Jhe \vfe of Xhomas Brassey Sic A. Helps :in'-^f ■re Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924050092604 BOHirS SELECT LIBBABT LIFE OF THOMAS BKASSEY LIFE AND LABOURS OP THOMAS BRASSEY 1805—1870. BT THE LATE SIR ARTHUR HELPS, K.C.B. SEVENTH EDITION LONDON: GEOllGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET COVENT GARDEN 1888 ^oL /l-Zb-V^S^ ^\ ^cornellX lf^S^ffC(k -fr^M \\J^ n^ Wb CHISV/ICK PRESS : C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COUJ^T, CHANCERY LANE. ^ Property of MARTIN P. CATHERWOOD LIBRARY NEW vn^:; state SOHOOL INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR RELATIONS Cnmell (Jnivprsity DEDICATION. TO TEE QUEEN. Madam, I am very grateful for the permission given me to dedi- cate this work to Your Majesty. I desired so to dedicate it, because I do not know of anyone who has a deeper sympathy with the labouring classes than Your Majesty, or anyone who takes a more heartfelt interest in every- thing that concerns their habits, their education, and their general welfare. Moreover, this sympathy and this interest are not con- fined to those classes in Your Majesty's Dominions only, but are extended to them wherever they are to be found. I think also, that it cannot but be very gratifying to Your Majesty to have full evidence that, in a special kind of labour of a very important character, namely, the construction of railways, Your own subjects have hitherto borne the palm, and have intro- duced their excellent modes of working into various Foreign countries. Your Majesty wiU find that the late Mit. Brassey was an employer of labour after Your Majesty's own heart : always V solicitous for the well-being of those who served under him ; X never keeping aloof from them, but using the powerful position \ of a master in such a manner as to win their affections, and to \j diminish the distance which is often far too great between the \j employer and the employed. 1 I venture, therefore, to think that the volume will be interest- ing to Your Majesty on its own account; and that You will be ■I disposed to view with favour the merits, if any, and to deal gently X with the faults, of a work written by one who, with all respect, is ^\ ever Your Majesty's X) Faithful and devoted Subject and Servant, ' ARTHUR HELPS. yT London: Am, 1872. PREFACE. I FEEL it to Le rigM to acknowledge in detail the great assistance I have received in writitag this work. It would he difficult for me to name all the persons from whom I have derived this assistance ; hut I must mention some of those who have been my principal coadjutors; namely, Mr. Thomas Brassey, Mr. Ballard, Mr. Bidder, Dr. Burnett, Mr. Day, Mr. Dent, Mr. Edwards, Mr. Evans, Mr. Fowler, Mr. Netlam Giles, Mr, Hancox, Mr. Henry Harrison, Mr. Hawkshaw, Mr. Henfrey, Mr. Hodges, Mr. Holme, Mr. Charles Jones, Mr. Longridge, Mr. Louth, Mr. Mackay, Lieut. -Col. Charles Manby, Mr. Milroy, Mr. Frederic Murton, Mr. Ogilvie, Sir Morton Peto, Bart., Mr. Eay, Mr. Ehodes, Mr. Eicketts, Eev. H. Eobinson, Mr. Eowan, Mr. Strapp, Mr. Tapp, Mr. Trubshaw, Mr. Wag- staff, Mr. Wilcox, and Mr. Woolcott. The object of this work is not merely to narrate the life and labours of Mr. Beasset ; but it aims, also, to show forth the labours of others, which that life elicited. The life of many an eminent man, especially if his eminence has consisted in doing one kind of work very well, does not admit of much interest in the narrative itself, and might be very briefly told. It is a melancholy fact, but fact it is, that great conquerors are mainly the persons whose lives are most interesting, such as Alexander the Great, Julius Gsesar, Cortes, and Napoleon. On the contrary, the lives that have been most serviceable to mankind, as well as the histories of the most peaceful and therefore happiest periods of the lives of nations, give little scope for exciting narrative. The consequences, however, of the actions of these benefactors of mankind are often of the highest in- terest ; and, in this particular case of Mr. Brassey, those consequences were visible in his own lifetime, and may PREFACE. therefore natm-ally lie incorporated with any account of his life. Mr. Brassey must ever be considered as one of the chief pioneers in the great series of industrial enterprises by which the modern world has, we may almost say, been transformed. The interest in his life greatly depends upon the fact, that his career and the establishment of railways commenced almost simultaneously. He certainly was the first person who went out as a contractor into foreign lands, and who first made the British modes of working known in many parts of the globe. It was for- tunate for our reputation with the foreigner, that British skill, workmanship, and power of organization, as mani- fested in railway construction, were made known in foreign countries by one who was a type of the men of his calling, and who possessed in perfection some of the most sterling qualities of the British people. When I speak thus of Mr. Brassey, I do not mean for a moment to ignore the services of the engineers under whom he acted, or of the partners with whom he acted in these great undertakiags. From Mr. Mackenzie, Mr. Brassey's first partner in a foreign railway contract, from many of his succeeding partners, from the able and distinguished men in their several callings who were connected with him in railway enterprises, Mr. Brassey received the greatest assistance. The business of a contractor is not by any means of an isolated character, and, in the course of Mr. Brassey's life, as wiU be seen by reference to the Table of Contracts in Chapter XII., he had at least twenty-seven partners. To narrate adequately the work that these gentlemen did in Great Britain and in Foreign countries would require many biographies to be written. I feel justified, however, ia claiming Mr. Brassey as a represen- tative man from whose career the great exertions and the skill manifested in railway enterprise by British engineers, contractors, agents, and workmen of all kinds, may be adequately appreciated. Not the least valuable and interesting part of the book, if I may presume to speak of any part as valuable or in- teresting, is that which gives, incidentally, an account of national characteristics. Lavater said that you could not X PREFACE. thoroughly understand a man until you had divided an in- heritance with him. Without going so far, I would ven- ture to say that you cannot thoroughly understand a man's nature until you have done business with him, for it is in the transaction of business that all the qualities of a man come forth and are developed. Mr. Brassey himself, and his agents, all of them very shrewd and capable persons, had to deal with men of every class in the countries where they were constructing railways. It was a necessary part of their business to understand the characters of the foreigners they dealt with ; and the remarks of these agents show that they did not fail to accomplish that primary portion of their labours. Frenchmen, Belgians, Germans, Italians, Russians, Spaniards, and Danes came under the close observation of Mr. Brassey and his agents ; and we are told how the men of these various nationalities acquitted themselves in their respective employments. Sometimes we find that our preconceived notions of the characteristics of certain peoples are confirmed : sometimes we find that these preconceived notions require modifica- tion. But whatever we learn npon this subject from per- sons who had such remarkable opportunities of observa- tion, is pure gain, and tends to remove our notions from the region of prejudice to that of fact. CONTENTS. Intkodcctoet