The Outlook 495 



itself ; and, though electricity may supersede steam to a 

 considerable extent, especially for suburban traffic, the resort 

 to it is a reversal, in another form, to the earlier idea of motive 

 power distributed from a fixed point, as originally represented 

 by stationary engines, before the locomotive had established 

 its superiority thereto. 



In any case, the railway is still the railway, whatever the 

 form of traction employed, and there is, after all, no such 

 fundamental difference between an electric railway and a 

 steam railway as there was between the railway and the canal, 

 or between either railway waggon or canal barge and the 

 carrier's cart travelling on ordinary roads. The question 

 that really arises here is, not whether electricity is likely to 

 supersede steam for long-distance as well as for short-distance 

 rail traffic, but whether the railways themselves are likely 

 to be superseded, sharing the same fate as that which they 

 caused to fall on the stage-coach and, more or less, on the 

 canal barge. 



For the physical, economic and other considerations already 

 presented, there is no reasonable ground for expecting much 

 from the projected scheme of canal revival. When the country 

 comes fully to realise (i) the natural unsuitability of England's 

 undulatory surfaces for transport by artificial waterways ; 

 (2) the enormous cost which the carrying out of any general 

 scheme of canal revival would involve ; (3) the practical 

 impossibility of canal-widening in the Birmingham and Black 

 Country districts ; and (4) the comparatively small proportion 

 of traders in the United Kingdom who could hope to benefit 

 from a scheme for which all alike might have to pay ; it is 

 hardly probable that public opinion will sanction the carrying 

 out of a project at once so costly and so unsatisfactory in its 

 prospective results. 



Still less than in the case of canals would any attempt 

 to improve the conditions of transport on rivers serving even 

 more limited districts, and having so many natural drawbacks 

 and disadvantages be likely to meet any general advantage 

 or to foster any material competition with the railways. 



Developments in regard to road transport are much more 

 promising or, from the point of view of the railways, much 

 more to be feared than any really practical revival of inland 

 navigation. 



