CHAPTER XXI

BUILDING THE FIRST STREET-RAILWAYS IN ENGLAND

1858

In '58, when I visited Philadelphia on business of Queen Maria Cristina, of Spain, I observed the network of street-railways in that city, which then, perhaps, had the most perfect system of surface transportation in the world. I was struck with the idea of the great convenience these railways must be to business men and to all workers, and wondered why London, with so many more persons, had never had recourse to the street-railway. At that time there was not an inch of "tramway," or street-railway, in Great Britain, or anywhere outside of New York and Philadelphia. I stored the idea up in my mind, intending to utilize it some day, when I returned to England.

Before undertaking the work of constructing street-railways in England, I was called upon to do a little financiering for my father-in-law, Colonel George T. M. Davis. Colonel Davis came to me in London and wished me to assist in organizing the Adirondack Railway in upper New York. He had been introduced to Hamilton and Waddell, who had a grant from the New York legislature of 600,000 acres in the Adirondacks; but nothing could be done at that time. Later, in '64, I organized the Adirondack road, and met General Rosecrans and Cheney, of Little Falls, at the Astor House, for the purpose of building the railway. I subscribed $20,000 for myself and $20,000 for my wife, and got a large sum from my friends. A large party of us went in carriages from the United States Hotel, Saratoga, through the country along the proposed route to Lucerne. George Augustus Sala, who was visiting this country at the time, was with us, also Dr. T. C. Durant, president of the Crédit Mobilier, and J. S. T. Stranahan, of Brooklyn. This was the beginning of the Adirondack road, of which Colonel Davis was the president when he died in '88. My plan was to build the road through the entire forest to Ogdensburg, but it was never carried out. This was four decades before the millionaire colonists began flocking in there, the Huntingtons, Astors, Webbs, Rockefellers, Woodruffs, Durants, et al.

My first efforts in introducing street-railways in England were made in Liverpool. I chose this city because I had been long associated with it and because, as it was the leading seaport of the world, I had a false idea that it was progressive. But I was soon set right as to this estimate of Liverpool. I recalled, in the hour of discouragement, the great difficulty I had had years before, in '50, in getting the municipal government to permit us to have lights and fire on the docks at night, in order to facilitate the handling of the very traffic that was the basis of the city's prosperity. Now, when I proposed the laying of a street-railway, I found the leading men of the city just as narrow and just as hopelessly behind the times as they had been in the matter of improving shipping facilities. They would not consider the proposition at all.

But this did not stop my efforts nor dampen my ardor. I felt that the plan would succeed somewhere in England, and I began to look about to see where the best chances of success might be found. All through the year '58 and into '59 I was at work upon my original plan. I had made every possible arrangement for the immediate construction of a railway, if I could only get some municipality to grant the necessary permission.

Finally, it occurred to me that the man I wanted was John Laird, the progressive and energetic ship-builder, the man who afterward built the Alabama and other Confederate craft, and who was at the time chairman of the Commissioners of Birkenhead, just across the Mersey opposite Liverpool. Surely, thought I, here is a man with enterprise enough to appreciate this thing, which means so much for the working people and all business men. So I went to Mr. Laird, and after a long conference with him, I made a formal request to the Commissioners for permission to construct a surface railway, or "tramway," as it is called in England. My proposition was to lay a track four miles long, running out to the Birkenhead Park. I offered to lay the road at my own expense, to pave a certain proportion of the streets through which the line passed, and to charge fares lower than those then charged by the omnibuses. If the line did not then satisfy the city authorities, I was to remove it at my own expense and to place all the streets affected in as good order as when the road was begun.

I found Mr. Laird as liberal-minded as I had expected, and with his influence, the Board of Commissioners consented to let me make the experiment. I went to work at once, and the road was pushed through with great despatch. I felt that it ought to get into operation before the 'buses and other transportation companies stirred up too much opposition. As soon as the working people found how comfortable and cheap the new mode of conveyance was, I felt sure they would stand up for it so strongly as to defeat the efforts of the omnibus men to tear up the line.