Chaptek Chap. I. Mr. Brassey as a Business Man II. Mr. Brassey's Early Career III. Contract Work . IV. Commencement of Foreign Woi-k V. Labourers of Different Nations VI. Mr. Brassey's Sldll in Calculation VII. Work becomes more Extensive VIII. Great Northern Eailway IX. Financial Management X. Financial Difficulties . XI. Mr. Brassey's Wealth . XII. Eailway and other Contracts XIII. Italian Railways . XIV. Grand Trunk Eailway of Canada XV. Victoria Bridge . XVI. Crimean and other Eailways XVn. Works in Australia XVIII. Argentine Railway XIX. Moldavian Eailways . XX. Indian Eailways . XXI, Recollections of his Son XXn. Close of Life XXm. Railways and Government Control Appendix A. Mr. Tapp's Notes on Mr. Brassey's Tours Appendix B. Letters .... Appenlix C. Wages .... Index PAGE 1 5 11 21 28 40 52 57 63 68 75 80 83 93 101 110 118 126 132 140 146 150 161 174 181 185 197 203 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Victoria Bridge (by A. Biclcetts) .... Frontispiece Bdlkelet Hall (by A. EioJcetts, from a Photograph) . page 13 Map showing some of the Continental Contracts (by A. Ricketts) ,,29 Map of English Lines (by G. Edwards and A. RicJcetts) . „ 59 Map op Grand Trunk Railway (by A. EicJcetts) . . ,, 103 Map of Argentine Eailwat (by A. Biclcetts) . . . „ 134 LIFE AND LABOURS OF THE LATE THOMAS BRASSEY. INTEODUCTOET CHAPTEK. THE first endeavour for a writer should be to put him- self in good relation with his readers. If he fail in doing this, he fails in a most important point. They may agree with him, or differ from him, as regards his conclu- sions ; but they will almost always have gained some profit from his work, if he makes them sympathize with him, and understand his meaning and purpose. Both reader and writer have but one and the same object: namely, to get at the truth in regard to a person, or matter, about whom, or which, it is worth while to know the truth. In writing the life of Mr. Brassey, I have undertaken a task for which I have no special qualifications ; but the aid I have received from his family and from his many friends who do possess these special qualifications, has greatly lightened my labour^ and will, I hope, make it effectual in bringing before the world the character and conduct of a very notable person. Before commencing this biography in the ordinary way, by giving the birth, parentage, and education of Mr. Brassey, I shall begin by giving an account of my first acquaintance with him — an acquaintance which afterwards ripened into a sincere friendship, causing me to accept with pleasure the task of writing his life, when requested by his sons to do so. They would, no doubt, have done th"? work better and more amply ; but then, what a son THOMAS DRASSEr. says of his father is always a little " suspect." Notwith- standing the familiarity of converse which has grown up of late years between sons and fathers, sons are apt to "be not the less proud, and perhaps even more fond, of their fathers than ever ; and on that account not the less unfit to write their fathers' lives. I am confirmed in this view, by the life of an eminent man, written .by his sons, which, though very well and certainly very dutifully written, failed to give the reader an adequate notion of those peculiarities in the hero of the tale, which are-so valuable in mating us really acquainted with him. This knowledge the reader did not, I think, attain until he came to a letter at the end of the book, written by Sydney Smith. It was a letter which thoroughly succeeded in bringing the man before you by means of such passages as the following : " Curran, the Master of the Rolls, said to Mr. G-rattan, ' Tou would be the greatest man of your age, G-rattan, if you would buy a few yards of red tape, and tie up your bills and papers.' This was the fault, or the misfortune, of your excellent father ; Tie never knew the use of red tape, and was utterly unfit for the common business of life. That a guinea represented a quantity of shillings, and that it would barter for a quan- tity of cloth, he was well aware ; but the accurate number of the baser coin, or the just measurement of the manu- factured article to which he was entitled for his gold, he could never learn, and it was impossible to teach him." ' Now these are the kind of things which sons are too fond and too respectful to say of their fathers ; and therefore I do not think that sons can ever make good biographers. I now proceed to give an account of my first introduc- tion to Mr. Brassey. I had to receive a visit from him on some ofiicial business of much importance and considerable difficulty. When one has heard a great deal of a man, but has not seen him, one cannot help forming some notion as to what manner of man he is. Wlien Mr. Brassey' s name was announced, I could not help supposing that I should see a hard, stern, forcible, soldierly sort of person, accustomed to sway armies of 1 " Life of Mackintosh,'' vol. ii. p. 500. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. working men in an imperious fashion. Now this was very foolish of me ; for I had, before, seen many great " captains of industry," and had almost uniformly found them to be men of suave manners and courteous bearing. Notwithstanding this experience, I was prejudiced and misled by the word " contractor," and expected to find in Mr. Brassey a very different person from the one I did see. There entered an elderly gentleman of very dignified ap- pearance, and of singularly graceful manners, suggesting at once the idea of what is called a " gentleman of the old school." He stated his case. . No : I express myself wrongly ; he did not state his case ; he understated it ; and there are few things more attractive in a man than that he should be inclined to understate rather than to overstate his own case. He was also very brief ; not going over any part of the ground a second time, as is the habit of ninety-nine persons out of every himdred. After he had gone away, I thought to myself (for I knew the matter pretty well, in respect of which he had a grievance) that, had it been my case, I should not have been able to restrain myself so completely and to speak with so little attention to self- interest as he had done. On thinking whom he resembled of the persons I had ever seen, I found that he reminded me most of the late Lord Herbert of Lea, a man who, even in a short and transient interview, never failed to impress you_ with a sense of his goodness and benevolence, and of his being one of the most perfect gentlemen you had ever seen. This was my first interview with Mr. Brassey. The im- pression it produced upoi> me was that of respect and regard for him, which continued to increase as we became better acquainted. I have also to add, that the life of Mr. Brassey has especial interest for the writer of it, as affording an example of skilful organization, as well as of the fulfilment of other functions, and the performance of other duties, which, though they especially concern Imperial Grovemment, may be thoroughly exemplified in the conduct of private enter- prise, when it assumes considerable magnitude and diversity. THOMAS BRASSEr. This work has been written in a very peculiar manner. Most of the persons who knew Mr. Brassey well, who had acted, with hiin, or served under him, have kindly con- sented to be examined as witnesses, and to have their evidence taken down by a shorthand writer. Mr. Thomas Brassey has been the examiner. Prom his general know- ledge of his father's affairs, no one could have fulfilled this office so well ; and I gratefully acknowledge the immense assistance that I have derived from the mode in which he has conducted