306 History of Inland Transport 



considerable expenditure on account of subsidences due to 

 coal-mining. In my book on "Canals and Traders" (P. S. 

 King & Son) I have told how " throughout practically the 

 whole of the Black Country, the Birmingham Canal, for a 

 total distance of about eighty miles, has been undermined by 

 colliery workings, and is mainly on the top of embankments 

 which have been raised from time to time, in varying stages, 

 to maintain the waterway above the level of the ground that 

 has sunk because of the coal mines underneath." Many of 

 these embankments, as I have had the opportunity of seeing 

 for myself, are now at a height of from twenty to thirty feet 

 above the present surface of the land, and in one instance, at 

 least, the subsidences have been so serious that an embank- 

 ment twenty feet high and half a mile long has taken the place 

 of what was formerly a cutting. If the Birmingham Canal 

 had not been controlled by the London and North-Western 

 Railway Company, who are under a statutory obligation to 

 keep it in good and effective working condition, it would 

 inevitably have collapsed long ago. No independent canal 

 company, deriving its revenue from canal tolls and charges 

 alone, could have stood the heavy and continuous drain upon 

 its resources which, in these circumstances, the canal would 

 have involved ; and like conditions apply to various other 

 railway-owned canals in the north, in Wales, and elsewhere. 



Concerning the Glamorganshire Canal, it is said in " Trans- 

 port Facilities in South Wales and Monmouthshire," by 

 Clarence S. Howells i 1 " The present owners have spent 

 25,000 on the canal since 1885 in an ineffectual attempt to 

 revive its waning fortunes. One of its many difficulties is the 

 subsidence caused by colliery workings." 



Dealing with the general position in regard to canal trans- 

 port in the United Kingdom, J. S. Jeans remarks in " Water- 

 ways and Water Transport " (1890) : 



" The railway companies have been accused of acquiring 

 canal property in order that they might destroy it, and thereby 

 get rid of a dangerous rival. This is probably not the case. 

 The railway companies are fully aware of the fact that water 

 transport under suitable conditions is more economical than 

 rail transport. It would therefore have suited them, at the 



1 " Publications of the Department of Economics and Political Science 

 of the University of South Wales and Monmouthshire," No. 2 (1911). 