The "tramway" proved a success from the start, and became as popular as I had expected. It was crowded with passengers at all hours of the day. The road is there to-day; and I learned a curious thing in connection with the line only recently. Twelve years ago the cashier of the restaurant in the Mills Hotel No. 1, Mr. Bryan, was the manager of the street-railway I had built in Birkenhead forty-two years ago.

Another incident of this period I should record here. I invited to Birkenhead most of the leading journalists and writers of London, having in view, of course, an intended invasion of the great metropolis. While these men were together I suggested the organization of a literary club, and this suggestion was the germ from which grew the Savage Club of London. My speech at the opening of the first street-railway in the Old World will appear in my forthcoming book of speeches.

As soon as I had completed my work in Birkenhead, I went to London, and opened a campaign for "tramways" in that metropolis of 4,000,000 people. It was a complex business from the first, and I had to make a study of the government and the conditions, and, above all, of the prejudices of citizens. The first step was to apply to every parish, for the parish there is our ward, and something more, for it has a far greater measure of home rule. Each parish had to grant permission for any tramway that was to invade its ancient and sacred precincts.

The greatest difficulty was the one I had most dreaded from the start--the opposition of the 'bus men. There are, or were at that time, 6,000 omnibuses in the streets of London, and in every one of the drivers, and in every one who was interested in the profits of the business, my tramway project had an unrelenting foe. I found that the influence of these men was tremendous, because they reached the masses of the people in a way that I could never hope to do. Their efforts were unremitting. They worked upon the different parish governments, upon the people at large, upon the municipal government, and upon Parliament itself. I believe they had sufficient influence to have carried the war even into the cabinet and to the throne.

However, as I shall soon relate, the opposition of the 'buses did not prove to be as terrible in the end as I had feared. The heaviest blows came from a higher source. The "people," in England, as elsewhere, seem very powerful at first, in the beginnings of all enterprises. To oppose them would seem to be inviting destruction. But in the end it is found that the real power is lodged elsewhere, and whenever this real power wants a thing done, the "people" do not exist. The fiction that they do exist disappears at once in the clear atmosphere of "exigency."

The first of these real powers that I had to attack was the Metropolitan Board of Aldermen. I appeared before the board with a carefully prepared model of the tramways I proposed. It was a sort of public hearing, and I was very closely questioned about the plans of operating the road, the effect its presence in the narrow streets would have in interfering with traffic, the danger of accidents, and so on. There was present a noble lord who, I saw, was fighting desperately against the project. He eyed me closely and made sharp interrogations. When he wished to be particularly effective, as is the manner of Englishmen of his class, he would drop his monocle, then readjust it carefully, with many writhings and twistings of his eyebrows, and, when the single glass was properly adjusted, half close the other eye and concentrate the full blaze of the monocle upon his victim. If the victim survives this, so much the worse for him, for he will then be subjected to a long drawl and to "hems" and "haws" that would shatter the composure of a Philadelphia lawyer.

We soon took up the problem of laying the tramway up Ludgate Hill, where the street is exceedingly narrow. His lordship fixed me with his glittering monocle. I saw from which direction the firing would come. After readjusting his monocle, so as to get the range better, he said:

"May I--ah--ask a question, Mr.--ah--Train?" When an Englishman wants to be sarcastic, and ironical, and cutting, he finds the means readiest to his mind in a pretended forgetting of your name.

"That is what I am here for, my lord," I replied, as graciously as possible.

"You know, of course, how very narrow is Ludgate Hill. Suppose that when I go down to the Mansion House in my carriage, one of my horses should slip on your d--d rail, and break his leg--would you pay for the horse?"

This produced a sensation, for the English love a lord even more than we plain Americans do. As soon as the stir had ceased, I replied, in a voice that carried to the ends of the hall:

"My lord, if you could convince me that your d--d old horse would not have fallen if the rail had not been there, I certainly should pay for it." This retort caught the audience so happily that the tide swept around my way, to the discomfiture of the noble lord. The hearing resulted in my obtaining permission to lay a tramway from the Marble Arch at Oxford Street and from Hyde Park to Bayswater, a distance of one or two miles.

I soon built other lines, also: one from Victoria Station to Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, and another from Westminster Bridge to Kennington Gate on the way to Clapham. These were constructed on my patent of a half-inch flange.