these examinations. It may easily be conjectured that the amount of mate- rial thus collected has been very great indeed, and has been of the most interesting character. I have often re- gretted that want of space prevents me from giving to my readers as much as I should otherwise like to give of this valuable information. CHAPTEE I. A BEIEP OITTLINE OP ME. BKASSEt's CHABACTEH AS A MAN OF BUSINESS. Trustfulness in his agents. — Liberality and equanimity. — Powers of organization. — Delicacy in blaming. — Courtesy. — Presence of mind. — Hatred of contention. — Anxiety to have work well done. — Gangers taken into council. — Euling passion. IN a biography, it is a difficult matter to determine where one should introduce a description of the character of the person written about. I have come to the conclusion that the best plan is to give very early in the book a brief outHne ; then, as the occasions arise, to point out, in the narrative, illustrations of the character; and, finally, to take an opportunity of restating and enlarging the de- scription. The most striking point in Mr. Brassey's character, and that which I shall mention first, was his trustfulness. This virtue was carried to a great extent in him, — to an extent that may appear almost extrem.e. He chose his agents with great care, and with consummate judgment. After he had chosen them, he placed implicit trust in them. Then, though perfectly capable of exercising the most minute supervision and criticism of details, he never judged by details, but looked to results ; not vexing or wearying those who served under him by minute and tiresome criticism. He was exceedingly liberal in the conduct of his busi- ness, as will be seen from many instances in the following pages ; and probably there never was a man who made so much money, caring so little for the money itself. He was a man of a singularly calm and equable tem- perament. It was very rarely, indeed, that either success or failure — and even great failure was not a thing unknown THOMAS BRASSEY. to liim — discomposed his complete serenity of mind. I do not mention this by way of praise. As regards this matter, there are two orders of men. There is the man whose anxieties never leave him, who cannot throw off his robe of office and say " Lie there. Lord Treasurer, or Lord Chancellor." And there is the man who, having done his best, is satisfied with that best, and can dismiss anxiety as to the result. This is a great felicity of temperament. Those men who do possess it are often liable to be much misconstrued. The world is apt to think that the man who can throw off the burden of care, is, on that account, less care taking than the man who is harrowed by perpetual anxiety, and who cannot conceal the constant pressure of that anxiety. Mr. Brassey did not take less care than these anxious men are wont to do ; but, having given his best efforts to ensure success, was content to await the result, and to abide by it with perfect equanimity. It is not requisite to do more here than to allude to the powers of perception, of calculation, and of organization, which Mr. Brassey possessed. These powers will inevit- ably reveal themselves in the course of the narrative, and may, indeed, almost be taken for granted as belonging to one who successfully carried out great undertakings in which these powers were absolutely indispensable. There was not anything more noticeable in Mr. Brassey's conduct of business than his mode of blaming where blame was requisite. It was of the very lightest and gentlest kind ; but not on that account less" forcible or less instruc- tive. To speak metaphorically, his little finger laid gently upon an error was more severely felt than the heavy hand so often put down by a coarse man when he blames his agents or his inferiors. Eeluctant blame is the blame that goes to the hearts and consciences of men ; and the greatest merit of it is, that while it condemns, it does not dis- courage. So thoroughly beloved, and so thoroughly appreciated was Mr. Brassey by all the people who served under him, that his coming amongst them was looked forward to as a most joyful and festive event. When, for instance, he had any great work on hand in a foreign country, the thousands of people employed by him, from the highest to the lowest. AS A MAN OF rUSINESS. longed to see him amongst them. This could not have been the case had he not been utterly devoid of captious- ness, and one of those generous employers of labour who recognize to the full all that is well done by those who work under them. Indeed, in this respect, he reversed the relative positions of employer and employed. When any disaster occurred on the works, it was he who comforted and excused his agents, instead of receiving comfort or excuses from them. It was a necessity of Mr. Brassey's career that he should live much with his dependents. Now, it may often bo ob- served that the man who has undoubted authority over his feUow-men in one respect, is apt to endeavour to extend that authority to matters in which he has not any right whatever to interfere with thos3 inferiors, or, otherwise than indirectly, to attempt to influence their opinions. The uniform testimony of those who, in any capacity, worked under Mr. Brassey, is, that he never sought to in- terfere with them, or their opinions, "out of school " as we may say. He was one of the least arrogant of men in his general converse with mankind, giving a respectful consi- deration to whatever anyone had to say to him. Even if people tallied folly to him, his comment upon it was of the mildest kind. Once, indeed, when a man was talking largely, with very little substance or understanding in his talk, Mr. Brassey was heard to remark, " I think the peas are over-growing the sticks." But this was a rare instance of censure — so rare that it greatly attracted- the attention of the hearers. Mr. Brassey was gifted with much presence of mind. The first Napoleon used to say of himself, that few men were his equals in what he was wont to call " two o'clock of the morning " courage, which is in fact presence of mind on the announcement of unexpected danger and difficulty. Mr. Brassey was fortunate enough to possess this " two o'clock of the morning " courage in a high degree. If called up suddenly in the middle of the night upon some urgent peril or difficulty, he met the alarm with perfect coolness ; sat down to consider and calculate what was the best mode of obviating the danger (danger seemed to stimulate his faculties, and not to overpower them) ; and, before the 8 THOMAS BRASSEY. break of day, when he had to proceed to the scene of action, was ready with his plan. It may he easily imagined what confidence this presence of mind on the part of their em- ployer, infused into his principal agents, and all those who were employed under him. Mr. Brassey had a perfect hatred of contention. This quality of mind was, second only to his trustfulness, the main element of his success. It was soon discovered by anyone who had dealings with him that, should any matter of controversy arise, he would not only refuse to take any questionable advantage over the other side, but would rather even submit to he taken advantage of ."