commissioners.  As to the _third Commissioner_, no mention was made of
qualifications.  This tribunal, though styled a _Commission_, conducted
its work as if it were a court; and a regularly constituted court in time
it became.  By the _Railway and Canal Traffic Act_, 1888, the section in
the Act of 1873 appointing the Commission was repealed and a new
Commission established consisting of two appointed and three _ex officio_
Commissioners, such Commission to be "a Court of Record, and have an
official seal, which shall be judicially noticed."  One of the
Commissioners must be experienced in railway business; and of the three
_ex officio_ Commissioners, one was to be nominated for England, one for
Scotland and one for Ireland, and in each case such Commissioner was to
be a Judge of the High Court of the land.  Under the Act of 1873, the
chief functions of the Commissioners were: To hear and decide upon
complaints from the public in regard to undue preference, or to refusal
of facilities; to hear and determine questions of through rates; and to
settle differences between two railway companies or between a railway
company and a canal company, upon the application of either party to the
difference.  The Act of 1888 continued these and included some further
powers.

In my humble opinion the Railway Commissioners have done much useful work
and done it well.  For more than forty years I have read most if not all
the cases they have dealt with.  On several occasions I have been engaged
in proceedings before them, and not always on the winning side.




CHAPTER X.
A GENERAL MANAGER AND HIS OFFICE


January, 1875, was a momentous time for me.  In the second week of that
month I commenced my new duties at Glasgow and bade farewell for ever to
the tall stool and "the dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood."  Before me
opened a pleasing prospect of attractive and interesting work, brightened
by the beams of youthful hope and awakened ambition.  I was now chief
clerk to a general manager.  Was it to be wondered at that I felt proud
and elated if also a little scared as to how I should get on.

Mr. Wainwright assumed the office of general manager on the first day of
the year.  I say _office_, but in fact a general manager's office
scarcely existed.  His predecessor, Mr. Johnstone, a capable but in some
respects a singular man, performed his managerial duties without an
office staff, wrote all his own letters, and not only wrote them but
first carefully drafted them out in a hand minute almost as Jonathan
Swift's.  A strenuous worker, Mr. Johnstone, like most men who have no
hobby, did not long survive his retirement from active business life.

Mr. Wainwright, who, like myself, was born in Sheffield, was twenty-three
years my senior.  His early railway life was passed in the Manchester,
Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (now the Great Central), of which the
redoubtable Mr. (afterwards Sir) Edward Watkin was then the lively
general manager.

A different man to his predecessor was Mr. Wainwright.  Unlike Mr.
Johnstone he was modern and progressive.  _He_ never scorned delights or
loved, for their own sake, laborious days; pleasure to him was as welcome
as sunshine; and work he made a pleasure.

As I have said, no general manager's _office_ existed.  Of systematic
managerial supervision there was none.  What was to be done?  Something
certainly, and soon.  Mr. Wainwright concurred in a suggestion I made
that I should visit Derby, see the general manager's office of the
Midland there, and learn how it was conducted.  This I did.  E. W. Wells,
a principal clerk in that office, who was married to my cousin, showed
and told me everything.  I returned laden with knowledge which I embodied
in a report and my recommendations were adopted.  Several clerks were
appointed and the general manager's office, of which I was chief clerk,
soon became efficient.

Wells afterwards became Assistant General Manager of the Midland, and
Frank Tatlow, my cousin and brother of Wells' wife, is now its General
Manager, in succession to Sir Guy Granet.  I am not a little proud that
the attainments of one who bears the name of Tatlow, and is so nearly
related to myself, have enabled him to reach the topmost post on a
railway such as the Midland Railway of England.  He commenced as a junior
clerk in the General Manager's office and worked his way step by step to
that eminent position.  No adventitious circumstances helped him on.

I became fond of railway work, which it seems to me for interest and
variety holds a high place among all the occupations by which man, who
was born to labour, may earn his daily bread.  My duties were certainly
arduous but intensely interesting.  The correspondence with other railway
companies regarding agreements, joint line working, Parliamentary
matters, and many other important subjects, conducted as it required to
be, with skill, care and precision, was for me a liberal education.  The
fierce rivalry which, in those days, raged in Scotland for competitive
traffic culminated often in disputes which could only be settled by the
intervention of the general managers, and these brought much exciting
work into the office.  Again, the close and intimate relations between
the Midland and the Glasgow and South-Western involved interesting
communications, meetings and discussions, and the keeping of certain
special accounts which it fell to me to supervise.

The Midland and the Glasgow and South-Western alliance was regarded by
the West Coast Companies (the London and North-Western and the
Caledonian) with much disfavour.  In their eyes it was an attack upon
their hen roost, and it certainly resulted in the loss to them of a large
share of through traffic between England and Scotland which the West
Coast route had previously had all to itself.  To carry on the
competition successfully necessitated a large expenditure of capital by
the Glasgow and South-Western, and the Midland, of course, had to help in
this.  The original cost of Saint Enoch Station for instance was nearly
one and three-quarter millions sterling, and a considerable outlay was
also necessary for goods stations and other accommodation.  There was in
those days much doing between the general managers' offices of the
Midland and Glasgow and South-Western companies, and it was all
delightfully new and novel to me.

A Committee of Directors of the two companies, called the _Midland and
Glasgow and South-Western Joint Committee_, was established.  This
committee, with the two general managers, met periodically either at
Derby, London, Carlisle or Glasgow.  Mr. Wainwright acted as secretary
and I kept the minute book and papers relating to the business of the
committee.

Pullman cars had been introduced on the Midland and were run on the
through trains between Saint Pancras and Saint Enoch.  The cars were the
property of Mr. Pullman, but the Midland kept them in repair, the Glasgow
and South-Western relieving them of a proportion of the cost
corresponding to the mileage run over their line.  Mr. Pullman received
as his remuneration the extra fare paid by the passengers--three
shillings each for drawing-room cars and five shillings each for sleeping
cars.  Other through carriages on these trains were jointly owned by the
two companies.  The interesting accounts connected with these
arrangements were supervised by me.  I commenced work with Mr. Wainwright
on a Monday.  The following Saturday afternoon, before leaving the
office, to my great surprise and delight, he presented me with a first-
class station to station pass over the railway.  With what pride I showed
it to Tom that evening!  Six months later my salary was increased, and
the pleasant fact was announced to me by my kindly chief, coupled with
the expression of a wish that he and I might long work together.

On the Scottish railways the financial half-years ended, not in June and
December, as in other parts of the United Kingdom, but at the end of July
and January.  This was for the better equalisation of receipts, taking a
month from the fat half-year to the lean, and giving, in exchange, a
month from the lean to the fat.  Soon after the first-half-year was
concluded and the accounts published, which was in the month of September
(my first September with the Glasgow and South-Western), Mr. Wainwright
handed to me a large sheet of closely printed figures, giving a detailed
analysis and comparison of the accounts of five of the principal English
and the three principal Scottish railways in columnar form, with a
request that I should take out the figures and compile for printing a
similar statement for the past half-year, from the accounts of the eight
companies.  I trembled inwardly for I had never yet looked at a railway
account, but I took them home, and, as in the case of the Acts of
Parliament, found them simpler than I thought; and, with less trouble
than I expected, succeeded in accomplishing the task.

Mr. Wainwright was himself a skilful statistician and tested everything
he could by the cold logic of figures.  I was soon surprised to find that
I too had a taste for statistics and acquired some skill in their
compilation.  Up to this I had always imagined that I disliked everything
in the shape of arithmetic.  At school I was certainly never fond of it,
and since school my acquaintance with figures had been little more than
the adding up of long columns in huge books at the half-yearly
stocktaking in the stores department at St. Rollox, a thing I detested,
and which invariably gave me a headache.  Well pleased was Mr. Wainwright
to see that statistics took my fancy.  As general manager he had not much
time himself to devote to them, but the office was now well manned and we
were able to establish, and keep up, tables, statistics and returns
concerning matters of railway working in a way which I have not seen
surpassed.  These statistics were of much practical use when considering
questions of economy and other matters from day to day.

My first year as general manager's clerk was, I have always thought, the
most important in my railway life.  Certainly in that year I learned much
and acquired from my chief business habits which have stood me in good
stead since.  Mr. Wainwright was a man of no ordinary nature, as all who
knew him will admit.  He was a pattern of punctuality and promptitude,
never spared himself in doing a thing well and expected the same
thoroughness in others, though he would make allowance for want of
capacity, but not for indolence or carelessness.  Straightforwardness,
honesty and rectitude marked all he did.  His word was his bond.  His
disposition was to trust those around him, and his generous confidence
was usually justified.  High-minded and possessing a keen sense of honor
himself, he had an instinctive aversion to anything mean or low in
others.  A man of great liberality and generous to a fault he often found
it hard to say no, but when obliged to adopt that attitude it was done
with a tact and courtesy which left no sting.  In all business matters he
required a rigid economy though never at the expense of efficiency.

