1S4.S.J 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



119 



ilulum), and the formula useil which we have given in a preceding 

 chapter. It is possible tliat in some cases we may not be able to 

 employ the rules above referred to for the velocity without making 

 great errors; thus to seek out the truth as unequivocably as pos- 

 sible, in cases of much importance it is well to calculate by many 

 different methods, observing the difference resulting fi-om eacli to 

 determine afterwards the most probable. 



FRENCH RAILWAYS AND FRENCH REVOLUTIONS. 



At length the time has come when the French are awakened to 

 the truth about their railway undertakings. There were very few 

 who withstood the plan of government interference; it was thought 

 quite right that the government should take charge of the rail- 

 ways, and private enterprise was crushed. We say crushed, be- 

 cause it had not free play, and because the concession system was 

 a clog on those lines which were left in the hands of shareholders. 

 France is behind-hand with her railways: private enterprise when 

 most wanted is dead, and the finances have been upset by the 

 wasteful manner of making the government lines. M. Garnier 

 Pages, the new Minister of Finance, says this plainly, and names 

 among the causes of financial embarrassment those great jobs, the 

 government railways, made for placemen and not for the country. 

 Thus a burden is put upon France, which she will very much feel, 

 for taxation is at all times burdensome to the people, but always 

 most in their times of greatest need. It was wrong that railways 

 should be made by loans and taxes ; but it was still more wrong, 

 when the private enterprise of France was in its childliood, to take 

 away from it the food, as it were, of growth. France has always 

 been backward in such public woi'ks, and when there was a fair 

 chance of getting the French to take shares in railways, they ought 

 to have been put forward instead of being kept back. It has not 

 been so, and France is burdened with the government railways, 

 and the springs of private undertakings are broken up and can do 

 nothing, when France wants tliem most. 



If, however, the late government struck a great blow at joint- 

 stock undertakings, the future government holds out no liope, for 

 with the growth of socialist ideas, shareholders are frightened as 

 to what may be their share in anything they may undertake. The 

 working-man comes in now, and asks for his share in the newly- 

 opened lines, and though it may be small at first, it may be very 

 much afterwards, or it may be all. Railway undertakings are not 

 those where this plan can be best tried, for the clerks and work- 

 men have no very great means of making the traffic greater ; for 

 when a railway is made, the bulk of the traffic flows upon it, and 

 though it may be nursed, yet, as we have said, the underlings can do 

 but little for it. Tlie shareholder does the most in making the 

 line, and the working does not much want the care of others. 



What may be the end to English shareholders in French rail- 

 ways we cannot undertake to say, but whatever may befall — if in- 

 deed all they hold now should be lost, there will be no loss on the 

 whole, because the sale of shares to the French in 1845 and 1816, 

 will more than make good whatever may be lost hereafter. On 

 the first stake in Frencli railways, the English made enough to make 

 good their old stock, so that what they have left is only their gain. 

 It may be, tliat so far as some are bound up in French shares, they 

 may be losers ; but most of the holders, as we have said, have made 

 themselves safe. If, too, we take the income which has been had 

 on the old stock and put by, there must be more than enough to 

 meet any loss. We wish the shareholders were as well off in 

 Flanders, but there the railways are only half made, no income lias 

 been had from them, very few shares have been sold, and there is 

 little hope of a sale to the Flemings or the French. Therefore, so 

 far as French railways go, there is no room for the outcry that 

 English gold has been wasted abroad. 



If there be no loss to the English in the end on French shares, 

 the French themselves will lose, for there will be a withdrawal of 

 that help which the English have given, and which has made and 

 worked the few French railways now open. At a time when the 

 French government must give up railway making, when Frencli 

 shareholders are liorne down by heavy losses and cannot make the 

 railways themselves, the French cannot look abroad, for the trust 

 of the foreign holders is broken. However right it might have been 

 to give the workmen a share in the income of the Great Northern 

 Railway, and however needful it may have been, yet this step is 

 the deed of the chairman alone, without one word from tlie share- 

 holders whose income is handed over. M. de Rothschild, in taking 

 this step, has taken it in haste ; and it looks more like giving in to 



fear, than making a fair and careful bargain between the share- 

 holders and the workmen. No one can help seeing that fear of the 

 Communists wrouglit upon M. de Rothschild, for it was not enough 

 to hold out the liope — they would not trust to that, he had to give 

 at once all that they wanted. Every one will feel that when they 

 ask again, and ask more, it must be given : tlie Communists are to 

 ask, and the sluireholders to yield. If the stake the shareholders 

 have lately had be too mucli for them, so that they now have may 

 be held to be too much ; it is not left to the sliareholders to say 

 what is right— they have not even to make a bargain : the Com- 

 munists have the might, and they have the right, and if they say 

 five in the hundred is too much, the shareholders must give way. 