^ Now, there is not a more fruitful virtue in the world than this kind of generosity. It is nearly sure to elicit a kindred response. In most instances where overreaching is begun or continued, it derives its strength from contentiousness. In the execution of any great undertaking Mr. Brassey's anxiety v/as that the work should be done quickly, and be done well. The minor questions as to who should bear the expense of minor matters, unprovided for by specific con- tract, he left to be settled afterwards ; whereas, many men, perhaps I may say most men, would have insisted, before- hand, upon the question being settled as to who should bear the outlay. Mr. Brassey's name is a name not known in the Law Courts. He said to Mr. Giles one day : " I never had but one regular law-suit. It was in Spain about the Mataro Line, and that was against my will ; but I was obliged to submit to it, as I had a partner. "We got nothing by it ; and I will never have another if, I can help it, for I believe in nineteen cases out of twenty you either gain no- thing at all, or what you do gain does not compensate you for the wori-y and anxiety the law-suit occasions you." If a dispute arose between his agents and the engineers of the company, for whom he was working, as to the best mode of proceeding with the work, he had an admirable way of S.ettling the dispute. He would appear, perhaps unex- pectedly, amongst the contending parties ; would not back- up his own agents, or enter into vexatious contention with the engineers of the company ; but would, in the presence ^ See Letter No. I, in Appendix. AS A MAN OF BUSINESS. of them all, take the " gangers " into council, and ask them what was their opinion on the matter. It was generally found that the gangers had a very clear opinion, and a very judicious one, as to how the work should proceed : and, at any rate, the contending parties felt that the opinion of those men, with whom the manual execution of the work rested, was an opinion which it was very desirable to defer to and to conciliate. This mode of reference and undefined arbitration was eminently cha- racteristic of this great employer of labour. It did not vex or humiliate anybody ; and it brought the matter to a definite conclusion. Our immediate forefathers, in estimating the character of any man, were always anxious to point out what was his ruling passion. This may be seen in the poets of a former age. They could not conceive the idea of a man unswayed by a ruling passion, which indeed they would invent for him, if he were not blessed, or cursed, Tvith such a motive for endeavour. I must confess that I think the idea is not altogether a bad one, and that most men have a ruling passion — strong iu life, as in death. Now, in writing this memoir, I have endeavoured to find out what was Mr. Brassey's ruling passion ; what was the work that he, Mr. Brassey, supposed that he was sent into the world to further and to establish. He had none of the ordinary ambitions. Rank, title, social position had no attraction for him. He had no other objects than those connected with his business. His great ambition — his ruling pas- sion, if I may so express it — was to win a high reputation for skill, integrity, and success in the difficult vocation of a contractor for public works ; to give large employment to his fellow-countrymen ; and by means of British labour and British skill to knit together foreign countries, and to promote civilization, according to his view of it, through- out the world. Mr. Brassey was, in brief, a singularly trustful, gene- rous, large-hearted, dexterous, ruling kind of personage ; blessed with a felicitous temperament for bearing the re- sponsibility of great affairs. By giving at once this view which I have formed of Mr. Brassey's character, I hope I may have sufficiently in- 10 TH03IAS BRASSEY. terested the reader to induce him to accompany me on my journey through the details, sometimes of a dry and tech- nical character, which serve to illustrate the nature of a man who undoubtedly proved himself to be one of the foremost leaders of industry in the present age. CHAPTEE II. ME. beasset's baelt caeeee. (a.d. 1805-1837.) Birth and parentage. — Goes to school, and is articled. — The Holyhead Road. — Becomes Mr. Law ton's partner. — Birkenhead in 1818. — Mr. Price's agent. — Mr. Stephenson. — Stourton Quarries. — The Sankey Viaduct. — First tender for railway works. — The Dutton Viaduct. — First contract. — Difficulties of early railway-making. — Meets Mr. Locke. — London and Southampton Kailw.ay. — Marriage. — Mr. Harri- son of Birkenhead. — Mrs. Brassey. — Early objections to railwaj's. ME. BEASSET was born November 7, 1805, at Buer- ton, in the parish of Aldford, in Cheshire. He was the son of John and Elizabeth Brassey of that parish. His family was an ancient one, his ancestors having come over with William the Conqueror. For nearly six centuries they resided at Bulkeley, near Malpas, in Cheshire, where they possessed a small landed projierty of three or four hundred acres, which is still in the family. Mr. Brassey was much attached to this ancestral property, and when the old house became almost uninhabitable from the effects of time, he rebuilt upon its site a handsome house, with model farm buildings on a large scale. Like most other ancient families, the Brasseys were concerned, in one way or another, in the civil war of the Eoses ; but, whatever losses they may have sustained at that period, so disastrous to many ancient English families, they were fortunate enough to retain a large part of their property. The time when they moved to Buerton is uncertain ; biit they must have resided there for more than two centuries, as is proved by certain documents which are dated in the year 1663. Mr. Brassey's father, in addition to property 12 THOMAS BRASSEY. which he possessed in Cheshire, had land of his own at Buerton, and rented from the Marquis of Westminster a large farm adjacent to it. The rent of this farm was <£8S0 a year. I am particular in noting these facts about the history of Mr. Brassey's family, because it resembles that of many of those families from which our most distinguished men have sprung — an origin which I conceive is very favourable for a man who is destined to do great things in this world. There is a certain amount of culture and of knowledge in such a family ; while at the same time it has run no risk of being enervated by luxury, or of having, if I may ven- ture to use the expression, thought itself out. We cannot be blind to the fact that there are amongst us but few descendants of our most eminent men. It certainly seems as though a family, after long ages, like some slowly de- veloping plant, produces its best flower, and then dies ofE. And when we see distinguished families still producing remarkable men, I believe that if \re could investigate the records of those families, we should find that there had been a frequent accession of new blood, — of minds un- wearied by mental labour, of bodies not exhausted or ren- dered unfruitful by luxury. Mr. Brassey, at twelve years of age, went to a school at Chester, of which the late Mr. Harlings was master. At sixteen years of age he left school, and was articled to the late, Mr. Lawton, a Land-surveyor and Agent. Mr.Lawton was at that time, and for many years had been, the agent of the late Mr. Francis Eichard Price, of Bryn-y-pys, Overton, Flintshire. Those of my readers who are no longer young, may remember that in the days of their youth there was a road made, which it was delightful to travel on, and of which all England was very proud. It was called .the Holyhead Eoad. It commenced at Shrewsbury and terminated at Holyhead ; and this was the first great work upon which the young Brassey was employed. The celebrated Telford was the engineer of this road, and under him, as a sur- veyor, a Mr. Penson, of Oswestry, was emj)loyed to make the surveys for the road. Mr. Brassey was permitted by his master to assist Mr. Penson in making these surveys. 