Intellectually he stood high, as I had ample opportunity of judging, but
if asked what were his most striking qualities I should say _goodness_
and a charm of manner which eludes description, but irresistibly
attracted all who met him.  In appearance he was tall and portly, and his
bearing, carriage and presence were gentlemanly and refined.  He was of
fair complexion, was possessed of a delightful smile, and had side
whiskers (turning white) continued in the old-fashioned way under the
chin, and yet he was so bright and debonair that he never looked
old-fashioned.  Like myself he was a great lover of Dickens, and I think
his most prized possession was a small bookcase which had belonged to
Dickens' study and which he purchased at the sale at _Gad's Hill_.  His
directors esteemed him highly, and the officers of the company were all
sincerely attached to him.  In his room he held almost daily conferences.
Correspondence formed but a small part in his method of dealing with
departments.  He believed in the value of _viva voce_ discussion, and
discouraged all unnecessary inter-departmental correspondence.  In this
he was right I am sure.  The daily conferences were cheerful and
pleasant, for he had the delightful faculty of "mixing business with
pleasure and wisdom with mirth."  I consider that I was singularly
fortunate at this period of my life in finding myself placed in close and
intimate association with such a man as Mr. Wainwright, in enjoying his
confidence as I did, and in being afforded the opportunity of benefiting
by his kind precepts and fine example.

[W. J. Wainwright: wainwright.jpg]

In Glasgow there was a weekly paper of much humour and spirit called _The
Bailie_.  With each issue it published an article on some prominent man
of the day under the title of _Men You Know_, accompanied by a portrait
of the person selected.  It is the Glasgow _Punch_.  It was established
in 1873,and "_Ma Conscience_!" is its motto.  It still, I am glad to
hear, runs an honorable and profitable course, which its merits well
deserve.  In its issue of September 13th, 1882, Mr. Wainwright was _The
Man You Know_, and, at the request of the Editor, I wrote the article
upon him.  In it are some words which, penned when I was with him daily,
and his influence was strong upon me, are, perhaps, more true and
faithful than any I could at this distance of time write, and so I will
quote them here, and with them conclude this chapter.

"He (_The Man You Know_) is one upon whom responsibility rests gracefully
and lightly, who accomplishes great things without apparent effort, and
whose personal influence smoothes the daily friction of official life.  He
rules with a gentler sway than many who are accustomed to other methods
of command would believe possible.  He believes in Emerson's maxim that
if you deal nobly with men they will act nobly, and his habit towards
everyone around him, and its success, lends force to the genial truth of
the American philosopher."




CHAPTER XI.
THE RAILWAY JUBILEE, AND GLASGOW AND SOUTH-WESTERN OFFICERS AND CLERKS


The 27th day of September, 1875, was the Jubilee of the British Railway
System.  It was celebrated by a banquet given by the North-Eastern
Railway Company at Darlington, for the Stockton and Darlington section of
the North-Eastern was, as I have mentioned before, the first public
railway.  A thousand guests were invited.  No building in Darlington
could accommodate such a number, and a great marquee, large enough to
dine a thousand people, was obtained from London.  My chief attended the
banquet and I remained at home to hear the news when he returned.  Dan
Godfrey's band was there, and Dan Godfrey himself composed some music for
the occasion.  The _menu_ was long, elaborate and imposing; equalled only
by the _toast list_, which contained no less than sixteen separate
toasts.  It was a Gargantuan feast befitting a great occasion.  Could we
men of to-day have done it justice and sat it and the toast list out, I
wonder.  It took place over forty years ago, when the endurance of the
race was, perhaps, greater than now; or why do we now shorten our
banquets and shirk the bottle?

The Stockton and Darlington Railway is 54 miles long, and its authorised
capital was 102,000 pounds--a modest sum indeed, under 2,000 pounds per
mile, less than half the outlay for land alone of the North Midland line
and not one twenty-fifth of the average cost of British railways as they
stand to-day, which is some 57,000 pounds per mile.  The railway owed its
origin to George Stephenson and to Edward Pease, the wealthy Quaker and
manufacturer of Darlington, both burly men, strong in mind as body.  The
first rail was laid, with much ceremony, near the town of Stockton, on
the 23rd of May, 1822, amid great opposition culminating in acts of
personal violence, for the early railways, from interests that feared
their rivalry, and often from sheer blind ignorance itself, had bitter
antagonism to contend with.

The day brought an immense concourse of people to Darlington, all bent on
seeing the novel spectacle of a train of carriages and wagons filled with
passengers and goods, drawn along a _railway_ by a _steam_ engine.  At
eight o'clock in the morning the train started with its load--22
vehicles--hauled by Stephenson's "Locomotion," driven by Stephenson
himself.  "Such was its velocity that in some parts of the journey the
speed was frequently 12 miles an hour."  The number of passengers reached
450, and the goods and merchandise amounted to 90 tons--a great
accomplishment, and George Stephenson and Edward Pease were proud men
that day.

Seven years from this present time will witness the _Centenary_ of the
railway system.  How shall we celebrate _it_?  Will railway proprietor,
railway director and railway manager on that occasion be animated with
the gladness, the pride and the hope that brightened the Jubilee Banquet?
Who can tell?  The future of railways is all uncertain.

A word or two regarding the railway system of Scotland may not be
inappropriate.

Scotland has eight _working_ railway companies, England and Wales 104,
and Ireland 28.  These include light railways, but are exclusive of all
railways, light or ordinary, that are worked not by themselves but by
other companies.  Scotland has exhibited her usual good sense, her canny,
thrifty way, by keeping the number of _operating_ railway companies
within such moderate bounds.  Ireland does not show so well, and England
relatively is almost as bad as Ireland, yet England might well have shown
the path of prudence to her poorer sister by greater adventure herself in
the sensible domain of railway amalgamation.  Much undeserved censure has
been heaped upon the Irish lines; sins have been assumed from which they
are free, and their virtues have ever been ignored.  John Bright once
said that "Railways have rendered more service and received less
gratitude than any institution in the land."  This is certainly true of
Ireland, for nothing has ever conferred such benefit upon that country as
its railways, and nothing, except perhaps the Government, has received so
much abuse.  On this I shall have more to say when I reach the period of
the Vice-Regal Commission on Irish Railways, appointed in 1906.

The average number of miles _operated_ per working railway company in
Scotland compared with England and Wales and Ireland, are:--

Scotland                       477
England and Wales              156
Ireland                        121

and the mileage, capital, revenue, expenditure, interest and dividends
for 1912, the latest year of which the figures, owing to the war, are
published by the Board of Trade, are as follows:--

                                                           Average rate
                                                            of interest
                                                           and dividend.
                                                             Per cent.
            Miles.     Capital.     Revenue.    Expenditure.
                        Pounds       Pounds         Pounds
England
 and Wales  16,223  1,103,310,000  110,499,000   70,499,000     3-58
Scotland     3,815    186,304,000   13,508,000    7,882,000     3-07
Ireland      3,403     45,349,000    4,545,000    2,842,000     3-83

The General Manager of the Glasgow and South-Western Railway and his
office I have described, but I have not spoken, except in a general way,
of the other principal officers, with whom, as Mr. Wainwright's
assistant, I came into close and intimate relationship.  They, alas! are
no more.  I have outlived them all.  Each has played his part, and made,
as we all must do, his exit from the stage of life.

Prominent amongst these officers was John Mathieson, Superintendent of
the Line, who was only twenty-nine when appointed to that responsible
post.  We became good friends.  He began work at the early age of
thirteen, had grown up on the railway and at nineteen was a station
master.  He was skilful in out-door railway work, and an adept in
managing trains and traffic.  Ambitious and a bit touchy regarding his
office, all was not always peace between his and other departments,
particularly the goods manager's.  The goods manager was not aggressive,
and it was sometimes thought that Mathieson inclined to encroach upon his
territory.  Often angry correspondence and sometimes angry discussion
ensued.  Yet, take him for all in all, John Mathieson was a fine man with
nothing small in his composition.  Soon his ambition was gratified.  In
1889 he was appointed Chief Commissioner of the Railways of Queensland;
and after a few years occupation of that post was invited by the
Victorian Government to the same position in connection with the railways
of that important State.  In 1900 he left Australia and became General
Manager of the Midland Railway; but his health unfortunately soon failed,
and at the comparatively early age of sixty he died at Derby in the year
1906.  In his early days, on the Glasgow and South-Western, Mathieson was
a hard fighter.  Those were the days when between the Scottish railway
companies the keenest rivalry and the bitterest competition existed.  The
Clearing House in London, where the railway representatives met
periodically to discuss and arrange rates and fares and matters relating
to traffic generally, was the scene of many a battle.  Men like James
MacLaren of the North British, Tom Robertson of the Highland, Irvine
Kempt of the Caledonian, and A. G. Reid of the Great North of Scotland
were worthy of Mathieson's steel.  Usually Mathieson held his own.  Irvine
Kempt I cannot imagine was as keen a fighter as the rest, for he was
rather a dignified gentleman with fine manners.  To gain a few tons of
fish from a rival route, by superior service, keen canvassing, or by
other less legitimate means, was a source of fierce joy to these ardent
spirits.  The disputes were sometimes concerned with through traffic
between England and Scotland, and then the English railway
representatives took part, but not with the keenness and intensity of
their northern brethren, for the Saxon blood has not the fiery quality of
the crimson stream that courses through the veins of the Celt.  Now all
is changed.  Combination has succeeded to competition, alliances and
agreements are the tranquil order of the day, and the Clearing House has
become a Temple of Peace.

