Regency Rails - Georgian, Williamine & Early Victorian Railways

[john new]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Of course, it wasn’t people who already had a large stash, and were betting a small percentage of their wealth in risky enterprises who really suffered as the bubble burst, it was the ‘first timer’ staking more than they could really afford.

 

Small investors had been locked out of such gambling by legislation made for their protection after the South Sea Bubble, but were let back in again by, I think, the Joint Stock Act In 1844.

 

The mid-term affect of the railway bubble bursting was to effectively stop new schemes for over a decade, but I wonder whether it had a longer-term affect, which might go part-way to explaining the under-capitalisation of British industry that was one of the factors behind relative decline when compared with the US and Germany at a later stage.

 

A bit OT, that though. For this period, all is financials optimism!

My memory from a past research project is that relaxation of The Bubble Act was a minor factor in enabling the S&D to be financed.

[Nearholmer]

Yes, from what I understand the Bubble Act was repealed in 1825, but the Joint Stock Act didn’t come until 1844, so I’m not at all sure how things rested in between ...... more reading needed!

[Compound2632]

Incorporation of a Joint Stock Company by Act of Parliament.

 

Shareholders were not protected until the Limited Liability Act of 1855 and the Joint Stock Companies Act of 1856.

[Northroader]

[Nearholmer]

I don’t know if it applied to railway promotion, but some enterprises in this period were created by individuals clubbing together and operating without an Act, so when people went after them for debts it was like chasing a cloud of flies. Goodness knows how a cloud of flies created contracts with anyone ...... maybe the contract was with a named entity that didn’t exist as a legal entity!

[rockershovel]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Of course, it wasn’t people who already had a large stash, and were betting a small percentage of their wealth in risky enterprises who really suffered as the bubble burst, it was the ‘first timer’ staking more than they could really afford.

 

Small investors had been locked out of such gambling by legislation made for their protection after the South Sea Bubble, but were let back in again by, I think, the Joint Stock Act In 1844.

 

The mid-term affect of the railway bubble bursting was to effectively stop new schemes for over a decade, but I wonder whether it had a longer-term affect, which might go part-way to explaining the under-capitalisation of British industry that was one of the factors behind relative decline when compared with the US and Germany at a later stage.

 

A bit OT, that though. For this period, all is financials optimism!

 

Germany, being a manufacturing rather than a trading nation, could never afford the short-term, speculative attitudes and neglect of education and training which have done so much harm to British industry over the centuries. 

[Regularity]

4 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Also from memory, there was one of the Forsytes who speculated heavily. On his risky behaviour being remarked upon to his broker, the reply was, "don't worry about him, he keeps £100,000 in Consols to save him from actual want" - or something along those lines.

Why and how would investing in 2-8-0s (consolidations, or "consols" in North America) make one financially solvent?

 

[john new]

27 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Why and how would investing in 2-8-0s (consolidations, or "consols" in North America) make one financially solvent?

 

 

CONSOLS was a financial package instituted by the British Govt, along with a few other things like the first imposition of an income tax, during the Napoleonic Wars. It was a consolidation (hence consols) of several financial options into one package with the Government controlling interest rates etc. Lots of info' available on it on line and in books.

 

It's a while since I read up on it but the above is the gist.

Edited October 9, 2019 by john new

[Regularity]

I was being lighthearted.

[HonestTom]

53 minutes ago, john new said:

 

CONSOLS was a financial package instituted by the British Govt, along with a few other things like the first imposition of an income tax, during the Napoleonic Wars. It was a consolidation (hence consols) of several financial options into one package with the Government controlling interest rates etc. Lots of info' available on it on line and in books.

 

It's a while since I read up on it but the above is the gist.

 

A little side note on this (apologies if it's off-topic) was that Whitaker Wright, who was an early backer of the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway, used to refer to his bonds as "consols" to inspire confidence in investors. They didn't inspire enough confidence, and the BS&WR was the downfall of Wright's empire. I'm making a video on the subject.

[Nearholmer]

Which brings us (OT) to Charles Tyson Yerkes.
 

Now, he was a man who made even the dodgiest railway promoters of the 1840s look like mild mannered amateurs.

[john new]

2 hours ago, Regularity said:

I was being lighthearted.

