The Evening Star TUESDAY, MAY 16, 1871.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2572, 16 May 1871, Page 2

The Evening Star TUESDAY, MAY 16, 1871.

The letter from Mr Vogel, which we publish to-day, suggests the principles that ought to guide us in railway construction—economy and utility. In America the value of labor saving appliances is far more universally appreciated than ever it has been in England. We do not say that the work done there is better than at Home, As a rule, what we have seen has not the high finish that marks that done by English artizans in English workshops. As in the Nevada, everything is neat; those portions of the machinery that require to be well fitted are carefully attended to, but where utility is not impaired, what would not have been allowed to pass at Home, is not discarded. From Mr Vogel’s letter we gather that a like principle is developed in their railway construction. The greatest amount of work is done at the least expenditure of money. The humbug of compelling railway proprietors to incur enormous expenccs in constructing viaducts across roads, or to have gates and gate-keepers, or to make long detours to avoid street lines, is exploded. Just as children learn to wait for a carriage passing before crossing a street, the common sense of foot

passengers, or drivers of vehicles, tenches them when and how to cross railways. In England, it may be precautionary measures are more necessary than either here or in America, The population is dense; the trains travel at high speed, and they follow eacli other sometimes in rapid succession, but we have seen several instances where lines of railway crossed the main roads on a level where there were no gates, and we never heard of an accident occurring. In one instance, we remember, a portion of a line nnfenced, carried side by side with a turnpike road, and we never heard of an accident on either the line or the road. The fact is, there is in many minds a lurking conservatism in favor of the old metalled road. Very likely, many years ago, our fore-fathers were content with their bush tracks, and grudged the expense of constructing metalled roads. Like many in our day, they could not see the advantage derivable irom improved communication. Their wives and daughters spun wool, and cooked mutton and beef, and brewed and baked, and their sons dug and ploughed, and they were content to eat and drink, and live and die, like vegetables, on the same spot. Macadamised roads helped to break up these sleepy hollows, and in their turn turnpikes must be superseded by the cheapest and best of roads—the railway. In America, the people appear to have learnt to value them. Here the opposition they have had to encounter proves how little the subject is understood. We believe there are thousands in the Colonies who look upon the Public Works Act and the loan for carrying them out, as merely political schemes for retaining an Executive in power. They imagine that the construction of railways will give employment for a few years to some hundreds or thousands of men; and then, they tell us, the country will be ruined through having to pay the interest on the money borrowed. They do not perceive that by means of railways an immense saving of capital and labor will be effected in a variety of ways, that will enable us to do far more work, with our means, than can now be done. There will be economy in carriage of goods; economy in the time of men ; economy in the use of money. As tar fewer animals will have to be kept for the same amount of work, there will be more money available for investment in other pursuits, and consequently more employment for men. The object of every labor-saving process is to do more work for less money than can otherwise be effected • and as by this process, products of labor are cheapened, their use is widely diffused ; and, in the end, a greater number of people find employment than could otherwise have had work for the same amount of capital. Were this truth fairly apprehended, we should hear no more of those childish objections so frequently urged against railway conconstruction. Every farmer, and every district road board, would seek the benefits derivable from it. We never could see why so much care and consideration should be given to the construction of common roads, and so little prominence given to the formation of railways that must supersede them. An able engineer, in view of the improvements made on railway engineering, remarked that the time will come when every farm will have its tramway branching into a railroad. Nor is this by any means a chimerical idea. There is as good reason why a district should have its produce truck as that on certain lines of railway in Great Britain, branch lines leading into manufacturing establishments, shpuld be found advantageous, Nor

will the full value of railways be developed until this consummation is achieved. The change required will be that the carriages must be adapted to the road, not the road to the carriages, as is the case on metalled I'oads. The letter of Mr Yogel is suggestive, and we trnst will tend to convince the most sceptical that the extent of line constructed for a given amount of money depends to a great extent upon our notions of what is required for speed and safety.