Between David Dickie, Goods Manager, and John Mathieson, Passenger
Superintendent, as I have said, many differences arose.  I sometimes
thought that Mathieson might well have shown more consideration to one so
much his senior in years as Dickie was.  Poor Dickie!  Before I left
Scotland he met a tragic death.  He was a kind-hearted man, a canny Scot,
and died rich.

James Stirling was the Locomotive Superintendent.  He and Mathieson did
not always agree, and the clash of arms frequently raged between them.
Mr. Wainwright's suavity often, and not infrequently his authority, were
required to adjust these domestic broils, but as all deferred to him
willingly, the storms that arose were usually short lived.

In 1878 Mathieson and I took a short holiday together and crossed to
Ireland.  It was our first visit to that unquiet but delightful country,
in which, little as I thought then, I was destined a few years later to
make my home.

It was in January, 1879, that the headquarters of the company were
removed from the old and narrow Bridge Street Station to the new palatial
St. Enoch, and there a splendid set of offices was provided.  This was
another advantage much to my taste.  St. Enoch was and is certainly a
most handsome and commodious terminus.  Originally it had one great roof
of a single span, second only to that of St. Pancras Station.  Other
spans, not so great, have since been added, for the business of St. Enoch
rapidly grew, and enlarged accommodation soon became necessary.  In 1879
it had six long and spacious platforms, now it has twelve; then the
number of trains in and out was 43 daily, now it has reached 286; then
the mileage of the railway was 319, now it is 466; then the employees of
the company numbered 4,010 and now they are over 10,000.  These figures
exemplify the material growth of industrial Scotland in the forty years
that have passed.  St. Enoch Station was not disfigured by trade
advertisements, and it is with great satisfaction I learn that the same
good taste has prevailed to this day.  Not long after it was opened a
great grocery and provision firm, the knightly head of which is still a
well-known name, offered to the company a large annual sum for the use of
the space under the platform clock, which could be seen from all parts of
the station, which the directors, on the representation of their general
manager, declined; and I am proud to remember that my own views on the
subject, pretty forcibly expressed, when my chief discussed the subject
with me, strengthened his convictions and helped to carry the day in the
board room.  The indiscriminate and inartistic way in which throughout
the land advertisements of all sorts crowd our station walls and
platforms is an outrage on good taste.  If advertisements must appear
there, some hand and eye endowed with the rudiments of art ought to
control them.  In no country in the world does the same ugly display mar
the appearance of railway stations; and considering what myriad eyes
daily rest on station premises it is well worth while on aesthetic
grounds to make their appearance as pleasant and as little vulgar as
possible.  The question of revenue to the companies need not be ignored
for proper and efficient control would produce order, moderation,
neatness, artistic effect--and profit.

With the principal clerks of the office staff my relations were very
pleasant.  The consideration with which I was treated by my chief, and
the footing upon which I stood with him, gave me a certain influence
which otherwise I should not have possessed.  Till then there had been
absent from the company's staff any gathering together for purposes of
common interest or mutual enjoyment.  The _Railway Benevolent
Institution_ provided a rallying point.  I had been appointed its
representative on the Glasgow and South-Western Railway and we held
meetings and arranged concerts in its aid.  Then, after a time, we
established for the principal clerks and goods agents and certain grades
of station masters, an annual day excursion into the country, with a
dinner and songs and speeches.  "Tatlow is good at the speak," said
publicly one of my colleagues, in his broad Scotch way, and so far as it
was true this I daresay helped me.  I was made permanent president of
these excursions and feasts, and often had to "hold forth," which I must
confess I rather enjoyed.  We christened ourselves _The Railway
Ramblers_.  The fact that I became the Scotch correspondent of the
_Railway Official Gazette_, a regular contributor to the _Railway News_,
and had access to the columns of several newspapers, enabled reports of
our doings to appear in print, and diffused some pleasure and pride
throughout the service.  Also I became a weekly contributor of _Scotch
Notes_ to the _Montreal Herald_.  In the _Railway Official Gazette_ was a
column devoted to short reviews of new books which were sent to the
editor.  For a time, from some reason or other, I undertook this
reviewing.  Possession of the books was the only recompense, though for
all other work payment in money was made.  It was a daring thing on my
part and I am sure many a reader of the paper must have smiled at my
criticisms.  I forget why I soon gave up the duty; probably from
incompetence, for I am sure I was not at all qualified for such a task;
but what will the audacity of youth not attempt?  This journalistic work
occupied much of my spare time, but it supplemented my income, a
consideration of no little importance, for in October, 1876, I had
entered the married state.  My wife came from the Midlands of England.  My
friends became her friends, and other friends we made.  Children soon
appeared on the scene; my bachelor days were over.

Societies amongst the staff of a railway company, whether for the purpose
of physical recreation, for mutual improvement or for social enjoyment
are to be much commended.  The assembling together of employees of
various ages, filling various positions, from the several departments,
from different districts, freed from business, and mixing on equal terms
for common objects, promotes good feeling and good fellowship, provides
pleasant memories for after life, gives a zest to work, and adds to the
efficiency of the service.

Amongst all my fellow clerks I remember one only who resembled as a
borrower some of my quondam associates at Derby.  But this was in
Scotland where more provident ways prevailed.  He was a married man,
about 30 years of age, with a salary of 100 pounds a year.  By no means
what one would call a nice fellow, he had nothing of the _bonhomie_ or
light-hearted good nature that distinguished my Derby friends.  He
possessed a good figure, wore fierce moustaches, and affected a military
air.  One suit of well-made, well-cut clothes by some means or other he
managed to keep in a state of freshness and smoothness nothing short of
marvellous.  Borrowing was his besetting sin, and he was always head over
ears in debt.  Duns pursued him to the office and he sometimes hid from
them in a huge safe which the office contained.  It was a wretched life,
but he brazened it out with wonderful effrontery, and, outwardly, seemed
happy enough.  From all who would lend he borrowed, and rarely I believe
repaid.  Once I was his victim, but only once.  I lent him 3 pounds, and,
strange to say, he returned it.  Of course he approached me again, but I
had read and digested the _master's_ wisdom and determined to "neither a
borrower nor a lender be."

Prominent amongst the principal clerks was David Cooper.  When I left
Glasgow he succeeded me as assistant to the general manager.  Now he is
general manager of the company himself.  Recently he celebrated his 50th
year of railway service.  Like me, he entered railway life in 1867; but,
unlike me, has not been a rolling stone.  One company only he has served
and served it well, and for nearly a quarter of a century has filled the
highest office it has to bestow.  He and I have been more fortunate than
many of our old-time colleagues.  In the list of officers of the Glasgow
and South-Western to-day I see the names of two only, besides David
Cooper, who were principal clerks in those days--F. H. Gillies, now
secretary of the company, and George Russell, Telegraph Superintendent.

In railways, as in other departments of life, ability and industry
usually have their reward; but alone they do not always command success.
Other factors there are in the equation of life and not least luck and
opportunity.  In those distant days, in the pride of youth, I was too apt
to think that they who succeeded owed their success to themselves alone;
but the years have taught me that this is not always so, and I have
learned to sympathise more and more with those to whom opportunity has
never held out her hand and upon whom good luck has never smiled.




CHAPTER XII.
TOM


In the last few chapters I have made but little mention of Tom.  The time
was drawing nearer when I was to lose him for ever.  Until early in 1876
we lived together in the closest intimacy.  We pooled our resources, and
when either ran short of money, which often happened, the common purse,
if it were not empty, was always available.  Similar in height and in
figure, our clothes, except our hats, boots and gloves, in each of which
I took a larger size than he, were, when occasion required,
interchangeable.  We standardised our wardrobe as far as we could.  We
rose together, ate together, retired together, and, except during
business hours, were rarely apart.  I being, he considered, the more
prudent in money matters, kept our lodging accounts and paid the bills.
He being more musical, and a greater lover of the drama than I, arranged
our visits to the theatres and concert halls.  I was the practical, he
the aesthetical controller of our joint menage.  Once I remember--this
occurred before we left Derby--we both fancied ourselves in love with the
same dear enchantress, a certain dark-eyed brunette.  Each punctually
paid his court, as opportunity offered, and each, when he could, most
obligingly furthered the suit of the other; and this went on till the
time arrived for Tom's departure to Glasgow, when I was left in
possession of the field.  Then I discovered, to my surprise, that I was
not so deeply enamoured as I had imagined; and, curiously enough, Tom on
his part had no sooner settled in Scotland than he made a similar
discovery.