14 THOMAS BRAS SET. Throughout his hfe we uniformly find that Mr. Brassey was a favourite with those with whom, or under whom, he acted. His master, Mr. Lawton, appreciating his value, became much attached to him, and ijltimately proposed to take him into the business as a partner. There was an additional reason, at that time, for making such a proposal. Mr. Lawton had the shrewdness to per- ceive that Birkenhead would become a very great place, and that it would give much occupation for men of his calling. Accordingly, he resolved to establish a business there, and to place at the head of it his young friend Brassey. Mr. Brassey accepted the proposal of partnership ; and, being then twenty-one years of age, went to reside at Birkenhead as Mr. Lawton' s partner, the whole of the Birkenhead estate being the property of Mr. Price. Birkenhead must at that time have been but a very small place, for we have evidence that in 1818 it consisted of only four houses. At this early period Mr. Brassey showed that ingenuity and fertility of resource which was afterwards so largely developed. At this time he possessed brick-yards and lime-kilns. In loading and unloading the barges, he found much injury occurred to the bricks : he therefore devised a kind of wooden crate, which not only kept the bricks from inj ury, but also reduced greatly the cost of delivery and re- stacking. On the death of Mr. Lawton, young Mr. Brassey became the sole agent and representative of Mr. Price; and, no doubt, acquired great experience in directing for him the rise and progress of that now most populous and thriving place. He had resided there eight years, when, accidentally, he came in contact with a great man — a circumstance which gave the colour and direction to his future life. This great man was George Stephenson. Mr. Brassey either possessed himself, or as a land-agent had the management of, a certain stone quarry at Stourton. Stone was wanted for the Sankey Viaduct on the -Man- chester and Liverpool Eailway — the first railway, for pas- seno-er traffic, that was ever constructed. JCARLY CAREER. 15 Mr. Stephenson went with Mr. Brassey to examine the stone at this quarry, intending, if satisfied with it, to make a contract for its delivery at the Sankey Viaduct. It is evident that Mr. Stephenson must have been much pleased with his young companion in this excursion, for he im- mediately sought to engage him in the new enterprise of railway-mating. Acting under Mr. Stephenson's advice, Mr. Brassey was induced to tender for a contract on the G-rand Junction Line. This railway was to run from. Newton to Birmingham ; and it now forms part of the London and TTorth-Western system. The first tender Mr. Brassey made was for the Dutton Viaduct, near Warrington ; but his estimate did not par- take of the rashness of youth, for it was ^£5,000 higher than the estimate sent in by the late Mr. Macintosh, a well-known contractor of that day, who obtained the con- tract in question. Not discouraged by this failure, Mr. Brassey next ten- dered for the Penkridge Viaduct, which is between Stafford and Wolverhampton ; also including in his tender ten miles of railway on the same line. Mr. Brassey was enabled to tender for this contract by the liberality of his bankers at Chester — Messrs. Dixon s — who, on being in- formed of the circumstances, at once agreed to place a considerable sum to his credit. Mr. Brasse}^ never forgot this act of kindness on their part, and kept his principal account with these bankers throughout his lifetime. Mr. Brassey was successful in obtaining this contract. He was now twenty-nine years of age. Doubtless he had obtained much knowledge of all kinds of construction connected with his business of a land-surveyor. The construction of railways, however, was at that time altogether a novelty, not only to him, but to all persons engaged in it. The work iad not yet begun to run in grooves, after which everything is comparatively so easy ; but it required new modes of operation, and the creation of skiHed labour of a new kind ; also the management of larger bodies of men than hitherto had been brought together for public works, and a more rapid movement of these armies of labouring men, from place to place, thau hitherto had ever been requisite. Moreover, and this is a most important point, 16 THOMAS BRASSEY. the system of " sub-contracts " had not been devised, or, rather, had only been partially and slightly adopted, — a system which has given increased facility to all great public vcorks. Altogether, to take a railway contract in those days, and to work it out successfully, was no light undertaking, but one which taxed to the utmost the ability of every kind possessed by the contractor. Mr. Brassey having obtained this contract, completed it most successfully. Mr. George Stephenson was Engineer- in-chief when Mr. Brassey took this contract. A few months, however, after the commencement of the line, Mr. Stephenson resigned his appointment ; and the late Mr. Locke, who had been his pupil and assistant, was appointed to succeed him as Bngineer-in-chief to the line. On the completion of the Grand Junction Railway, Mr. Locke was employed on the London and Southampton Railway, which had been commenced under the superin- tendence of the late Mr. Francis Giles. Mr. Locke asked Mr. Brassey to go with him ; and Mr. Brassey contracted for, and undertook the important works on that rail.way between Basingstoke and Winchester, and also on other parts of that line. It was when Mr. Brassey was thirty-one years of age, that he came up to London, in consequence of his con- nection with the London and Southampton Railway, and thus entered into a much larger sphere of business ; in fact, commencing a career which was to lead him into great railway operations, extending over a large part of Europe, India, and the British Possessions in America. It may be requisite here to say something of the business relations of Mr. Locke and Mr. Brassey. It has been thought by some persons that Mr. Locke showed a spirit of favouritism for Mr. Brassey ; and this is so far true, that Mr. Locke was always delighted to have Mr. Brassey as a coadjutor : but those who knew anything of the qualities of that eminent engineer, Mr. Locke, must be well aware that his regard as a man of business for any other man of business would have been founded upon no prejudices, and upon no unreasonable favouritism. To put the matter very plainly, it was soon discovered that EARLY CAREER. 17 whenever Mr. Brassey had undertaken a contract on a line, the Engineer-in-chief had but little occasion for rigid supervision. Mr. Locke well knew that a bargain once concluded with Mr. Brassey would be exactly, I may say handsomely, fulfilled, and that no difficulties or contin- gencies would be made an excuse for delay, or an occasion for demanding any alteration in the terms of the contract. After the fall of a certain great viaduct, which disaster will have to be mentioned in these pages, it was suggested to Mr. Brassey that, on his representing the facts of the case to the Directors of the Company, some alleviation of his loss might be obtained. His reply to this suggestion was in" consonance with the whole tenour of his career. " No," he said, " I have contracted to make and maintain the road, and nothing shall prevent Thomas Brassey from being as good as his word." Throughout Mr. Brassey's career, his faithfulness, his desire to do his work efficiently, whether at a gain or a loss, together with his resolution to avoid all petty subjects of dispute, naturally made him a most welcome fellow- worker to any person placed in such an arduous position — ■ a position requiring so much watchfulness and supervision — as that of Engineer-in-chief