Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland Part 14

Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland Part 14

The Conference consists of the General Managers of all railways who are parties to the London Clearing House, which means all the princ.i.p.al railways of the United Kingdom. Other Conferences there were such as the Goods Managers', the Superintendents', the Claims Conference, etc., but it was the General Managers' Conference that dealt with the most important matters.

I remember that, in returning thanks for my election, I ventured on a few remarks which I thought appropriate to the occasion. Amongst other things I said it was breaking new ground for the Conference to look to Ireland for a Pope, but that in doing so they exhibited a catholicity of outlook which did them honor; and I added that, in filling the high office to which they had elected me, though I should certainly never pretend to the infallibility of His Holiness, I should no doubt find it necessary at times to exercise his authority. At ten o'clock in the morning this little attempt at pleasantry seemed to be rather unexpected, but it raised a laugh, which, of course, was something to the good. The Conference was a businesslike a.s.sembly that prided itself on getting through much work with little talk--an accomplishment uncommon at any time, and particularly uncommon in these latter days. In these restless days when--

"_What this troubled old world needs_, _Is fewer words and better deeds_."

My year of office quickly pa.s.sed and I got through it without discredit, indeed my successor to the chair, Sir (then Mr.) Sam Fay, writing me just after his election, said that I "had won golden opinions," and expressed the hope that he would do as well. Of course he did better, for he was far more experienced than I in British railway affairs, and this was only his modesty. My friend Sir William (then Mr.) Forbes was my immediate predecessor as Chairman, and to him I was indebted for the suggestion to the Conference that I should succeed him in the occupancy of the chair.

Early in the year 1910 a delightful duty devolved upon me, the duty of presiding at a farewell dinner to J. F. S. Gooday, General Manager of the Great Eastern Railway, to celebrate his retirement from that position, and his accession to the Board of Directors. For some years it had been the custom, when a General Manager retired, for his colleagues to entertain him to dinner, and for the Chairman of the Conference to officiate as Chairman at the dinner. Gooday's brother Managers flocked to London from all parts of the kingdom to do him honor, for whilst he was esteemed for his ability as a manager, he was loved for his qualities as a man. Of refined tastes, including a _penchant_ for blue china, being a thriving bachelor, he was able to gratify them. We were so fond of him that the best of dinners was not enough, in our estimation, to worthily mark the occasion and to give him the pleasure he wished, and we presented to him some rare blue vases which _Cousin Pons_ himself would have been proud to possess.

By virtue of my office of Chairman of the Conference, I also, during 1910, sat as a member of the Council of the _Railway Companies'

a.s.sociation_. This a.s.sociation, of which I have not yet spoken, merits a word or two. As described by its present Secretary, Mr. Arthur B. Cane, it is "a voluntary a.s.sociation of railway companies, established for the purpose of mutual consultation upon matters affecting their common interests, and is the result of a gradual development." It dates back as far as the year 1854, when a meeting of Railway Directors was held in London to consider certain legislative proposals which resulted in the Railway and Ca.n.a.l Traffic Act of that year. In its present form it consists of all the princ.i.p.al railway companies of the United Kingdom, each Company being represented by its Chairman, Deputy Chairman, General Manager and Solicitor. A Director of any so a.s.sociated Company, who is a Member of Parliament, is also _ex officio_ a member of the a.s.sociation.

As its membership increased it was found that the a.s.sociation was inconveniently large for executive purposes, and some twenty years or so ago a _Council_ was formed with power to represent the a.s.sociation on all questions affecting general railway interests. At this moment this Council is engaged in looking after the interests of the railway companies in the matter of the great _Ways and Communications Bill_. By the suffrages and goodwill of my colleagues in Ireland, who had the election of one member, I remained on the Council till the end of the year 1912. Mr. Cane states that "The a.s.sociation has always preserved its original character of a purely voluntary a.s.sociation, and has been most careful to safeguard the independence of its individual members."

Also, that it has "been expressly provided by its const.i.tution that no action shall be taken by the Council unless the members are unanimous."

For many years Sir Henry Oakley was its honorary secretary, performing _con amore_ the duties which were by no means light, but in 1898 it was resolved to appoint a paid secretary and to establish permanent offices, which now are located in Parliament Street, Westminster. Mr. (now Sir Guy) Granet was the first paid secretary, Mr. Temple Franks succeeded him, and Mr. Cane, as I have already mentioned, is the present occupant of the office.

In the autumn of 1910 I visited the English Lakes and spent a fortnight in that beautiful district, in the company, for the first few days, of Walter Bailey; and during the latter part of the fortnight, with E. A.

Pratt as a companion. It was the last holiday Bailey and I spent together, though happily at various intervals we afterwards met and dined together in London, and our letters to each other only ended with his lamented death.

