INFLUENCE OF THE MEANS OF TRANSIT ON THE SOCIAL CONDITION QF THE PEOPLE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2146, 10 April 1886, Page 4

INFLUENCE OF THE MEANS OF TRANSIT ON THE SOCIAL CONDITION QF THE PEOPLE.

The following extracts are from a paper by Mr Samuel Vaili 1 , read before tbe Anckl»ud Institute on the 21st September last :—: — \A. v «y small amount of consideration will convince anyone th&t the faailt&et possessed by any country for the. transport of its people, produce, and merchandise, must have a msirkcd effect on the Bociat condition of its inhabitants ; and thi« being the case, it is tho more remarkable that so little attention has been paid to the subject. I believe it might b« laid as an axiom, that the commercial and society prosperity of .my countiy is in exact proportion to its transit facilities. • ♦ ♦ * A little, careful -.tudy will show that, as Svery marked incrpa-e in the facilities for travelling lias bt i>n .iccorded to any people, ■o there his speedily followed an equally marked unpro\ement in the cotntneicial and social condition ot that community. • , • * With the Romans came good roads and ■hips — or rather galleys, — and the advance in civilisation was rapid. Ido not mean to •ay that tho roads were the only civilising Agencies at work, but I do emphatically •ay this -that, without the roads, the civilising influence of the Romans would have been confined within very narrow limiti. Civ lhsing influences were then, as now, limited by the speed, ease, and cheapness of the means of transit. Take for instance the vast continent of Afrioa. Portions of it have been highly civilised for ages, but how little tbe influence of that civilisation was felt over the whole continent. And for why ? Simply because those nations had no adequate means of reaching tho interior ; nor can this great work ever be accomplished nntil we push our roads and rail* into its principal districts. « • • • The meant of inland transit bogan to improve in the in the days of Telford, McAdam, and the Earl of Bridgewater, but it was not till the advent of steam that any real progress was made. With the development of the new motive power came great and rapid progress — civilisation, the arts, science, manufactures. All shot ahead with marvellous speed. Wealth wai rapidly accumulated ; luxury, pleasure, social enjoyments inci eased everywhere ; and, side by side with all this, came an ever increasing, ever darkening ever deepening in hideous intensity, such a mass of human wretchedness and misery as no former age has ever witnessed, and such as we hope, in God's mercy, no future age will ever see. What an amount of trouble and research has been expended in attempting to account /orchis vast accumulation of wealth, the great and enormous progrrsa made in the arts and sciences, side by side with the constant piling up of the most abject poverjty, disease, and crime. < People ask how it -is, and why it should be, that in one street there should be whole terraces of houses full of very conceivable luxury, houses that cannot be raaintaind under many thousands per annum, and, that in another street only a few yards off, there should be nothing but the most wretched hovels inhabited by the most miserably poor ? This CJuehtion- of the TJuxqvaTi DISTRIBUTION of Wealth is a great one. In the near future it must be settled, and if we cannot find peaceful and natural means of doing this, we may make sure that violent and unnatural ones will be breught into play, and surely effect tbe purpose. I happen to know something of the condition of the poor of the great cities of the Old Country. I have worked among the London poor, and visited the slums of Manchester and Liverpool. You who have not seen these things, but have read " The Bitter Ciy of Outcast London," " How the Poor Live," and similar works, will most likely be inclined to think that the pictures there drawn are exaggerated. I tell you, of my own knowledge, that not only is there no exaggeration, but that the truth is not half told. Indeed, I believe it would bs impossible for pen or tongue to adequately describe] the unutterable life-long misery in which the very poor of the great citiea of the Old World and America drag out their wretched existence. It is not absolutely appalling merely to think of an almost 'lifeless iufant seeking to draw sustenance from a mother dying, if not already dead, from starvation? or to contemplate people lying on the same miserable bed with the bodies of their companions out of which the life had passed for several hours ? or to know of a whole family •ating, drinking, sleeping, working, in one small room in company with a corpse for 'fifteen day*, because they could not find the means to bury it ? Yet these thiDgs have taken, and doubtless are still taking place, hard by the palaces of the wealthy. These are wrongs that cry to heaven for vengeance, and they must, and surely will, by some means or other be remedied before long. But you say, " What has all this to do with your subject, and why do you harrow up our feelings by describing scenes which happily are far removed from us 2" For this reason : J. shall have to show you that the snme agencies that have brought about these fearful results have been set to work here, that they are now in active operation, and that, if they are not removed, scenes such as 1 hu\ r spoken of, ( will, before another thirty years have passed away, be enacted in Auckland, in Wellington, in Christchurch, and Dunedin. On the 10th October, 1825, the first railway — the Stockton and Darlington — was opened. In 1830 the Manchester and Liverpool and other lines followed, and in September, 1838, the first province was brought into railway communication with London by the opening of the London and Birmingham Railway. From that time the progress of railway construction has been very rapid. a The great misfortune appears to me to have been that private people were allowed to construct these great highways and use them for their personal benefit, when they ought to have been constructed by the government and manipulated in the public interests only. At the first, so far as I can see, fareTarid rates were charged on a pietty uniform and fair basis, but as time went on and competition became keener, the • ' , • ,' Differential Rating system sprang up. I think the great Arch Fiend must have laughed his loudest when this villainously dishonest method of trading wan brought into existence, at its door 1 lay the charge of nine-tents of the poverty, wretchedness, misery, and crime, that is in existence at tho piesent period. It is most difficult for me to convey to you any adequate idea of what this system really means. Very few, e,ven among skilled railway men, really xinderstand it, and fewer still have any idea of its far reaching and disastrous effects, on the commercial, social, and moral condition of the !eople. •♦**♦*• '<> put the matter broadly, " Differential rating simply means plunder your customer, when, where, and how you can. Get money out of him by some means, legally, if convenient, if not, illegally, but money you must get. When I say illegally', I speak advisedly and with a full knowledge of what lam saying ; and to prove the truth of my accusation, 1 quote th» fact that it js an everyday practice of the English railway companies to charge their customers from 300 to 1000 per cent, above the maximum rates they are allowed by law to charge ; and so difficult i? it to deal with these powerful institutions that they do not hesitate to publish these excess charges in their rate books, and only charge the legal rates in those rare instances when they have to deal with people who know too much for them. * * From the time of the opening of the London and Birmingham line, in 1833, the 1 progress of railway construction has been great and rapid everywhere. In Great Britain 111,000 miles of railway have been constructed at a capital cos,t of about £800,000,000. All the chiet centres of population have been brought into connection with the metropolis, and from the period mentioned dates the commencement of the enormous growth of the population of London and a few of the great provincial cities. f To be continued.)

The richest men m the land of the Czars at the present time are the ttpo Nobel brothers. They are of SwifS origin. While travelling in the interior of Russia they saw thousands of acres of land aglow with the light cf oil-gas. They at once purchased entire districts of the apparently worthless fields, sunk oil-wells, and now control more petroleum than .my concern in t!ie world. Their wealth ia'real'v bejond calculation, thorgh the London TimeV concspoadent thinks that £80,000,000 is not an extrav»gant estimate.