to a railway. It was an immense comfort to have a man to deal with, whom it was not necessary to be looking after in respect of any of the details of the work entrusted to him. Mr. Brassey married, on December 27, 1831, Maria, second daughter of Mr. Joseph Harrison, of Birkenhead. Mr. Harrison carried on the business of a forwarding agent in Liverpool, and acted in this capacity for the great firms of Phillips and Son, Sir J. Potter, the Houldsworths, and other leading Manchester houses. In those days there were no railways, and the business of a forwarding agent was of an important and interesting character, as he was the medium of communication between the manufacturer and the shipper. Mr. Harrison was the first resident in the new town of Birkenhead. He was a man of much intelligence and foresight. Amongst his other agencies, he acted for the old Quay Canal Company, and was one of the few persons clear-sighted sufficiently to perceive that canal property would not be ruined by the new mode of 18 THOMAS BRASSEY. transit by railway; but that, in most instances, there would be ample employment for carriers by canal as well as by railway. Indeed, he gave evidence in favour of the Liverpool and Manchester Eailway Company, at the time when they were seeking to obtain their bill in Parliament. There was much sympathy between the father-in-law and the son-in-law ; and, from the time Mr. Brassey com- menced business at Birkenhead, Mr. Harrison predicted his successful career. Mr. Brassey became acquainted with his future father-in-law shortly after the time when Mr. Lawton received Mr. Brassey as an articled pupil. Mrs. Brassey has survived her husband. It is always a difficult matter to speak in praise of those who are living, and who may not like to read commendation of themselves. But, notwithstanding this necessary reserve, it is right to mention the fact that Mr. Brassey's first connection with railways was partly due to the advice which he received from his wife. He naturally hesitated to leave Birken- head, where he had established a large and increasing business ; but his wife's spirit and sound judgment con- vinced her that her husband would be able to find a far more important sphere, for the exercise of his great abili- ties, by enlisting in the small band of men who had at that time taken in hand the construction of railways. This may now seem a thoroughly self-evident proposition ; but it was not so then. My readers must bear in mind the objections that were raised to railways, even in Com- mittees of the House of Commons. "How would the carriages ever get up hill ? how would they ever be able to stop, when going down hill ? what would happen if a cow were to come in the way ? " Such were the agitating questions asked by the opponents of the new mode of locomotion. In short, they maintained that " these new- fangled concerns, might do to convey heavy goods (as improved tramways), but as for carrying passengers, with any comfort or safety, that was a ludicrous supposition." It was a very courageous thing for any woman to hold a contrary opinion, and to hold it so firmly that she should venture to advise her husband to throw in his fortunes with the new and much depreciated class of enterprise. Mr. Brassey followed his wife's advice, and to her there- EARLY CAREER. J 9 fore is due, in no slight degree, the successful career of this remarkable man. There is the more credit due to Mrs. Brassey, as she doubtless foresaw that, in a domestic point of view, her husband's railway engagements would impose a great burden upon her, and a burden of the kind which women especially dislike. The railway contracts, in which Mr. Brassey successively engaged, compelled repeated changes of residence. In the course of thirteen years, dating from the commencement of his career as a Railway Contractor, Mr. Brassey changed his residence eleven times : namely, from Birkenhead to Stafford ; from Stafford to Kingston- cn-Thames ; thence to Popham Lane, in Hampshire ; after- wards to Winchester ; from Winchester to Fareham ; from Fareham to Vernon in Normandy ; from Vernon to Eouen ; from Eouen to Paris ; afterwards back again to Eouen ; then to Kingston-on-Thames, and finally 'to Lowndes Square, London. It may be seen by this that the life of a railway contractor has some drawbacks, such as probably may not have been thought of by my readers. The labour and difficulty occasioned to Mrs. Brassey, by these frequent removals, all the arrangements of which were entirely left to her, may well be imagined by those who have had any similar troubles to encounter. Many of these removals, especially those from England, necessitated frequent sales of furniture, and the most cherished articles were compulsorily parted with. These, however, though serious troubles in themselves, were much added to by the social difficulties which occur in such cases, it being very difficult, if not impossible, to make friends, or at any rate to retain them, in any neighbourhood in which a family does not reside more than a year. ' Moreover, Mr. Brassey's occupation, and the remote dis- tance of many of his contracts from his place of residence, made constant absence from home inevitable ; and even when at home, little could be seen by his family of the head of the house, as he was generally absent from nine or half-past nine in the morning till ten o'clock in the evening;. Of course, the education of the children at this period rested entirely with Mrs. Brassey ; and, during these years 20 THOMAS BRASSEY. of isolation, she devoted herself with the utmost affection to the care of her sons. Mrs. Brassej could speak French fluently, which was a great assistance to her husband when they first went to Prance. He never had time to acquire a command of any foreign language, though, I helieve, he succeeded in con- triving to understand a good many of those technical terms which it was desirable for him to master. Notwithstanding Mrs. Brassey's domestic avocations, which, as we have seen, were large and constant, she did not fail to take the greatest interest in her husband's public career ; and he was wont to take counsel with her in all the weightier matters of business in which he was concerned. CHAPTEE III. CONTRACT WOEK. (a.d. 1838.) Mr. Hawksliaw on railwa3S. — Need for contractors. — Sub-contracting. . — Governments and contracts. — Mr. Henfrey's speech. — Mr. Brassey's dealings with the sub-contractors. — Cost of inspections. — Co-operative system . — But ty-gangs. PEEVIOTJSLT to narrating the series of great worts of construction, iu which Mr. Brassey was engaged in foreign countries, it may be well to give a little forethought to the nature of Contract Work, and to see why such a person was wanted at this particular juncture, and for this particular kind of work. Mr. Hawkshaw, the eminent engineer, justly observes that " with the commencement of the railway system began an age of great works, during which undertakings of far more colossal dimepsions were rapidly projected, and required to be as rapidly carried into execution. The ex- tension of the railway system called for larger docks and larger harbours, and since the construction of the Liver- pool and Manchester Eailway the public works that have been executed in the United Kingdom alone far exceed all that had been done before." ' At first sight, it might appear that there was no need for the contractor. In early days, and perhaps we may say in comparatively barbarous times, great works were doubt- less executed without the intervention of the contractor. He is an inevitable product of civilization ; for, inevitably, with civilization comes the division of labour. It is obvious that one of the main advantages of doing ^ See Letter No. 7, in Appendix. 