In the year 1913 a new form of Railway Accounts came into operation. This new form became compulsory for all railways by the pa.s.sing, in 1911, of the _Railway Companies (Accounts and Returns) Act_. This Act is the last general railway enactment that I shall have to mention, for no legislation of importance affecting railways was pa.s.sed between 1911 and 1913; and since the war began no such legislation has even been attempted, excepting always the _Ways and Communications Bill_ which, as I write, is pursuing its course through the House of Commons.

The form of half-yearly accounts prescribed by the _Regulation of Railways Act_, 1868, admirable as they were, in course of time were found to be insufficient and unsatisfactory. They failed to secure, in practice, such uniformity as was necessary to enable comparisons to be made between the various companies, and in 1903 a Committee of Railway Accountants was appointed by the Railway Companies' a.s.sociation to study the subject, with the view of securing uniformity of practice amongst British railways in preparing and publishing their accounts. This Committee, after an expenditure of much time and trouble, prepared a revised form, but the companies failed to agree to their general adoption, and without legislation, compulsion could not of course be applied. This led to the Board of Trade, who were keen on uniformity, appointing, in 1906, a Departmental Committee on the subject. On this Committee sat my friend Walter Bailey. The Committee heard much evidence, considered the subject very thoroughly, and recommended new forms of Accounts and Statistical Returns, which were (practically as drawn up) embodied in the Act of 1911, and are now the law of the land.

From the shareholders' point of view the most important changes are the subst.i.tution of annual accounts for half-yearly ones, and the adoption of a uniform date for the close of the financial year. In addition to the many improvements in the direction of clearness and simplicity which the new form of accounts effected, the following two important changes were made:--

(1) _All information relating to the subsidiary enterprises of a company to be shown separately to that relating to the railway itself_

(2) _A strict separation to be made of the financial statements from those which were of a purely statistical character_

The first of these alterations had become desirable from the fact that practically all the larger railway companies had, in the course of years, added to their railway business proper such outside enterprises as steamships, docks, wharves, harbours, hotels, etc.

One bright morning, in the autumn of 1911, I was summoned to the telephone by my friend the Right Honorable Laurence A. Waldron, then a Director of the Dublin and Kingstown Railway, and now its Chairman. He said there was a vacancy on the Kingstown Board; and, supposing the seat was offered to me, would I be free to accept it? As everybody knows, it is not usual for a railway manager, so long as he remains a manager, to be a director of his own or of any other company; so, "I must consult my Chairman," said I. The Dublin and Kingstown being a worked, not a working line, the duties of its directors, though important are not onerous, and my Chairman and Board readily accorded their consent. Such was my first happy start as a railway director.

[The Gresham Salver: salver.jpg]

The Dublin and Kingstown has the distinction of being the first railway to be constructed in Ireland. Indeed, for five years it was the only railway in that country. Opened as far back as 1834, it was amongst the earliest of the railway lines of the whole United Kingdom. The Stockton and Darlington (1825), the Manchester and Liverpool (1830), and the Dundee and Newtyle (1831), were its only predecessors. Soon after its construction it was extended from Kingstown to Dalkey, a distance of 1.75 miles. This extension was constructed and worked on the _atmospheric system_, a method of working railways which failed to fulfil expectations, with the result that the Dalkey branch was, in 1856, changed to an ordinary locomotive line.

The atmospheric system of working railways found favour for a time, and was tried on the West London Railway, on the South Devon system, and in other parts of Great Britain, also in France, but nowhere was it permanently successful. The reason of the failure of the system on the Dalkey extension, Mr. Waldron tells me (and he knows all about his railway, as a Chairman should) was due to the impossibility of keeping the metal disc airtight. The disc, shaped like a griddle, was edged with leather which had to be heavily greased to enable it to be drawn through the pipe from which the air was pumped out, in order to create a vacuum, and the rats, like nature, abhorring a vacuum, gnawed the greasy leather, letting in the air, and bringing the train to a standstill!

The Kingstown Railway was also interesting in another respect, as ill.u.s.trating the opposition which confronted railways in those early days. There was a Mr. Thomas Michael Gresham, who was the owner of the well-known Gresham Hotel in Dublin, and largely interested in house property in Kingstown--Gresham Terrace there is called after him. He organised a successful opposition to the Dublin and Kingstown Railway being allowed--though authorised by Parliament--to go into Kingstown, and its terminus was for some years Salthill Station (Monkstown) a mile away.

Mr. Gresham's action was so highly appreciated--incredible as it now appears--that he was presented with a testimonial and a piece of plate for his "_spirited and patriotic action_." I have adorned this book with a photograph of the salver which, with the inscription it bears, will I think, in these days, be not uninteresting.