The climate of Glasgow never suited Tom's health and in 1876, on the
advice of his doctors, he decided to return to England.  For a time he
seemed to regain his health, but only for a time.  Soon he relapsed, and
before another year dawned it became evident, if not to himself, to his
friends, that his years on earth were numbered.  With what grief I heard
the news, which came to me from his parents, I need not say.  Bravely for
a while he struggled with work, but all in vain; he had to give in, and
return to his parents' home in Lincolnshire.  That home he never again
left, except once, in the summer of 1877, to visit my wife and me, when
he stayed with us for several weeks.  Though greatly reduced and very
thin, and capable only of short walks he was otherwise unchanged; the
lively fancy, the bright humor and the sparkling wit, which made him so
delightful a companion, were scarcely diminished.  He himself was
hopeful; talked of recovery, planned excursions which he and I should
take together when his health returned; but his greatest pleasure was in
recalling our Derby days, our _Maypole_ visits, our country rambles, our
occasional dances and flirtations, and our auld acquaintances generally.

Tom was remarkable for the quickness of his observation, for keen
penetration of character, and for happy humorous description of
particular traits in those he met.  He possessed, too, a wonderfully
retentive memory.  It is largely due to his lively descriptions of our
interesting fellow clerks at Derby that I have been able, after the lapse
of half a century, to sketch them with the fidelity I have.  His humorous
accounts of their peculiarities often enlivened the hours we spent
together, and impressed their personalities more forcibly on my mind than
they otherwise would have been.

When his visit came to an end, and he returned to his home, I too
indulged in the hope that he might regain some measure of health, for he
seemed much improved.  But it was a temporary improvement only, due in
part, perhaps, to change in environment, and in part to the exhilaration
arising from our reunion, heart and mind for a time dominating the body
and stimulating it to an activity which produced this fair but deceptive
semblance of health.  His letters to me breathed the spirit of hope till
almost the last.  We never met again.  The intention I had cherished of
going to see him was never fulfilled.  The illness of my wife and the
death of one of our children, and other unfortunate causes, prevented it;
and in little more than a year and a half from our farewell grasp of the
hand at the railway station in Glasgow my dear and beloved friend
breathed his last.  Often and often since I have heard again the music of
his voice, have seen his face smiling upon me, and have felt

   "_His being working in mine own_,
   _The footsteps of his life in mine_."




CHAPTER XIII.
MEN I MET AND FRIENDS I MADE


Ten years I served the Glasgow and South-Western Railway Company as chief
clerk, or as Mr. Wainwright euphemistically called it, _assistant_ to the
general manager.  In that position I met from time to time, not only many
prominent railway men, but also other men of mark.

Amongst these, two stand out with great distinction because of the effect
they had upon me at a memorable interview I had with each.  I never
forgot those interviews, and nothing that ever occurred in my life tended
to strengthen in me the quality of self-reliance so much as they did.
Their effect was sudden, inspiring and lasting.  These well-remembered
men were Mr. John Burns (afterwards the first Lord Inverclyde), head of
the shipping firm of G. and J. Burns, and chairman of the Cunard Line,
and Mr. John Walker, General Manager of the North British Railway.  The
interviews occurred, as nearly as I recollect, during the second or third
year of my Glasgow and South-Western life, and took place within a few
weeks of each other.

John Burns was one of the largest shareholders in the Glasgow and South-
Western Railway, his steamers plied between Greenock and Belfast, and his
relations with the company were intimate and friendly.  At the time I
speak of some important negotiations were proceeding between him and Mr.
Wainwright concerning the company and his firm, and whilst they were at
their height Mr. Wainwright was unexpectedly summoned to London and
detained there.  Now Mr. Burns was a man who greatly disliked delay, and
I was told to see him and, if he wished, discuss the business with him,
and, if possible, further its progress.  It was the way in which Mr.
Burns received me, young and inexperienced as I was, the manner in which
he discussed the subject and encouraged me, and the respect with which he
listened to my arguments, that surprised and delighted me.  I left him,
feeling an elation of spirit, a glow of pride, a confidence in myself, as
new as it was unexpected.  It is a fine trait in Scotchmen that, deeply
respecting themselves, they respect others.  Difference of class or
position does not count much with them in comparison with merit or
sterling worth--

   "_The rank is but the guinea's stamp_,
   _The man's the gowd for a' that_."

Mr. Burns was a striking personality; strong and vigorous, mentally and
physically.  He had a good voice, and was clear, decided and emphatic in
speech.  He was a doughty champion of the Glasgow and South-Western
Company, with which at this time, affairs, like the course of true love,
did not run smooth.  The dividend was down and discontented shareholders
were up in arms.  Bitter attacks were made on the directors and the
management.  Not that anything was really wrong, for the business of the
line was skilfully and honestly conducted, but the times were bad, and
"empty stalls make biting steeds."  The very same shareholders who, when
returns are satisfactory, are as gentle as cooing doves, should revenue
and expenditure alter their relations to the detriment of dividend,
become critical, carping and impossible to please, though the directors
and management may be as innocent as themselves, and as powerless to stem
the tide of adversity.  At shareholders' meetings Mr. Burns was splendid.
He rose after the critics had expended their force, or if the storm grew
too violent, intervened at its height, and with facts and figures and
sound argument always succeeded in restoring order and serenity.  An
excellent story of him appeared about this time in _Good Words_.  He,
Anthony Trollope and Norman Macleod were once at a little inn in the
Highlands.  After supper, stories were told and the laughter, which was
loud and long, lasted far into the night.  In the morning an old
gentleman, who slept in a room above them, complained to the landlord of
the uproar which had broken his night's rest, and expressed his
astonishment that such men should have taken more than was good for them.
"Well," replied the landlord, "I am bound to confess there was much loud
talk and laughter, but they had nothing stronger than tea and fresh
herrings."  "Bless me," rejoined the old gentleman, "if that is so, what
would they be after dinner!"

In the entrance hall of the North British Railway Company's Waverley
station at Edinburgh stands the statue, in bronze, of Mr. John Walker.  As
far as I know this is, the whole world over, the only instance in which
the memory of a railway general manager has been so honoured.  It is of
heroic size and eloquently attests his worth.  He was born in Fifeshire
in 1832, and died with startling suddenness from an apoplectic seizure,
at the age of fifty-nine, at Waterloo station in London.  When he left
school he was apprenticed to the law, but at the age of nineteen entered
the service of the Edinburgh, Perth and Dundee Railway.  This railway was
in 1862 amalgamated with the original North British, which was first
authorised in 1844, and extended from Edinburgh to Berwick.  His
exceptional ability was soon recognised and his promotion was rapid.  He
became treasurer of the amalgamated company, and in 1866 was appointed
its secretary.  In this office he rendered great service at a trying time
in the company's affairs, and in 1874 was rewarded with the position of
general manager.

The North British Railway has had a chequered career, has suffered great
changes of fortune, and to Mr. Walker, more than to any other, is due the
stability it now enjoys.  On the occasion of his death, the directors
officially recorded that, "He served the company with such ability and
unselfish devotion as is rarely witnessed; became first secretary and
subsequently general manager, and it was during the tenure of these
offices that the remarkable development of the company's system was
mainly effected."

His capacity for work was astounding.  He never seemed to tire or to know
what fatigue meant.  Ordinary men are disposed to pleasure as well as to
work, to recreation and social intercourse as well as to business, but
this was not the case with Mr. Walker.  It must be confessed that he was
somewhat exacting with his staff, but his own example was a stimulus to
exertion in others and he was well served.  One who knew him well, and
for many years was closely associated with him in railway work, tells me
that his most striking characteristics were reticence, combativeness,
concentration and tenacity of purpose, and that his memory and mastery of
detail were remarkable.  Deficient perhaps in sentiment, though in such
silent men deep wells of feeling often unsuspectedly exist, he was, by
those who served under him, always recognised as fair and just, and no
one had ever to complain of the slightest discourtesy at his hands.  Like
Lord Byron, he was lame from birth, and while this may have affected his
character and pursuits, it never, I am told, in business, which indeed
was practically his sole occupation, impeded his activity.  On the
failure of the City of Glasgow Bank, in 1878, which involved in ruin
numbers of people, he lost a considerable fortune.  He was a large
shareholder of the bank, and the liability of the shareholders was
unlimited.  He faced his loss with stoical fortitude, as I believe he
would have confronted any disaster that life could bring.

On a certain day Mr. Walker came to Glasgow by appointment to discuss
with Mr. Wainwright some outstanding matters which they had failed to
settle by correspondence.  In the afternoon Mr. Wainwright had an
important meeting of his directors to attend.  The business with Mr.
Walker was concluded in time, all but one subject, and Mr. Wainwright
asked Mr. Walker if he would let me go into this with him.  Without the
least hesitation he consented; and he treated me as Mr. John Burns had
done, and discussed the matter with me as if I were on an equal footing.
This was the interview that strengthened and confirmed that self-reliance
which Mr. Burns had awakened, and which never afterwards forsook me.
Great is my debt to Scotland and to Scotchmen.