 

I had assumed that but it was worth adding as not everyone would know what they were.

[runs as required]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Which brings us (OT) to Charles Tyson Yerkes.
Now, he was a man who made even the dodgiest railway promoters of the 1840s look like mild mannered amateurs.

This is my excuse to jump in with something approaching the topic (I have never wanted to be fluent in Guilts sic Yields and property development)

As I understand it we exported Bury locos to the USA where they grew into the Classic 4-4-0 and Cramptons to the French.

How did they spawn Engineers and Mechaniciens happy to tinker with their increasingly complex machines whereas we had got Drivers who seem to have been resistant to the bosses from the start of riding the early waggonways to the heyday of unionism in the 1950s?

dh

[Nearholmer]

Can you back-up the assertion about the militancy of drivers in the early days?

 

My impression is that most of the early drivers were fairly young, as befits an emerging technology, and I’ve never read of great unrest until the 1870s, when things turned sour as a result of downward wage pressure during an economic recession.

 

Doubtless drivers and bosses had occasional falling out before that, but especially in the very early days their interests were largely aligned, The shareholders couldn’t make money without the help of these clever chaps who understood the newfangled machinery, and it is misalignment of interests that causes trouble.

[whart57]

Wasn't the Joint Stock Company Act satirised in one of the less well-known Gilbert and Sullivan operettas (Utopia Ltd)?

[rockershovel]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Can you back-up the assertion about the militancy of drivers in the early days?

 

My impression is that most of the early drivers were fairly young, as befits an emerging technology, and I’ve never read of great unrest until the 1870s, when things turned sour as a result of downward wage pressure during an economic recession.

 

Doubtless drivers and bosses had occasional falling out before that, but especially in the very early days their interests were largely aligned, The shareholders couldn’t make money without the help of these clever chaps who understood the newfangled machinery, and it is misalignment of interests that causes trouble.

 

It’s a big subject, but I’d start with the legalisation of Trades Unions, which happened as long ago as 1824. The Tolpuddle Martyrs were convicted, transported and then pardoned and returned due to mass protests in the 1830s.

 

Gas workers seem to have been strongly unionised from their earliest days. 

 

Edited October 9, 2019 by rockershovel

[Nearholmer]

True, but the point was railway specific.

[rockershovel]

52 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

True, but the point was railway specific.

 

Railways seem to have come relatively late to the Trades Union Movement.   https://www.wcml.org.uk/our-collections/working-lives/railway-unions/

Edited October 9, 2019 by rockershovel

[Compound2632]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Can you back-up the assertion about the militancy of drivers in the early days?

 

My impression is that most of the early drivers were fairly young, as befits an emerging technology, and I’ve never read of great unrest until the 1870s, when things turned sour as a result of downward wage pressure during an economic recession.

 

Doubtless drivers and bosses had occasional falling out before that, but especially in the very early days their interests were largely aligned, The shareholders couldn’t make money without the help of these clever chaps who understood the newfangled machinery, and it is misalignment of interests that causes trouble.

 

Having been on the footplate on the Liverpool and Manchester seems to have been an essential CV item for the first generation of company locomotive superintendents - people such as Matthew and William Kirtley.

[webbcompound]

An unincorporated Association is a legal entity, with members, officers, and a constitution, but it is limited by its inability to enter into contracts. Instead the individual officers enter into contracts in their own name, which is clearly risky, however if a legal person, for example a limited company, is vested as one of the officers then everybody is happy,

[Argos]

William Aytoun's Spoof article on the Glenmutchkin Railway really summed up the times.

 

http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/rrsources/glen6.pdf

 

It was felt to be so true to life that it was blamed for the difficulty in raising finances for several schemes proposed through the Highlands.

[Compound2632]

“The Railway will be twelve miles long ... The gradients are easy, and the curves obtuse. There are no viaducts of any importance, and only four tunnels along the whole length of the line. The shortest of these does not exceed a mile and a half." [My italics] - at which point I fell off my stool, laughing.

[Nearholmer]

Brilliant!

 

The prospectus is drafted exactly as the ones I've been looking at - they really were as vague and inflated as that.

 

Thank you for highlighting the story.