 It is very true that lately the income of the holders in stocks and 

 savings banks has been raised, but this only lays a heavier weight 

 on France, and the day must soon come when these burdens will 

 have to be lightened. Then it will be said, holders in savings banks 

 take so much, stockholders take so much — railway shareholders 

 must do the like. On these grounds, the holders here will be 

 frightened, and will take no share in any new railways, whatever 

 the wants of France may be. 



If the late government of France had upheld joint-stock under- 

 takings, there would have been a better knowledge of them, and 

 the new government would liave been more careful of meddling. 

 They would have looked to them as a help and a stay when so 

 many in France are out of work, and they would have found in 

 them the best way of making the wealthy give food and work to 

 the poor. A tax, however mild on the whole, can never fit itself to 

 the means of evei-y one; the golden mean will be broken — on one 

 the tax will fall lightly, another will sink under it. A joint-stock 

 share undertaking is a free-will loan, or a tax made by a man him- 

 self, knowing his means, and taxing himself to the utmost in the 

 hope of gain hereafter. There is no fear of a man putting down 

 too little, there is no fear of smuggling or shifting from under 

 the yoke. A loan raised for railway works partakes of this in 

 so far, that each gives as his means allow ; but the hope of gain 

 is not so strong to draw liim on, while he is not the master of 

 his own money, it is not laid out under his own care, it wants 

 the eye of the master. It is on these grounds, as much as any- 

 thing, that we uphold joint-stock undertakings in England; they 

 bring to bear not only the money of the people, but their skill and 

 powers of mind ; and we shall grieve whenever in this country 

 joint-stock undertakings shall be given over to the government, 

 as Mr. Morrison and his followers have been so earnest that they 

 should be. What the French did led them on, but we hope they 

 are cooled by what has lately happened there; though we are not 

 so strong in our belief that the goxernment will leave off meddling 

 while berths can be found for their many greedy hangers-on. 



The turning out of France of the English workmen need not 

 give us any sorrow, though it will do France no good. It is neither 

 more nor less than self-slaughter by the French. Why did Eng- 

 lish workmen go there ? Not as wanderers seeking a livelihood, 

 not like the Swiss and others who crowd to Paris, and earn bread 

 which Frenchmen might earn ; but they have been asked to go 

 there — they have been sought. English skill and English know- 

 ledge were wanted for French railways, French power-looms, and 

 French engine works. Tliere were no Frenchmen to do tlie work, 

 and Englishmen were brought over to teach them. So far from 

 the English doing as the Swiss — working under the French, taking 

 away their livelihood, or shortening their earnings— the English 

 have been always paid higher than the French, and have followed 

 new callings in which no Frenchmen came in their way, while they 

 have given help to the others by teaching them trades, which they 

 did not know before. The power-looms and other weaving and 

 spinning works of the north of France have been set up by the 

 English, and carried on by English foremen ; and thus the French 

 have been brought into the market against us. The English fore- 

 man is to be found all over Europe, not because he is liked, but as 

 they cannot do without him. This not in France only, but in 

 Flanders, Holland, Germany, Italy, and Spain. 



The withdrawal of English masters and English workmen from 

 France is a blow struck at France, and not at us. Instead of 

 Frenchmen fighting us with English weapons, tliey must take to 

 their own, and be beaten as they were before. We do not believe 

 that this swarm of Englishmen abroad did us the least good. They 

 mostly laid out in France what they made there — they seldom 

 brought anything back; and if we had not to keep the few thousands 

 who lived there, still we must have lost by the Englishmen put out 

 of work at home, who if they had to deal with the French only 

 would have beaten them, for after all the English are far better in 

 all the higher work. We shall have so many men brought home, 

 and we sliall have to keep them : it will be most likely by our 