Amongst the most prominent railway men I have met were Sir Edward Watkin,
Chairman of the South-Eastern Railway, and the following general
managers:--Mr. Allport, Midland, the exalted railway monarch of my early
railway days; Mr. (afterwards Sir) Henry Oakley, Great Northern; Mr.
Grierson, Great Western; Mr. Underdown, Manchester, Sheffield and
Lincolnshire; and Mr. (afterwards Sir Myles) Fenton, South Eastern.  Of
Sir Edward Watkin a good story was told.  When he was general manager of
the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (he was Mr. Watkin
then) many complaints had arisen from coal merchants on the line that
coal was being stolen from wagons in transit by engine drivers.  Nothing
so disgraceful could possibly occur, always answered Mr. Watkin.  Down
the line one day, with his officers at a country station, a driver was
seen in the very act of transferring from a coal wagon standing on an
outlying siding some good big lumps to his tender.  This was pointed out
to Mr. Watkin, who only said--"The d---d fool, _in broad daylight_!"  When
Mr. Allport learned that I came from Derby, and was the son of an old
Midland official, he treated me with marked kindness.  Mr. Oakley came in
the year 1880 to Glasgow, where he sat for several days as arbitrator
between the Glasgow and South-Western and Caledonian Railway Companies,
on a matter concerning the management, working, and maintenance of
Kilmarnock Station, of which the companies were joint owners, and I
learned for the first time how an arbitration case should be conducted,
for Mr. Oakley was an expert at such work.  This experience stood me in
good stead, when, not many years later, I was appointed arbitrator in a
railway dispute in the North of Ireland.

In the front rank of the railway service I do not remember many beaux.
General managers were men too busy to spend much time upon the study of
dress.  But there were exceptions, as there are to every rule, and Sir
James Thompson, General Manager, and afterwards Chairman of the
Caledonian Railway, was a notable exception.  Often, after attending
Clearing House meetings or Parliamentary Committees, have I met him in
Piccadilly, Bond Street, or the Burlington Arcade, faultlessly and
fashionably attired in the best taste, airing himself, admiring and
admired.  We always stopped and talked; of the topics of the day, the
weather, what a pleasant place London was, how handsome the women, how
well dressed the men.  At the Clearing House we usually sat next each
other.  I liked him and I think he liked me.  Do not think he was a beau
and nothing more.  No, he was a hard-headed Scotchman, full of ability
and work, and as a railway manager stood at the top of the ladder.  Next
to him Sir Frederick Harrison, General Manager of the London and North-
Western Railway, was, I think, the best dressed railway man.  Both he and
Sir James were tall, handsome fellows, and I confess to having admired
them, perhaps as much for their good looks and their taste and style, as
for their intellectual qualities; and I have often thought that men in
high positions would not do amiss to pay some attention to old Polonius'
admonition to his son that, "the apparel oft proclaims the man."

In the friends I made I was fortunate too.  They included two or three
budding lawyers, a young engineer, a banker, a doctor, two embryo hotel
managers, an auctioneer, and one or two journalists; and, as I have
mentioned before, my artist friend _Cynicus_.  We were, most of us,
friends of each other, met often, and the variety of our pursuits gave
zest and interest to our intercourse.  First amongst these friends ranked
G. G., one of the young lawyers, or _writers_, as they are called in
Scotland.  He was my closest friend.  We have not met for many years, but
the friendship remains unweakened; for there are things that Time the
destroyer is powerless to injure.  Like myself, G. G. comes of the middle
class.  His parents, like mine, were by no means affluent, but they were
Scotch and held education in veneration, and were ambitious, as Scottish
parents are, for their sons.  They gave him a University education, and
afterwards apprenticed him to the law.  He became, and is still, a
prosperous lawyer in Glasgow.

Then came J. B., a young lawyer too, who blossomed into the pleasant and
important position of Senior Deputy Town Clerk of the City of Glasgow.
He, too, had sprung from the great middle class.  Well versed in
classical lore he was a delightful companion.  He had travelled much and
benefited by his travels; was a sociable being, exceedingly good-natured,
and peered through spectacles as thick as pebbles, being very
short-sighted, and without his glasses would scarcely recognise you a
yard off.  Yet he could see into the heart of things as well as most men,
for he was a shrewd Scotchman, and had a pawky humour.  If he possessed a
fault it was a love for a game of cards.  We played _nap_ in those days,
and when a game was on it was hard to get him to bed.  He has gone over
to the majority now.  His sudden death a year ago came as a great blow to
his family and a large circle of friends.  Next to G. G., as intimate
friends, came H. H. and F. K.  They were in the company's service though
not in the railway proper, but connected with the management of the hotel
department.  Of foreign birth, sons of a nation with whom we are now,
alas! at war, they were youths of fine education, disposition and
refinement, and I became greatly attached to each.  H. H. preceded and F.
K. followed me to Ireland, where he (F. K.) still resides, honoured and
respected, as he deserves to be.  He and I, throughout the years, have
been and are the closest of friends.  Once, not very long ago, in a grave
crisis of my life, when death seemed near, he stood by me with the
devotion of a brother.  My auctioneer friend (G. F.) was, perhaps, the
most interesting man of our circle; certainly he possessed more humour
than the rest of us put together.  Fond of literature, with a talent for
writing, he was a regular contributor to the Glasgow Punch, _The Bailie_.
But his greatest charms were, his dear innocence, his freshness of mind,
his simple inexpensive tastes, his enjoyment of life, and his infectious
laugh.  In years he was our senior, but in worldly knowledge junior to us
all.  He lives still and is, I believe, as jocund as ever.  Another of
these Glasgow friends I must mention--a poet, and like Burns, a son of
the soil.  His name was Alexander Anderson.  When first I met him he was
in the railway service, a labourer on the permanent way, what is called a
surfaceman in Scotland, a platelayer in England and a milesman in
Ireland.  Self taught, he became proficient in French, German and
Italian, and was able to enjoy in their own language the literature of
those countries.  A Scottish nobleman, impressed by his wonderful
poetical talent, defrayed the expenses of a tour which he made in Italy
and an extended stay in Rome, to the enrichment of his mind and to his
great enjoyment.  On his return to Scotland he published a book of poems.
In an introduction to this book the Revd. George Gilfillan wrote, "The
volume he now presents to the world is distinguished by great variety of
subject and modes of treatment.  It has a number of sweet Scottish
verses, plaintive or pawky.  It has some strains of a higher mood,
reminding us of Keats in their imagination.  But the highest effort, if
not also the most decided success, is his series of sonnets, entitled,
'In Rome.'  And certainly this is a remarkable series."  A remarkable man
he was indeed; simple and earnest in manner, with a fine eye, a full dark
beard and sunburnt face.  Tiring, however, of a labourer's life and of
the pick and shovel, he left the railway and became assistant librarian
of Edinburgh University, and three years afterwards Secretary to the
Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh.  He afterwards became Chief
Librarian to the Edinburgh University.  He died in the summer of 1909.  He
stayed with me in Glasgow once for a week-end, and on the Sunday
afternoon we together visited a friend of his who lived near, a literary
man, who then was engaged in writing a series of lives of the Poets for
some publishing house.  An interesting part of our conversation was about
Carlyle with whom this friend was intimate, had in fact just returned
from visiting him at Chelsea.  He told us many interesting stories of the
sage.  I remember one.  He was staying with the Carlyles, when Mrs.
Carlyle was alive.  One evening at tea, a copper kettle, with hot water,
stood on the hob.  Mrs. Carlyle made a movement as if to rise, with her
eye directed to the kettle; the friend, divining her wish, rose and
handed her the kettle.  She thanked him, and, with a pathetic and wistful
gaze at Carlyle, added, "Ay, Tam, ye never did the like o' that!"

My first trip abroad was in 1883, and my companion, G. G.  We went to
Paris via Newhaven, Dieppe and Rouen, and at Rouen stayed a day and a
night, and spent about a fortnight in Paris.  We were accompanied from
London by a friend I have not yet named, one who was well known in the
railway world, Tony Visinet, the British Engineering and Commercial Agent
of the Western Railway of France; a delightful companion always, full of
the charm and vivacity that belong to his country.  He took us to see his
mother at Rouen, who lived in an old-fashioned house retired from the
road, in a pleasant court-yard; a charming old lady, with whom G. G. was
able to converse, but I was not.  Tony Visinet's life was full of
movement and variety.  He had lodgings in London, and a flat in Paris,
traversed the Channel continually, and I remember his proudly celebrating
his fifteen hundredth crossing.