The omnibuses, defeated in this part of the fighting, resorted to peculiar but effective tactics. As soon as I laid a portion of my tracks--which was done upon the same terms under which I had put down the line in Birkenhead--the 'bus drivers tried in every possible way to wreck their vehicles on the rails. They would drive across again and again and take the rails in the most reckless way, in order to catch and twist their wheels. They were very often successful, and there were many accidents of this sort. The excitement increased greatly with every foot of track laid down. But the people, as in Birkenhead, were tremendously in favor of the tramway. It was such a convenience to them that they sided with me in the fight. The 'bus drivers and companies and the aristocracy were against me--the one because my trams interfered with their business, the other because they owned their private conveyances, and did not like to drive across the rails. I dressed conductors and drivers in the uniform of volunteers, to which many soldiers objected. In the meanwhile the cars were crowded with passengers at all hours, there being throughout the day a rush such as is seen in New York only in what we call the "rush hours."

In all this excitement and press of travel, accidents were, of course, unavoidable. I dreaded one, as I felt it would be the crucial point. It might turn against me the popular feeling, now so strongly setting in my direction, for the "mob" (so called) of London is fully as excitable and as ungovernable as the "mob" of Paris, and its prejudices are more deeply intrenched. Finally, the dreaded accident came. A boy was killed, and I was arrested for manslaughter.

In order to appease public feeling, I paid the expenses of the boy's funeral, and did everything that could possibly be done to pay, in a material way, for his death. The accident was entirely unavoidable, and the tramway was not responsible for it, but there was a great deal of feeling, chiefly due to the agitation of the 'bus drivers. Sir John Villiers Shelley, member of Parliament, a relative of the poet, who was chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works and the representative of the omnibus people, led the fight against me. We had a terrific struggle. The bill to authorize the tramways had gone to Parliament, and this was now defeated by a few votes. I had six of the ablest lawyers of England to represent me (through Baxter, Rose & Norton, solicitors), but the influence of the 'bus men, aided by the sentiment in certain quarters against me on account of my speeches in favor of the American Union, was too strong for me, and I had to abandon the fight in London.

I then went to the Potteries in Staffordshire, and there, after renewing the same kind of fighting that I had had in London, in every new town I undertook to lay railways in, I succeeded in building seven miles of track through the crockery-making country. Those tracks are there to-day.

My failure in London, which was to have been expected, must be set off by these successes in Birkenhead and in Staffordshire. I am entitled to the credit of laying the first street-railways in England, having to overcome the most formidable of all the enemies of progress--British prejudice. I afterward went to Darlington, where Stephenson had built his first railway, from Stockton to Darlington, in '29, the year of my birth, and I constructed a tramway there to connect the two steam railways through that town.

My life, therefore, spans the entire railway building of the world. The first railway was built the year I was born, and since that time, in a space of seventy-three years, more than 200,000 miles of railway have been constructed in the United States alone. In much of this great work I have had some share. I suggested the railway that connects Melbourne with its port, and mapped out the present railway system in Australia thirty-nine years ago; I organized the line that connects the Eastern States with the great Middle West--the Atlantic and Great Western Railway; and I organized and built the first railway that pierced the great American desert, and brought the Atlantic and Pacific coasts into close touch and led to the development of the far West.

I may mention here, also, that I built a street-railway in Geneva, Switzerland, which is still in use; and one in Copenhagen, which proved that there was at least something sound in "the state of Denmark." Other railways, as in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, suggested by me, have been changed from horse to trolley lines. I also suggested the road in Bombay, India, which was the first railway in all Asia, now extended.

It may be of interest to record that when I began building street-railways, I sent to the United States and got the plans of the Philadelphia roads and of the New York Third Avenue line. It was therefore upon the models of American roads that these foreign railways were constructed.

It is sometimes said that it is remarkable that little is known of my connection with these great enterprises--for they were great, and epoch-making. But my achievements in England, in the pioneer work of building street-railways, is a matter of recorded history. An account of my work there will be found in a book by Dr. Albert Shaw, editor of the Review of Reviews, Municipal Government in Great Britain, as well as in other books that deal with the industrial life of the period.