802 
THE TROPICAL 
but Ceylon, Districts. For instance; — [a tin- 
alleged scarcity of coolies general, and common to 
all districts? How far do Sinhalese till the 
deficiency, or how far with further exertions cm 
they he got to do so? Are heavy advances the rule, 
or strictly the exception ? Is it a fact that in- 
experienced planters are great sinners inasmuch 
as instead of sending advances by Icanganies to 
recruit on the coast, they are inclined to advance 
in order to outbid their neighbours on the spot! 
Is it a fact that while pressure on coolies is almost 
inevitable in March-April-May ; yet that by June- 
July-August in many cases, there may be only 
work for three days a week available? Now 
these are all questions on which the Parent 
Committee ought to .have full information, before 
they are called on to take any action whatever. 
Cannot a circular be drawn up embodying such 
queries and no doubt some more of an equally 
practical character, and sent to each District 
Association for a Report embodying the n< 
answers. This is certainly how we should re- 
commend the planters to proceed; for, other- 
wise, the Association is liable to be placed in a 
ridiculous position by discussing the need for a 
Commission, a Cooly Agency or the passing of 
a Regulation limiting Advances, before it is in 
possession of the information on which alone any 
such action could be justified. 
CHEAP TRANSPORT AND HOW 
TO GET IT: 
(Specially in the Ceylon Planting Districts.) 
BY J. DAVIS-ALLEN. 
The motto of the up-to-date railway engineer 
is "public needs," not as with the old-time man, 
"professional precedent.'"' So it has come to pass 
that even in those remarkable little islands 
Ceylon and England where, a short while since, 
he had nothing but impatient contempt for 
anything under "standard," he is beginning to 
join approvingly in the talk about the advantages 
of little railways — light railways — cheap railways. 
We could wish that matters were advanced 
beyond the stage of talk, but until they are 
the more talk the better. Anyhow we make no 
apology for adding to the volume of it. 
In Germany they have a quarterly magazine, 
"The Light Railway Journal" devoted to the 
subject, and not a newspaper but keeps it 
continually to the fore. As for books the titles 
alone fill a column and a half of " Roll's Rail- 
way Encyclopedia," a standard work published 
in Vienna. Significantly, not a solitary English 
name appears in that list ! Things have, how- 
ever, altered since it was published, and today . 
we can make quite a respectable show of Blue- 
books, magazine articles and newspaper contribu- 
tions all concerned with this one theme. The 
change is the outcome of a compelled recognition 
(itself engendered by the steady shrinking of 
the margin between cost of production and value 
in exchange of nearly every commodity) that 
the railway system of England like the 
systems of most countries, so far from being- 
complete, as used to be the boast heard on all 
sides, is little more than the skeleton of a 
complete system ; that over the whole country 
must be woven a close tissue of inexpensive 
lines, securing to every hamlet cheap, rapid and 
regular access to at least one of the great centres 
of population. 
The dominant economic factor of the cur- 
rent age is the amazing improvement in the 
means of transport. But the improvement 
has been in a direction, and of a nature to 
give foreign producers easier and yet easier 
access to the home-markets, while the home pro- 
ducer has been allowed to remain pretty much 
as .Macadam left him. 'J he l.ombardy farmer is 
provided with services of trains and steamboats 
competing for his patronage, and giving him 
cheap and rapid communication with London and 
the great Transalpine markets ; in many cases 
his produce is railed at his own door, an<l in no 
case is he out of sight of the steam tram wav.— 
ramifying into every cranny and valley, — of the 
Lombardy Roads Railway Company. The Nor- 
folk farmer, per contra, i- barred ot1 from liiu 
own markets by miles of country road, often 
ankle-deep in mire, through which' he has to haul 
nis produce to the nearest railway station by 
means Of a slow-going cait or waggon, costing 
him in wages, horse-feed, upkeep and interest 
on capital from £60 to £75 a year for each single 
horse cart. This is the state of things for which 
a reined}- is wanted, and the remedy should !>e 
sought not in currency adventures, but in the 
provision of cheap, rapid, ami regular Iransjiort, 
in a word, in Light Railway-. 
In 1891 (and the calculation holds good for 
J894) the United Kingdom had 166 mile* of rail- 
way per 1 ,<H»t) square miles of area. To giveher 
the same transport facilities as Belgium enjovs 
(290 miles per I.imhi sq. miles) would require toe 
addition of no less than 15,000 mile- of railway 
to the 20,000 she possesses today And the need 
of England is the need of other countries, each 
after its kind. 
In what follows we take the necessity for 
cheap railways as proved, and are concerned 
rather with ways and means. 
An opinion is about that Mich topics 
are best left to the technical journals, 
and it may be objected that having at 
hand one so able and " alive " as the 
Indian Engineer, the general press is going out 
of its way in discussing the detail of Railway 
construction and management. We are not of 
this way of thinking. The public have, of right 
and necessity, a determining voice in matters 
touching them so nearly as the provision and 
improvement of the means of communication, and 
while there are many questions of a highly 
technical nature which should be left to pro- 
fessional advisers, there are many others which 
are best settled by an educated commercial sense, 
professional advice being treated in these in- 
stances as one, but only one, of the data on which 
decision hinges. Such questions are : Traffic Esti- 
mates and the Capital Outlay they justify ; Time- 
table Arrangements ; Classification of Goods for 
Tariff Purposes ; 'Point to Point' as against mileage 
rates ; the Revision of Plans and Specifications 
from the point of view of economy and public 
needs ; the Location of the Projected Line. On some 
of these questions great weight must be allowed 
to professional advice, but with this proviso, 
all of them come within the jurisdiction of an 
educated commercial sense. Only it must be 
educated. It must be informed with knowledge 
not necessarily exhaustive, but certainly accurate 
as far as it goes, of what has been written and 
done with regard to the points on which it claims 
a voice. 
Of all the questions open to public discussion 
none has been so much debated, none has so much 
of the haze of controversy hanging over it, as 
"TRAMWAYS YEHSUS RAILWAYS." 
Yet, as a matter of fact there is no material differ- 
ence between them. Both are essentially rail-tracks 
for the conveyance of fianged-wheel vehicles. Of 
neither can a definition be "framed, whether based 