From childhood I had longed to see something of the world, and this
excursion to Paris was the first gratification of that wish.  Paris now
is as familiar to me almost as London, but then was strange and new.
Rouen and its cathedral we first saw by moonlight, a beautiful and
impressive sight, idealised to me by the thought that we were in sunny
France.  Little I imagined then how much of the world in later years I
should see; but strong desires often accomplish their own fulfilment, and
so it came to pass.




CHAPTER XIV.
TERMINALS, RATES AND FARES, AND OTHER MATTERS


Of course it was right that Parliament, when conferring upon the railway
companies certain privileges, such as the compulsory acquisition of land
and property, should, in the public interest, impose restrictions on
their charging powers.  No one could reasonably complain of this, and had
it been done from the beginning in a clear, logical way, and in language
free from doubt, all might have been well and much subsequent trouble
avoided.  But this was not the case.  Each company's charging powers were
contained in its own private Acts (which were usually very numerous) and
differed for different sections of the railway.  It was often impossible
for the public to ascertain the rights of the companies, and well nigh
impossible for the companies themselves to know what they were.  These
powers were in the form of tolls for the use of the railway; charges for
the use of carriages, wagons, and locomotive power, and total maximum
charges which were less than the sum of the several charges.  In the Acts
no mention was made of terminals, though in some of them power to make a
charge for _services incidental to conveyance_ was authorised, and what
these words really meant was the subject of much legal argument and great
forensic expenditure.

In addition to the tolls and charges, the Acts usually contained a rough
classification of goods to which they applied.  These were divided into
from three to five classes, and comprised some 50 to 60 articles.  The
railway companies, however, had in existence, for practical everyday use,
a general classification called The Railway Clearing House
Classification, and this contained over 2,700 articles divided into seven
classes.

The tolls and charges in the Companies' Acts were fixed originally in the
old belief (to which I have before alluded) that railway companies, like
canal companies, would be mere owners of the route; and when they became
carriers and provided stations, sidings, warehouses, cranes, and all the
paraphernalia appertaining to the business of a carrier, the old form was
not altered, the charging powers remained as originally expressed in
subsequent Acts, and the same old model was followed.  For several years
prior to 1881 complaints by merchants, traders and public bodies against
railway rates and fares had become very common.  The cry was taken up by
the public generally, and railway companies had a decidedly unpleasant
time of it, which they bore with that good temper and equanimity which I
(perhaps not altogether an unprejudiced witness) venture to affirm
generally characterised them.  The complaints increased in number and
intensity and Members of Parliament and newspaper writers joined in the
jeremiad.

Parliament, as Parliaments do, yielded to clamour, and in 1881 a Select
Committee was appointed by the House of Commons to inquire into railway
charges, into the laws and conditions affecting such charges, and
specially into passenger fares.  It was a big committee, consisted of 23
members, took 858 pages of evidence, and examined 80 witnesses.  At the
end of the session they reported that, although they had sat
continuously, time had failed for consideration of the evidence, and
recommended that the committee be re-appointed in the next session.  This
was done, and the committee, enlarged to 27 members, took further
evidence, and submitted a report to Parliament.

The gravest issue was the right of the companies to charge terminals, and
the committee found that the railways had made out their case, and
recommended that the right of the companies to station terminals should
be recognised by Parliament.  Further, the committee, on the whole of the
evidence, acquitted the railway companies of any grave dereliction of
their duty to the public, and added: "It is remarkable that no witnesses
have appeared to complain of 'preferences' given to individuals by
railway companies as acts of private favour or partiality."  As to
passenger fares, the committee reported that the complaints submitted to
them were rather local than general, and not of an important character,
but thought that it might be well for the Railway Commissioners to have
the same jurisdiction in respect to passengers as to goods traffic.

The railway companies thus emerged from this searching inquiry with
credit, as they have done in the many investigations to which they have
been subjected, and no high-minded and aspiring young railway novice need
ever blush for the traditions of the service.

Before the committee Mr. James Grierson, General Manager of the Great
Western, was the principal witness for the railway companies, and yeoman
service he rendered.  He presented the railway case with great ability,
and his views were accepted on the important terminal question.  In 1886
he published a book on _Railway Rates_, which was warmly welcomed by the
Press and, in the words of _Herepath's Journal_, was "an exhaustive,
able, and dispassionate _resume_ of all the conflicting statements,
claims, and interests verging round the much vexed question of railway
rates."  Certainly he did much towards the ultimate settlement of the
matter.  Mr. Grierson was, perhaps, the ablest witness before
Parliamentary Committees the railway service ever had, which is saying
much.  A leading counsel, during the luncheon interval, once said to him,
"We feel small when we are cross-examining you.  You know all about the
business, and we can only touch the fringe of it."  The great secret of
Mr. Grierson's success was his mastery of, and scrupulous regard for,
facts and his straightforwardness.  Of his book he himself said, "My
conclusions may be disputed, but no one shall dispute the facts on which
they are based."

The committee recommended that Parliament, when authorising new lines, or
extending the powers of existing companies, should have its attention
drawn by some public authority to the proposed, and in the case of
existing companies, to the existing rates and fares.  They also
recommended that one uniform classification of merchandise be established
by law; that the Court of Railway Commissioners be made permanent; and
that the amalgamation of Irish Railways be promoted and facilitated.  Thus
the great inquiry ended; but public agitation did not cease.  One or two
attempts at legislation followed, but from one cause or another, fell
through; and it was not until 1888 that the subject was seriously tackled
by Parliament.  In that year the _Railway and Canal Traffic Act_, of
which I shall later on have something to say, was passed.

On the appearance of the Report in 1882, it was recognised in railway
circles that something _must_ happen regarding the eternal rates
question, and the companies began to prepare themselves as best they
could.  It fell upon me to examine the many Acts of Parliament of the
Glasgow and South-Western Railway, to collate the provisions relating to
tolls, charges and maximum powers, to compare those powers with actual
rates, to work out cost of terminal service, and to draw up a revised
proposed scale of maximum conveyance rates and terminal charges.  Deeply
interesting work it was, and led, not very many years afterwards, to
unexpected promotion, which I valued much, and about which I shall have
more to say.

In the year 1880 a Scotch branch of the Railway Benevolent Institution
was established.  Mr. Wainwright was made its chairman, and I was
appointed secretary.  He and I had for some time urged upon the Board in
London the desirability of a local committee of management in Scotland.
The Institution had a great membership in England, and was generously
helped there in the matter of funds by the public.  The subscription
payable by members was small, and the benefits it bestowed were
substantial; but railway men in Scotland looked at it askance: "the Board
in London kenned little aboot Scotland and Scotch claims wouldna get vera
much conseederation."  Well, all this was changed by what we did.  Soon a
numerous membership succeeded to the few who on Scottish railways had
previously joined the Institution, and we had much satisfaction in
finding that we were able to dispense substantial aid to many old and
needy railwaymen and to their widows and orphans.  Mr. Wainwright
remained Chairman of the Branch till his death, and I continued Secretary
until I left Scotland.

In 1883, after my return from Paris, I grew restless again, with a
longing for more responsibility and a larger and freer life; with,
perhaps, an admixture of something not so ennobling--the desire for a
bigger income.  Never was I indifferent to the comforts that money can
bring, though never, I must confess, was I gifted with the capacity for
money making or money saving.  The pleasures of life (the rational
pleasures I hope) had always an attraction for me.  I could never forego
them, or forego the expense they involved, for the sake of future distant
advantages.  What weighed with me, too, was the fact that I was
undoubtedly overworked and my health was suffering.  It was not that my
railway duties proper were oppressive, but the duties as Secretary of the
Railway Benevolent Institution in Scotland added considerably to my
office hours, and at home I often worked far into the night writing for
the several papers to which I contributed.  Too much work and too little
play was making Jack a very dull boy.  I envied those officers, such as
John Mathieson, whose duties took them often out of doors, and gave them
the control and management of men.

My chief was as kind and considerate as ever, and I confided to him the
thoughts that disturbed me.  Warm-heartedly he sympathised with my
feelings.  He himself had gone, he said, through the same experience some
twenty years before.  The prospect of promotion at St. Enoch, he agreed,
seemed remote; the principal officers, except the engineer, were young or
middle-aged; and he himself was in the prime of life.  He did not want to
lose me, but I must look out, and he would look out too.  At last the
opportunity came, and it came from Ireland.  The Belfast and County Down
Railway Chairman, Mr. R. W. Kelly, and a director, Lord (then Mr.)
Pirrie, were deputed to see half a dozen or so likely young applicants in
England and Scotland.  I was interviewed by these gentlemen in Glasgow,
was selected for the vacant post of general manager, and in May, 1885,
removed with my family to Belfast, and entered upon my duties there.