22 THOMAS BRASSEV. wort by contract, and through the agency of a practised contractor, is that yon command the knowledge and ex- perience of a trained body of men, fitted for the especial work. Something of this kind is to be obsCTved in great works which were executed before the word " contractor " came into being. We know but little, comparatively speak- ing, of the history of the construction of the grand cathe- drals which have arisen throughout the Christian world. But we are told by those who have most carefully investi- gated such matters — that bands of skilled workmen, chiefly Italians, were employed in these buildings, who went from place to place, and were enabled to give instruc- tion to the local workmen. This, in some measure, accounts for the unifoi-mity of style pervading certain periods of church architecture. It might be said, that at first sight, it does not appear why those who have undertaken a great public work, should not execute it by means of their own ofiicers ; but almost all experience shows that this would not be a wise course. There are many reasons for this conclusion, and some of them are based upon much knowledge of human nature. If the projectors of the undertaking had to execute the work themselves, they would undoubtedly be seduced into frequent change of plan, from the very fact of their being masters of the situation. This may be seen in much smaller matters than public works. When a gentleman undertakes to build a house for hipiself, many are the changes he is induced to make during the building of that house, and large is the additional expense which he gene- rally incurs. The system of contracting for great works necessitates much forethought before commencing them, and, for the most part, a rigid adherence to the plans originally laid down. It may serve to show the need and value of this system of contracting for great works, that it perpetually tends to extend itself. The great contractor finds it to his advantage to sub-let portions of his contract ; and these are again sub-let to smaller men, by which means individual skill and exertion are gradually developed to the uttermost. Perhaps in no way could this individual sldll and exertion CONTBACT rroRK. 23 he more amply developed, and the merits of individual men be brought more prominently forward, than by this system of contracting. Moreover, it developos the power of bearing responsibility, and tends to create masters out of men. Thus far as regards the advantages to be derived from doing work by contract. It must, however, be remembered that there are limits within which this practice should be confined, and that there are cases to which it is altogether inapplicable. The demands, for example, of Grovernment are not of a nature to be wholly met by dealings with contractors. These demands are liable to be sudden, large, imperative, and indefinite. Hence Grovernment will do wisely not to abandon their establishments. It must also be remem- bered, that by keeping up some of those establishments; they have, on a sudden pressure, some of the benefits of > competition within their reach, and are not entirely at the mercy of what we may call the foreign element of contracting. So, again, as regards matter into which taste and beauty of design enter, or where there is great probability of a change of plan, the system of contracting is not altogether admirable. Even as regards that instance which I took before, of a house built by a private individual for him- self, there is considerable probabiUty that the house will be better built, at any rate more suitably built, for the owner, if it is not built by contract. But no one will contend that it is not likely to be an expensively built house. Those works, however — whether devised by governments, public bodies, or private individuals — of which the cha- racter is definite, and the time for executing them not im- peratively short, are the works which it is most advisable to have executed by contract. Now the construction of railways is work which exactly fulfils these conditions. It is very definite in character : it is not like a demand for arms, or other warlike material, which may be wanted by a Government at a very brief notice : and, in short, it is one of those products of labour, in which contract work may be most usefully employed. 24 THOMAS BRASSEY. Accordingly, the contractor mates his appearance on the stage as he is imperatively required. ITie practice of doing works by contract is liiely to increase extensively ; and therefore, it will not be without advantage to observe, in the course of this memoir, how contractors have been wholly entrusted, and with the best results, with the care of some of the greatest undertakings of our time. It may also be noted that, in carrying out works in foreign countries, great benefit has accrued both to those countries themselves, and to the country in which these projects originated, from the works being confided to con- tractors who carried hither and thither bands of skiKul workmen ; and who, indirectly, brought much profit to the mother country, while gradually they instructed the natives of other countries in skilled labour, and made them more useful citizens than they were before. There are some parts of Europe where the condition of the whole labouring population has been permanently raised by the introduc- tion of British skill and British labour in the execution of a particular work. And this would hardly have been the case, or at any rate would not so soon have been the case, but for the presence of the British contractor and his accompanying army of British workmen ; bringing new tools, new modes of working, new methods of payment ; and, in short, introducing an element of vigour and pros- perity which could not have been so well introduced in any other way. In a speech made by Mr. Henfrey, on the opening of the Meerut and Umballa section of the Delhi Eailway, he says : — "How greatly the working classes of this country (India) have profited by the construction of railways mav be judged by the fact, that out of the seventy-five, or eighty- millions sterling expended to the present time on Indian railways, nearly two-thirds, or between forty and fifty millions, must have passed, I cannot say into the pockets, but into the hands of the working classes." When Mr. Brassey took any contract, he let out portions of the work to sub-contractors. His way of dealing with them was this : he generally furnished all the materials, and all the plant. I find him on one occasion ordering as CONTRACT WORK. 25 many as 2,400 wagons from Messrs. Eansome and Maj. He also provided the horses. The sub-contractors con- tracted for the manual labour alone. But even Mr. Brassey, with all his intelligence and all his tnowledge, could not make that intelligence and that knowledge equivalent to the minute care and daily super- vision which every man exercises over matters which are completely within his control. For instance, he found that in France to provide horses was an undertaking which did not pay ; and afterwards he made all the sub-contractors find their own horses. At first this could not well have been done. Bringing into a strange country Englishmen, hardly any of whom could speak the language, Mr. Brassey very properly took upon himseK the greater part of the responsibility, leaving the sub-contractors to find the manual labour, and to execute the work at so much per metre. Ultimately, the sub-contractors found the horses, the manual labour, grease for the wagons, and their own