The year 1911 was darkened for me by the shadow of death. During its course I lost my wife, who succ.u.mbed to an illness which had lasted for several years, an illness accompanied with much pain and suffering borne with great courage and endurance.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

FROM MANAGER TO DIRECTOR

I had long cherished the hope that when, in the course of time, I sought to retire from the active duties of railway management, I might, perhaps, be promoted to a seat on the Board of the Company. Presumptuous though the thought may have been, I had the justification that it was not discouraged by some of my Directors, to whom, in the intimacy of after dinner talk, I sometimes broached the subject. But I little imagined the change would come as soon as it did. I had fancied that my managerial activities would continue until I attained the usual age for retirement--three score years and five. On this I had more or less reckoned, but

"_There's a divinity that shapes our ends_ _Rough hew them how we will_,"

and it came to pa.s.s that at sixty-one I exchanged my busy life for a life of comparative ease. And this is how it came about. A vacancy on the Board of Directors unexpectedly occurred in October, 1912, while I was in Paris on my way home from a holiday in Switzerland and Italy. I there received a letter informing me that the Board would offer me the vacant seat if it really was my wish to retire so soon. Not a moment did I hesitate. Such an opportunity might never come again; so like a prudent man, I "grasped the skirts of happy chance," and the 5th day of November, 1912, saw me duly installed as a Director of the Company which I had served as Manager for close upon twenty-two years. It was an early age, perhaps, to retire from that active life to which I had been accustomed, but as Doctor Johnson says, "No man is obliged to do as much as he can do. A man is to have a part of his life to himself." I made the plunge and have never since regretted it. It has given me more leisure for pursuits I love, and time has never hung heavy on my hands. On the contrary, I have found the days and hours all too short. Coincident with this change came a piece of good fortune of which I could not have availed myself had not this alteration in my circ.u.mstances taken place.

Whilst in Paris I heard that Mr. Lewis Harcourt (now Viscount Harcourt), then Colonial Secretary, had expressed a wish to see me as I pa.s.sed through London, and on the 28th of October, I had an interview with him at his office in the House of Commons. There was a vacancy, he informed me, on the recently appointed Dominions' Royal Commission, occasioned by the resignation of Sir Charles Owens, late General Manager of the London and South-Western Railway, and a railway man was wanted to fill his place. I had been mentioned to him; would I accept the position? It involved, he said, a good deal of work and much travelling--voyages to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and Newfoundland. Two years, he expected, would enable the whole of the work to be done, and about twelve months' absence from England, perhaps rather more, but not in continuous months, would be necessary. It was a great honor to be asked, and I had no hesitation in telling him that as I was on the eve of being freed from regular active work, I would be more than happy to undertake the duty, but--"But what?" he inquired. I was but very recently married, I said, and how could I leave my wife to go to the other side of the globe alone? No need to do that, said he; your wife can accompany you; other ladies are going too. Then I gratefully accepted the offer, and with high delight, for would I not see more of the great world, and accomplish useful public work at the same time. Duty and pleasure would go hand in hand. I need not hide the fact that it was one of my then Directors, now my colleague, and always my friend, Sir Walter Nugent, Baronet (then a Member of Parliament), who, having been spoken to on the subject, was the first to mention my name to Mr.

Harcourt.

Soon after my retirement from the position of Manager of the Midland, my colleagues of the Irish railway service, joined by the Managers of certain steamship companies that were closely a.s.sociated with the railways of Ireland, entertained me to a farewell dinner. Mr. James Cowie, Secretary and Manager of the Belfast and Northern Counties Section of the Midland Railway of England (Edward John Cotton's old line), presided at the banquet, which took place in Dublin on the 9th of January, 1913. It was a large gathering, a happy occasion, though tinged inevitably with regrets. Warm-hearted friends surrounded me, glad that one of their number, having elected to retire, should be able to do so in health and strength, and with such a smiling prospect before him.

When I became a Midland Director, Mr. Nugent was no longer Chairman of the Board. He had been called hence, after only a few days' illness at the Company's Hotel at Mallaranny, near Achill Island, where, in January, 1912, he had gone for a change. In him the company lost a faithful guardian and I a valued friend. He was succeeded by Major H. C. Cusack (the Deputy Chairman), who is still the Chairman of the Company. A country gentleman of simple tastes and studious habits, Major Cusack, though fond of country life, devotes the greater part of his time to business, especially to the affairs of the Midland and of an important Bank of which he is the Deputy-Chairman. The happy possessor of an equable temperament and great a.s.siduity he accomplishes a considerable amount of work with remarkable ease. For his many estimable qualities he is greatly liked.