Lord Pirrie is a great shipbuilder of world-wide fame.  I was not long at
the County Down before I discovered his wonderful energy, his marvellous
capacity for work, his thoroughness, and keen business ability.  I always
thought that at our interview at Saint Enoch he was as much impressed
with the order and method which appeared in the office of which I had
charge as by anything else.  I showed him everything very freely, and
remember his appreciation and also his criticism, of which latter, as I
afterwards found, he was at times by no means sparing, but if sometimes
severe, it was always just and salutary.  How little one foresees events.
Not long had I left Glasgow before unexpected changes occurred.  In 1886,
Mr. Wainwright took ill and died; soon after Mathieson went to
Queensland; and in less than eight short years three general managers had
succeeded Mr. Wainwright.

They were good to me when I left Glasgow.  I was presented with a
valuable testimonial at a banquet at which Mr. Wainwright presided and at
which my good friend, G. G., made a fine speech.  It would be idle for me
to say that the warm congratulations of my friends, the prospects of
change, and the sense of new responsibilities, did not delight and excite
me.  But a strong measure of regret was mixed with the pleasurable
draught.  I was greatly attached to my chief, and keenly felt the parting
from him.  He felt it too.  When it came to the last handshake words
failed us both.

The Nestor of the Glasgow and South-Western Railway was Andrew Galloway,
the chief engineer.  A Nestor he looked with his fine, strong, grave
features, abundant hair, and flowing beard.  He was a very able engineer,
but had many old-fashioned ways, one of which was an objection to anyone
but himself opening his letters, and when absent from his office they
would at times lie for several days untouched.  If remonstrated with he
was quite unmoved.  He had a theory that most letters, if left long
enough unanswered, answered themselves.  In me he always showed a
fatherly interest, and sometimes chided me for talking too freely and
writing too much.  His last words when he bade me farewell, and gave me
his blessing were, to remember always to think twice before I spoke once.
On the very day I was assured of my appointment as general manager for
the County Down Railway I discarded the tall silk hat and the black
morning coat, which for some time had been my usual business garb, as it
was of many serious-minded aspiring young business men in Glasgow.  Mr.
Galloway asked me the reason of the change, which he was quick to
observe.  "Well," said I, "I have secured my position, so it's all right
now."  Never since, except in London, have I renounced the liberty I then
assumed; the bowler and the jacket suit became my regular business wear,
and the other habiliments of severe respectability were relegated to
churchgoing, weddings, christenings, and funerals and other formal
occasions.




CHAPTER XV.
FURTHER RAILWAY LEGISLATION


In Chapter IX., at the outset of my Glasgow and South-Western service, I
reviewed the public Acts of Parliament passed since the beginning of
railways down to the year 1875, and it may not be amiss to notice now the
further railway legislation enacted up to 1885.

The first measure of importance was the _Railway Returns (Continuous
Brakes) Act_, 1878.  The travelling public had for some years been
sensitive regarding railway accidents which, though infrequent,
nevertheless occurred much oftener then than now, and were more serious
in their results.  The matter of their reduction began to receive the
serious attention of railway engineers and inventors, and among many
appliances suggested was the system of continuous brakes.  In June, 1875,
a great contest of brakes, extending over three days, in which trains of
the principal companies engaged, took place on the Midland railway
between Newark and Bleasby.  A large number of brakes competed--the
Westinghouse, the Vacuum, Clarke's Hydraulic, Webb's Chain, and several
others.  It is recorded that at the conclusion of the trial, each
patentee left the _refreshment tent_ satisfied that his own brake was the
best; but Time is the great arbiter, and _his_ decision has been in
favour of two--the Automatic Vacuum and the Westinghouse, and these are
the brakes the companies have adopted.  The Act required all railway
companies to submit to the Board of Trade, twice in every year, returns
showing the amount of rolling stock fitted with continuous brakes, the
description of brake and whether self-acting and instantaneous in action.
So far there was no compulsion upon the railways to use continuous
brakes, though most of the companies were earnestly studying the subject,
but the rival claims of inventors and the uncertainty as to which
invention would best stand the test of time tended to retard their
adoption.  Meanwhile, the publicity afforded by the Board of Trade
Returns, and public discussion, helped to hasten events and the climax
was reached in 1889, when a terrible accident, due primarily to
inefficient brake power, occurred in Ireland, and was attended with great
loss of life.  The Board of Trade was in that year invested with
statutory power to _compel_ railway companies, within a given time, to
provide all passenger trains with automatic continuous brakes.

In 1878 there was also passed the _Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act_.
Foot and mouth disease had for some time been rife in Great Britain and
Ireland, and legislation became necessary.  The Act applied not only to
railways but was also directed to the general control and supervision of
flocks and herds.  It contained a number of clauses concerning transit by
rail, and invested the Privy Council with authority to make regulations,
the carrying out of which, as affecting the Glasgow and South-Western
Railway, devolved upon me, and for a year or two occupied much of my
time.

An Act to extend and regulate the liability of employers, and to provide
for compensation for personal injuries suffered by workmen in their
service, came into force in 1880.  It was called the _Employers'
Liability Act_, and was the first step in that class of legislation,
which has since been greatly extended, and with which both employer and
employed, are now familiar.

That great convenience the _Parcel Post_, which for the first time
secured to the public the advantage of having parcels sent to any part of
the United Kingdom at a fixed charge, and which seems now as necessary to
modern life as the telephone or the telegraph, and as, perhaps, a few
years hence, the airship will be, was brought into existence by the _Post
Office (Parcels) Act_, 1882.  Under that Act it was ordained that the
railways of the United Kingdom should carry by all trains whatever
parcels should be handed to them for transit by the Post Office, the
railway remuneration to be fifty-five per cent. of the money paid by the
public.  The scheme was a great success.  During the first year of its
operation the parcels carried numbered over 20 millions, and in the year
1913-14 (the last published figures) reached 137 millions.

The _Cheap Trains Act_, 1883, was passed to amend and consolidate the law
relating to (_a_) railway passenger duty, and (_b_) the conveyance of the
Queen's Forces by railway.  It did not apply to Ireland.  Passenger duty
was never exacted in that happy land.  In Great Britain the Act relieved
the railway companies from payment of the duty on all fares not exceeding
one penny per mile; provided for the running of workmen's trains; and
prescribed a scale of reduced fares for the conveyance of Her Majesty's
soldiers and sailors.

After this Act, and until the year 1888, no further general railway
legislation of importance took place.




CHAPTER XVI.
BELFAST AND THE COUNTY DOWN RAILWAY


After eighteen years of railway life, at the age of 34, I had attained
the coveted position of a general manager.  Of a small railway it is
true, but the Belfast and County Down Railway, though unimposing as to
mileage, was a busy and by no means an uninteresting line.  A railway
general manager in Ireland was in those days, strange to say, something
of a _rara avis_.  There were then in the Green Isle no less than
eighteen separate and distinct working railways, varying from four to
nearly 500 miles in length, and amongst them all only four had a _general
manager_.  The system that prevailed was curious.  With the exception of
these four general managers (who were not on the larger lines) the
principal officer of an Irish railway was styled _Manager_ or _Traffic
Manager_.  He was regarded as the senior official, but over the Traffic
Department only had he _absolute_ control, though other important duties
which affected more than his own department often devolved upon him.  He
was, in a sense, maid of all work, and if a man of ability and character
managed, in spite of his somewhat anomalous position, to acquire many of
the attributes and much of the influence of a real general manager.  But
the system was unsatisfactory, led to jealousies, weakened discipline,
and was not conducive to efficient working.  Happily it no longer exists,
and for some years past each Irish Railway has had its responsible
_General Manager_.  Something that happened, in the year 1889, gave the
old system the first blow.  In that year a terrible accident to a Sunday
school excursion of children occurred on the Great Northern Railway near
Armagh, and was attended with great loss of life.  This led the company
to appoint a General Manager, which they did in June, 1890, Thomas
Robertson, of the Highland Railway of Scotland, of whom I spoke earlier
in these pages, being the capable man they selected.

Curious certainly was the method which up to then prevailed on the Great
Northern system.  Three different _Managers_ exercised jurisdiction over
separate sections of the line, and the _Secretary_ of the Company, an
able man, stationed in Dublin, performed much more than secretarial
duties, and encroached, so I often heard the managers complain, upon
their functions.  This divided authority was a survival of the time
before 1877, when the Great Northern system belonged to several
independent companies; and, in the words of the Allport Commission of
1887, "its continued existence after ten years could hardly be defended."

Very pleasant and very interesting I found my new avocation on the County
Down, which for short the Belfast and County Down Railway was usually
called.  My salary certainly was not magnificent, 500 pounds a year, but
it was about 100 pounds more than the whole of the income I earned in
Scotland, and now for the 500 pounds I had only my railway work to
perform.  Now I could give up those newspaper lucubrations, which had
become almost a burden and daily enjoy some hours of leisure.  The change
soon benefited my health.  Instead of close confinement to the office
during the day, and drudgery indoors with pen and ink at night, my days
were varied with out-door as well as in-door work, and I had time for
reading, recreation and social enjoyment.  My lean and lanky form filled
out, and I became familiar with the greeting of my friends: "Why, how
well you look!"

