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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 70, 23 March 1874, Page 2

The Quarterly lievieio says : — " Among the new and important inventions of which the last forty years have witnessed the creation, none hue attained greater importance than the railway. Nothing, at any period in the history of the world, has given such an impetus to commerce and manufacture. We have expenced nearly 560 millions sterling in the creation of 15,000 miles of iron road. It is true that from the moment when the first English railway was baptised in the Llood of an illustrious victim, the speculative element — the id».a of investing for profit — hae never been disconnected from the issue and transference of railway stock. But there has been an active creative vitality in this industry altogether, apart from the question of transfer of proporty. We have applied to ihe surface of our island an amount of labor which has produced a system of internal communication unknown to our fathers. Wo have done this to some extent by the devotion to this branr.h of industry of a certain amount of labor diverted from some other occupation. But no one who is practically familiar with the developetnent of the English railway Bystem from its origin can doubt that the labor thus transferred has formed but a part, and that by no means the most important par?, of the labor that has created railways. Much of that labor has been called into action by the occasion. Not only have men who would otherwise have been idle been fully and profitably employed, but the aotual productive capacity of a great number of men has been enormously developed. Still it has been formed by experience; industry has been formed by remunerative employment; and not only so, but to a considerable extent, the physique of the laborer has been improved. The man has been better fed, as well as better directed. His capacity for work has been at once developed and utilised. Thus we have had a new and most advantageous application of labor. We have raised and formed a new and improved class of laborers. Our railways have enriched the country, not only by the facilities which they afford to communication, but still more by the elevation of the working-class. They are not only benefits to the nation as a product of labor, but they can claim the yet higher title of being in themselves creators of laborers of a higher order than was to be found existent before their commencement, unless in so far as they were anticipated in this respect by our canals."