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CHAPTER VII

RAILWAYS AND PORTS

REVIEW of the history and present

position of Manchester as a seaport affords a striking illustration of the importance of the railways to the ports. Manchester's chief port was Liverpool, and the essential connection between Liverpool as a port and Manchester as a market and export centre was the iron road. But water-carriage being practicable and cheap, and the railway rates between the two cities being, in Manchester's opinion, unduly high, the great canal was cut.

The result was, as we have remarked, to bring down not merely the railway rates complained of, but the rates of the other railways-the railways connecting Manchester with the east-coast and other ports. For, failing such competitive reductions, these ports, and the railways serving them, stood to be cut out by the attractions of Liverpool [138]

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with its competing land and water carriage systems. The importance of the railways to the ports is, indeed, so paramount that the subject calls for special consideration. And having recently written a series of articles dealing with it from its converse aspect- The Ports and Docks as Railway Feeders'-I will now, with the approval of the editor of the Railway News, repeat, with such omissions and additions as may be called for, the conclusions thus arrived at.

The degree in which the railway is responsible for the growth of the port, and the port is responsible for the development of the railway, often affords matter for interesting study. It is, in fact, a question of mixed cause and effect. So, too, when it is asked how far the port is responsible for the population, and the population for the port. The causes are mutually reacting. But while there can be a population without its port, and a port without, comparatively stated, its population, there is nowadays no such thing as a port without its railway, and, if the railway companies can help it, no railway without its port. For, while in the case of the Continental States bordering one on the other the frontier railway junction often fills the part of port, our case is different everything that we send away, and

everything that we receive, must needs find its way to or from a shipping port. And so, too, with the millions of travellers who annually pass between the United Kingdom and other States: to all of these the port is the inevitable link between the railway and the ship. And the port itself, as, in greater or less degree, a centre of consumption and construction, is in continual need of supplies on its own account. No wonder, then, that to the railway companies a good and independent connection between their system and the shipping ports is one of the first considerations.

And if we accept it as an axiom that it is the population which makes the port, it can hardly be doubted that the railways, by bringing inland centres into connection with the ports, have been and are large contributors to the importance of the latter. The competition between the ports is, indeed, when looked at below the surface, often but another phrase for the competition of the railway companies at their back. For inland populations have all to be placed in touch with docks and quays, and the rival railway systems by which the inland cities are linked one with the other and with the various ports are unwearying in their efforts to encourage and develop the use of the

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particular ports with which they themselves happen to be peculiarly connected.

If it be true that it is the population which makes the port, it is certainly also true that the population need not be at the port. The following figures, in round thousands as regards the populations, and round million pounds sterling as regards the trade (overseas traffic, 1901 returns), afford ample illustration of the fact. Thus:

So that, as it will be seen, Liverpool, with a population of barely 700,000 citizens, has an import trade of no less than £132,000,000, as against London's trade of £170,000,000 for a

population (for Greater London) nearly ten times as great-6 millions. Indeed, if we deduct the 'Clearing House' imports, Liverpool's figures are £116,000,000, as against London's £135,000,000, thus reducing the disparity to £19,000,000 only. Liverpool is becoming more and more the conduitpipe for supplying with foodstuffs and with raw materials the manufacturing centres of the North and Midlands, with all their teeming millions. Here the port and the railway companies are hand in hand. It is the railways which have made Liverpool what it is. It may be replied that so also has Liverpool made the railways. But while the reply is largely true, it may be remarked that if the rails between Liverpool and the inland cities should be severed, it would not be very long before these cities would be in receipt of their supplies, even if at greater cost, by rail from other ports— Hull, Glasgow, London, and elsewhere. If the manufacturers could get on with difficulty without Liverpool as their port, without the railways they would be at a still greater disadvantage. And Liverpool, without the railways, would-if such an absurdity may be supposed-sink to the level of a petty coastal port.

It reduces itself, therefore, to this: That if it is the population which makes the port, it is the rail