The County Down railway was 68 miles long.  Situated entirely in County
Down, it occupied a snug little corner to itself, bounded on the north by
Belfast Lough, on the south by the Mourne Mountains, and on the east by
Strangford Lough and the Irish Sea.  To the west ran the Great Northern
railway but some distance away.  The County Down line enjoyed three fine
sources of seaside traffic, Bangor, Donaghadee and Newcastle, and was
rich in pleasure resorts and in residential districts.  It even possessed
the attractions of a golf course, the first in Ireland, the _Kinnegar at
Holywood_, but more of that anon.  As I have said, it was a busy line,
and it was not unprosperous.  The dividend in 1885 reached five and a-
half per cent., and in spite of considerable expenditure necessary for
bringing the line up to first-class condition, it never went back, but
steadily improved, and for many years has been a comfortable six and a-
half per cent.  In 1885 the condition of the permanent way, the rolling
stock, and the stations was anything but good, and as the traffic showed
capacity for development, to stint expenditure would have been but folly.
I do not think, however, the outlay would have been so liberal as it was
but for Lord (then Mr.) Pirrie, who was an active and influential
director, though there were also on the Board several other business men
of energy and position.  Indeed, it was a good Board, but the Chairman,
though a shrewd far-seeing man, had, like John Gilpin's spouse, "a frugal
mind," and Lord Pirrie's bold commercial spirit quite eclipsed his
cautious ways.  One instance will suffice to exemplify this, and also to
illustrate the novelty of my new duties, which were delightful in their
diversity and activity to one whose life hitherto had been confined to
sedentary work.

It was the rolling stock that demanded the most urgent attention--engines,
carriages and wagons and especially carriages.  Of carriages there were
not enough for the traffic of the line, and many were in a very sorry
condition, particularly those which had been taken over with the Holywood
and Bangor Railway, acquired by the company the previous year.  One
weekend, soon after I joined the service, I had all passenger carriages
brought into Belfast, except those employed in running Sunday trains, and
early on the Sunday morning (it was in the summer) with the company's
locomotive and mechanical engineer I examined each carriage thoroughly
from top to bottom, inside and out, above and below, and with his
practical help and expert knowledge, noted carefully down the defects of
each.  He worked with a will, delighted that someone as enthusiastic and
even younger than himself was now in charge.  He little suspected, I am
sure, how ignorant I was of practical matters, as I kept my own counsel
which was my habit when prudence so dictated.  I knew the names of things
and was well versed in the theory and statistics of repairs and renewals,
but that was all.  A fine worker was and is R. G. Miller.  Well over 70
now, healthy and energetic still, he occupies the position he did then.
Age has not withered nor custom staled his juvenility.  I met him on
Kingstown promenade the other day walking with an elastic step and with
the brightness of youth in his eye.  The ordinary age-retirement limit,
though a good rule generally, was not for him.  Daylight failed and night
came on before our task was finished, several carriages remaining
unexamined.  These and the Sunday running vehicles we subjected to
scrutiny during the following week.  At the next meeting of the Board I
presented a report of what I had done, and urged that a number of new
carriages should be contracted for without delay, enlarging upon the
return we might confidently expect from a responsive traffic.  The
Chairman and most of the Board were a little aghast at what appeared, to
a small company that had only recently emerged from straitened
circumstances, a very large order.  But Lord Pirrie came to the rescue,
strongly supported my proposal and commended the thoroughness with which
I had tackled the subject.  The day was won, the carriages secure, and
the order for their construction was placed with a firm in Birmingham.
This expenditure was the precursor of further large outlays, for it was
soon seen that the prospects of the company warranted a bold course.

I may, I am sure, be pardoned if I quote here some words from the report
of Sir James Allport's Commission on Irish Public Works.  It is dated 4th
January, 1888.  I had then been less than three years with the County
Down, and so could claim but a modicum of the praise it contains, and my
modesty, therefore, need not be alarmed.  The words are: "_The history of
the Belfast and County Down Company is sufficient to show how greatly
both shareholders and the public may benefit from the infusion into the
management of business qualities.  In that case a board of business men
have in ten years raised the dividend on the ordinary stock from nil to
5.5 per cent., while giving the public an improved service and reduced
rates_."  My satisfaction was the greater as I had given evidence before
the Commission, and helped to tell them the cheerful story of the
progress and development of the County Down Company.  It was my first
appearance as a railway witness and before Sir James Allport, who had
commanded my unbounded admiration from my first entrance at Derby into
railway life.  Need I say that to me it was an event of importance.

In the year 1875 the Board of the County Down, after an investigation of
its affairs by a Committee of Shareholders, was reorganised, and it was
then that Mr. Richard Woods Kelly became Chairman, and Lord (then Mr.)
Pirrie a Director.  The latter has more than once since told me that the
County Down shares were one of his best investments.

Mr. Kelly merits more than a passing word.  Before I joined the County
Down I was told he was a "terror," and that I ran foolish risk in leaving
a service like the Glasgow and South-Western for a position in which I
might find it impossible to please.  But fears like that never disturbed
me.  To wrongdoers Mr. Kelly could certainly be "a terror," and
wrongdoers there were, I believe, in the service in the early days of his
chairmanship.  He was a mild-mannered man, tall, rather pale, with
refined features and a low-toned pleasant voice.  But beneath this smooth
and gentle exterior resided great firmness.  He would smile and smile
with wonderful imperturbability and, in the quietest tones and the
blandest way, say severe and cutting things.  Economy was his strong
point and he observed it in his public and private life with meritorious
consistency.  Impervious to cold, as to most other human weaknesses, in
winter or summer he never wore an overcoat.  His smooth face and tall
slight figure seemed as indifferent to the angry elements as bronze or
stone.  By man or Nature I never saw him ruffled or in the least degree
disturbed.  But he had his human side, as all men have, and in time I
discovered it and grew to like him.  He was not at heart so cold as he
seemed.  Though he could not write a page without mis-spelling some of
the words, his letters were always concise and very much to the point.
But it was only in spelling he was deficient.  He spoke well, was a
shrewd judge of men, had a keen sense of humour, a clear perception of
facts, and was quick to detect and discard everything irrelevant.

Lord Pirrie and Mr. Kelly, in connection with the County Down, were hand
and glove, and it was no small part they played in its transformation
from dark and dismal poverty to smiling prosperity.

My assistant was James Pinion, afterwards my successor, and later on
Manager of the Cheshire Lines Committee at Liverpool.  Being a capable
fellow and a hard worker, it was only natural that he felt disappointed
at not being made general manager of the County Down instead of imported
me; but any sign of soreness soon disappeared.  The kindness, the
consideration and the confidence I had received at Mr. Wainwright's
hands, as his assistant, were not forgotten and I felt pleasure in
endeavouring to treat my assistant in the same way.  It was not long
before its effect appeared.  He told me one day that it was a new
experience for him to be so frankly trusted and so freely consulted, but
it made him happier and imparted a greater zest to his work.  Certainly
he served me with enthusiastic zeal and fine loyalty.  Throughout a long
period of railway management I have been most fortunate in securing the
goodwill and ready help of the staff, and in many instances their strong
personal attachment.  There are men no doubt whose natures are proof
against kindness and consideration, but my experience is that they are
few and far between.  I have found also that if one refrains from fault-
finding, gives praise where praise is due, and overlooks small or venial
faults, when reproof becomes necessary, if it be temperately
administered, it is always effective and productive of good.  But even
such reproof may be carried too far as on one occasion I found to my
dismay.  Pinion, one forenoon, came into my room to tell me he had
discovered that the man in charge of the cloak room was guilty of
peculation; had been tampering with the tickets, and appropriating small
sums.  I sent for him, talked to him very severely, sent him home, and
told him he should hear what would be done.  An hour later, I heard he
was _dead_: that on his way to his home he had purchased a bottle of
laudanum and swallowed the contents!

In Scotland a railway manager was rarely worried by outside interference
in the management of his men.  Well intentioned people either credited
him with the possession of good sense and decent feeling, or, themselves
resentful of any inter-meddling in their own affairs, refrained from
meddling in his.  But it was different I found in Ireland, even in
Belfast where Scottish traditions and Scottish ways were not unknown.
Exceeding good nature, I suppose, is largely accountable for the
readiness with which people in the sister isle espouse, often with little
consideration, the cause of any railway employee who has or fancies he
has a grievance.  A rather ridiculous instance of this occurred soon
after my installation at the County Down.  One of my first duties was to
examine the line and the employees at each station.  At one small station
I found in charge a station master in poor health and well advanced in
years--in fact quite beyond his work.  I learned that he possessed a
small property in land and was quite willing to retire if given a few
weeks in which to make his arrangements.  This, of course, I gladly
granted as well as a little parting gratuity.  He was well pleased, and
wrote me to that effect.  But, to my astonishment, not many days passed
before a long and numerously signed Memorial to the Board arrived
beseeching the Directors to stay t

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