 

Kevin

[runs as required]

6 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Can you back-up the assertion about the militancy of drivers in the early days?

My impression is that most of the early drivers were fairly young, as befits an emerging technology, and I’ve never read of great unrest until the 1870s, when things turned sour as a result of downward wage pressure during an economic recession.

Doubtless drivers and bosses had occasional falling out before that, but especially in the very early days their interests were largely aligned, The shareholders couldn’t make money without the help of these clever chaps who understood the newfangled machinery, and it is misalignment of interests that causes trouble.

 

2 hours ago, rockershovel said:

Railways seem to have come relatively late to the Trades Union Movement.   https://www.wcml.org.uk/our-collections/working-lives/railway-unions/

Since the word Militant hadn't occurred to me, I thought I should define terms:

Concise Oxford dict ionary definition: 1 combative, aggressively active esp in support of a (usu) poltical union 2 engaged in warfare

From wikipaedia:  

Militant means vigorously active, combative and aggressive, especially in support of a cause, as in "militant reformers".[1][2] It comes from the 15th century Latin "militare" meaning "to serve as a soldier". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militant

 

From what I've already posted about early waggonways and chaldron waggon running, it is pretty clear there was a lot of militancy already in evidence in the coal trade. 

I emphasised the chain between pits and sea going colliers – at the top of the hierarchical chain were the aristocracy, then came the lessees of pits, the colliery viewers, the waggonway owners, the waggonway contractors and the staith owners. All of these seem  collectively termed 'the coal owners'.

 

I posted a picture of a runaway descending waggon spill with the comment that deaths of drivers and (their more valuable) horses were frequent.  

Strikes by Tyneside Keelmen, a vital link in the chain, occurred throughout the C18, some long and bitter to the point of hunger.

A particularly acrimonious one took place from 27 September 1819 (a month after Peterloo) where the military were promptly called.

Accounts refer to Tyneside ‘Labourers’ being in support of the Keelmen

In 1822 there was a longer and more violent Keelmen’s strike, famous because a Hedley Wylam steam loco was placed on a boat demonstrating the superiority of a steam tug. The Navy were called to the staiths at Dunston and Swallwell and set up a drill area at Axwell Park in conflict with locals.  Source Sunnyside Local History Soc (last section)

I'm sure this 'them and us' regional dichotomy continued right through the industrial period and endures still today in North East culture: songwriting theatre and 'stand up'.

The young drivers you refer to on the L&M, L&B, and the GWR in the early period surely became 'the management', replaced by rural/urban migrants taken on as the scale of the rail industry grew.

 

My own young experience was as a result of WW II when my mum joined in sharing a house with 4 other young women whose men had been called up. 'Aunty' Freda's dad was an (ex GE) Stratford engine driver who had an allotment near us at Epping station where I often went to help him. I got given rides down to Ongar  and inter alia during long pauses of inactivity learnt how to snare rabbits and skin and roast them on (wood not coal) fires. Though living in a Leyton terrace he was much more a passionate countryman than "mechanician".

When nationalisation arrived in 1946/47 he proudly instilled me with "its our railway now". I don't think he was as militant as Tynesiders, but he had a fund of stories about what 'you had to watch out for' from the bosses.

dh

 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

Strikes and other forms of collective action was difficult to undertake regardless of the conditions that caused it because of the Masters and Servants Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_and_Servant_Act which was a blatant means of making sure that workers remained at work and didn't disrupt the profits of their betters. Of course these sorts of reactionary laws came unstuck because with the exception of the most unskilled jobs, like that done by the navvies, it was difficult if not impossible for the employers to find substitute skilled labour if their workers had struck for better pay and conditions. After all the lives of paying passengers would be put in danger if unskilled driving staff were employed, not to mention the risk of damage to complex machinery if unskilled or scab mechanics were employed. 

 

Plus the industrial age saw the ideals and monopolies of the old medieval trade guilds embraced by people who up until then were regarded as simply disposable labour to be used at will by the entrepreneurs.  For the workers, either skilled or unskilled, the early industrial period was one of grinding hard work for longs hours but it did ultimately drive home the point that a company's profits depended upon a reasonably compliant and contented work force. That didn't stop industrial action but it certainly lessened hours and, ultimately, profits lost.