90 CANALS. 



All this legislation, however, excellent in intention as it was, came rather 

 late to secure the full free development of inland 



Railway versus waterways. Of the whole mileage of the canals of 

 Canal. the United Kingdom, practically one-third, as has 



been said, belonged to the railway companies in 1888. 

 The actual figures were 1,204 ^- ^4)4 ch. owned by railway companies, as 

 against 2,608 m. 65 ch. not so owned. The mileage of canals belonging to 

 railway companies has decreased since 1888 by a little over 65 miles, owing 

 to the transfer to the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation Company 

 of certain canals which belonged to the Grand Central Railway Company. 

 Of the 582 m. 12 ch.* of canals in Ireland, 95 m. 69 ch., or nearly one- sixth, 

 is in the hands of a railway company. Commenting at the Manchester 

 Conference on the 1888 figures of the Board of Trade, Sir Michael Hicks- 

 Beach, the then President of the Board of Trade, said : — " Out of the 

 whole mileage of the canals of the United Kingdom, one-third belong to the 

 railway companies. That one-third only carries one-fourth of the total 

 traffic carried on the canals. The gross receipts per mile on that one-third 

 are considerably less than they are on the independent canals, and Ihe net 

 profits out of these gross receipts amount to as little as one-fourth of the 

 gross receipts. I confess, without desiring to say anything that should be 

 unpleasant to the railway companies, that the facts do seem to me to give 

 some colour to the accusation which has been frequently made, that when a 

 railway company becomes the owner of a canal it works that canal rather 

 for the profit of the railway than for the profit of the canal or the advantage 

 of the community. I believe there can be no more short-sighted policy 

 than such a policy as that. If our railway companies allowed the free de- 

 velopment of the traffic of their canals and through traffic from their canals 

 to the canals of independent companies, I believe the result would be most 

 satisfactory to canals generally and to the public at large, but even, by the 

 increase of trade, to the railways themselves." This is emphatically the 

 opinion of those foreign Governments which own both the railways and 

 canals, and which can thus secure a natural and profitable division of labour 

 between the two supplementary modes of transit. I shall return in a 

 moment, to the illustration of this point. Meantime I take it as an evidence 

 of what I may call the vitality of inland waterways — a vitality arising, of 

 course, from their inherent utility and adaptability as economical means of 

 communication — that in spite of the past action and attitude of railway 

 companies (of which something has just been said), and in spite of their own 

 intrinsic engineering and other defects, the canals of the United Kingdom 

 have been able to survive at all and even to pay a moderate return on 

 capital. 



According to the Board of Trade Return issued in 1890 (the particulars 

 given are for the year 1888), it will be seen that 25 per cent, of the paid-up 

 ordinary capital paid 2 to 3 per cent, dividend ; 47 per cent, paid 3 to 4 per 

 cent. ; and 9 per cent, paid 4 to 10)4 per cent. Only 6 per cent, of the 

 v> hole ordinary paid-up capital gave no return. The Board of Trade figures 

 for the year 1898, which I append, are, it is true, far from being so favour- 

 able. Still, it will be seen that 68.48 per cent, of the entire ordinary capital 



* This figure is taken from the Board of "Works return for 1898, but the Table on which this 

 mileage is estimated, omits the following waterways : — River Suir Navigation, Foyle Navigation 

 (Foyle to Strabane), Ballinamore and Ballyconnell Navigation, Lough Corrib Navigation, and 

 the Tyrone Navigation. An estimate of our inland navigation places it at 750 miles, more than 

 two-thirds of which are natural lakes and rivers. 