On the 14th of November I made my _debut_ as a Dominions' Royal Commissioner, at the then headquarters of the Commission, Scotland House, Westminster. Soon the Commissioners were to start on their travels, and were at that time holding public sittings and taking evidence.

This is a narrative of railway life at home, not of Imperial matters abroad, and it is therefore clearly my duty not to wander too far from my theme; nevertheless my readers will perhaps forgive me if in my next chapter I give some account of the Commission and its doings. The fact that I was placed on the Commission chiefly because I was a railway man is, after all, some excuse for my doing so.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

THE DOMINIONS' ROYAL COMMISSION, THE RAILWAYS OF THE DOMINIONS AND EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

For the first time in the history of the British Empire a Royal Commission was appointed on which sat representatives of the United Kingdom side by side with representatives of the self-governing Dominions. This Commission consisted of eleven members--six representing Great Britain and Ireland and five (one each) the Dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, and Newfoundland. The Commission came into being in April, 1912. It was the outcome of a Resolution of the Imperial Conference of 1911. The members of that Conference and of others which preceded it had warmly expressed the opinion that the time had arrived for drawing closer the bonds of Empire; that with the increase in facilities for communication and intercourse there had developed a deepened sense of common aims and ideals and a recognition of common interests and purposes; and that questions were arising affecting not only Imperial trade and commerce but also the many other inter-relations of the Dominions and the Mother Country which clamantly called for closer attention and consideration. The time at the command of the Conference was found to be too short for such a purpose, and it was to study problems thus arising, and to make practical recommendations that our Commission was appointed.

The individuals forming the Commission were, first and foremost, Lord D'Abernon (then Sir Edgar Vincent). He was our Chairman, the biggest man of us all; ex-banker, financial expert, accomplished linguist; a sportsman whose horse last year won the Irish St. Leger; an Admirable Crichton; an excellent Chairman. Then came Sir Alfred Bateman, retired high official of the Board of Trade, a master of statistics and unequalled in experience of Commissions and Conferences. He was our Chairman in Canada and Newfoundland and a most capable Chairman he made.

Sir Rider Haggard, novelist, ranked third; a master of fact as well as of fiction; a high Imperialist, and versed both theoretically and practically in agriculture and forestry. Next came Sir William (then Mr.) Lorimer of Glasgow, a man of great business experience, an expert authority in all matters appertaining to iron and steel and in fact all metals and minerals. He was Chairman of the North British Locomotive Company and of the Steel Company of Scotland, also a Director of my old company, the Glasgow and South-Western Railway. Then Mr. Tom Garnett (christened Tom), an expert in the textile trade of Lancashire, owning and operating a spinning mill in c.l.i.theroe; a good business man as well as a student of "high politics," a scholar and a gentleman. Of the last and least, my humble self, I need not speak, as with him the reader is well acquainted.

Canada's representative was the Right Honorable Sir George Foster, Minister of Trade and Commerce, steeped in matters of State, experienced in affairs, a keen politician and a gifted orator.

Australia selected as her representative Mr. Donald Campbell, a clever man, well read and of varied attainments, sometime journalist, editor, lawyer, Member of Parliament, and I don't know what else.

The Honorable Sir (then Mr.) J. R. Sinclair was New Zealand's excellent choice. A barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of his country, he had retired from practice but was actively engaged in various commercial and educational concerns and was a member of the Legislative Council of New Zealand.

South Africa's member was, first, Sir Richard Solomon, High Commissioner for the Union of South Africa in London. He died in November, 1913, when Sir Jan Langerman took his place. Sir Jan was an expert in mining, ex- President of the Rand Chamber of Mines, and ex-Managing Director of the Robinson Group, also a Member of the Legislative a.s.sembly of South Africa. Keen and clever in business and a polished man of the world, he was a valuable addition to the Commission.

Lastly, Newfoundland was represented by the Honorable Edgar (now Sir Edgar) Bowring, President and Managing Director of a large firm of steamship owners. He was experienced in the North Atlantic trade, in seal, whale and cod fishing and other Newfoundland industries. He was also a member of the Newfoundland Legislative Council.

Such were the members of the Commission. All endowed with sound common sense and some gifted with imagination.

Shortly stated the main business of the Commission was to inquire into and report upon:--

(a) The natural resources of the five self-governing Dominions and the best means of developing these resources

(b) The trade of these parts of the Empire with the United Kingdom, each other, and the rest of the world

(c) Their requirements, and those of the United Kingdom, in the matter of food and raw materials, together with the available sources of supply

The Commission was also empowered to make recommendations and suggest methods, consistent with then existing fiscal policy, by which the trade of each of the self-governing Dominions with the others, and with the United Kingdom, could be improved and extended.