blacksmiths. Mr. Brassey's mode of dealing with the sub-contractors was of an unusual kind, and such as could not have been adopted except by a man who had great experience of all kinds of manual work, and who was "also a very just man. They did not exactly contract with him, but he appointed to them their work, teUing them what price he should give for it. AH the evidence I have before me shows that they were content to take the work at his price, and that they never questioned his accuracy. One of his sub- contractors thus describes the process. " They did not ask him any question.' He said, ' There is a piece of work for you. Will you go into that ? You will have so much for it.' And then they accepted it, and went to work." It may somewhat surprise the reader to find that all these sub-contractors were so willing at once to accept Mr. Brassey's terms ; but this is easily to be accounted for by the conviction which each of them had that, if any mistake had been made, especially a mistake to their injury, there was a court of ajipeal which listened very readily to any grievance, and took care to remedy it. The truth is, that Mr. Brassey would always increase the price of the contract, or make it up to the sub-contractor in 20 THOMAS jBRASSEY. some other way, if the original contract had proved to he too hard a bargain for the sub-contractor. Frequently the wort appointed to the sub- contractor turned out to be of a more difficult nature than had been anticipated. He however, would not desist from the work on that account, nor make any appeal in writing to his employer. He would wait until the time when Mr. Brassey should come round to visit the works. This was generally, at this period, once or twice a month. Of course Mr. Brassey had agents who represented him, providing the necessary materials, making payments, and watching the work of the sub- contractors. These agents, however, seldom felt disposed, or were not authorised, to add to the price already agreed upon between Mr. Brassey and any of the sub-contractors.^ The sub-contractor, therefore, who had made but an in- different bargain, awaited eagerly the coming of Mr. Brassey to the works. One of these occasions is thus described : — He came, and saw how matters stood, and invariably satisfied the man. If a cutting, talicn to be clay, turned out after a very short time to be roelt, tlie sub-contractor would be getting disheartened ; yet he still persevered, looking to the time when Mr. Brassey should come. He came, walking along the line as usual, with a number of followers, and on coming to the cutting he looked round, counted th« number of wagons at the work, scanned the cutting, and took stock of the nature of the stuff. " This is very hard," said he to the sub-contractor. " Tes, it is «. pretty deal harder than I bargained for." Mr. Brassey would linger behind, allowing the others to go on, and then commenced the following conversation. " What is jour price for this cutting ? " " So much a yard, sir." " It is very evident that you are not getting it out for that price. Have you asked for any advance to be made to you for this rock?" " Yes, sir, but I can make no sense of them." "If you say that your price is so much, it is quite clear that you do not do it for that. I am glad that you have persevered witli it, but I shall not alter j'our price ; it must remain as it is, but the rock must be measured for you twice ; will that do for yon ? " " Yes, very well indeed, and I am very much obliged to you, sir." "Very well; goon; you have done well in persevering, and I shall look to you again." The same witness states that one of these visits of in- spection would often " cost Mr. Brassey a thousand pounds ; and as he went along the line in these inspec- ' Thi3 statement applies only to the earlier period cf Mr. Brasses '3 career CONTRACT WORK. 27 tions, he remembered even the navvies, and saluted tliem by their names." In making sub-contracts, Mr. Brassey was very careful to apportion them according to the abilities and experieuce of the sub-contractor. For example, he never liked to let the brick-work and earth- work to one man. He would let the brick-work to a bricklayer, and the earth-work to a man specially acquainted with that branch. " I have often," says one of his employes, " heard him mention, as a principle of action — ' Each one to his own speciality.' " Before leaving the subject of Mr. Brassey' s dealings with his sub-contractors, it will be desirable to see what extent of work was, as a general rule, entrusted to a sub- contractor, and what number of men he had under him. I find that the sub-contracts varied from ,£5,000 to .£25,000 ; and that the number of men employed upon them would be from gne to three hundred — the former number being more common than the latter. There were also, occasionally, sub-lettings made by these sub-con- tractors ; but this was a practice of which Mr. Brassey did not approve. It may be remarked, that, throughout his career, Mr. Brassey favoured and furthered the co-operative system ; constantly giving a certain share of the profits to his agents, and thus making them partakers in the success or failure of the enterprise. He also approved of the " butty- gang " system. This word " butty-gang " requires some explanation. It means that certain work is let to a gang of about ten or thirteen men, as the case may be, and that the proceeds of the work are equally divided amongst them, something extra being allowed to the head man. This system was originated when the formation of canals first began in England. " Butty-gangs " were afterwards employed on the Paris fortifications which were constructed by French workmen. CHAPTER IV. COMMENCEMENT OF FOEEIGN WOBK. (a.D. 1S41.) Eailwaj' flevelopment. — France and England. — Paris and Rouen Rail- way. —Mr. Brassey as a master. — English abroad. — Navvy language. — Interpreters. — Wages in Belgium. — Rouen and Havre Railway. — 'J'lio Barentin Viaduct. GREAT Britain has been a fortunate country in many respects, but in hardly any more fortunate than in the time at which railway communication was introduced into the country. It was not until after great attention had been paid for many years to the subject of locomotion, and after roads and canals had been brought to a state of comparative perfection throughout England, if not through- out Great Britain, that railways began to be thought of. This was an immense adyantage for this country ; and it was one which was possessed almost exclusively by Great Britain. In warlike preparations it is discouraging to notice that when some kind of work has been brought to perfection, such as a stately man-of-war, or a well-con- structed and well-armed battery, — that is, " well con- structed and well armed" according to the latest know- ledge of scientific men of that particular time, — some, comparatively speaking, small advance in science or im- provement in manufacture, renders the stately ship or the well-appointed battery useless, and, as we almost say, ridiculous. It is not so, however, with what may be called the minor modes of locomotion. That a country should be traversed by these in every direction is of the greatest advantage as forming the means of easy approach to the great lines of railway. France, as indeed almost every other continental 30 THOMAS BRASSEY. country, was not in the same happy position in this respect as England, at the time when railways were commenced. It was not, however, to he expected that continental countries would wait to develope a good system of roads and canals before they gave their minds to endeavouring to bring amongst them this new and marvellous mode of transit by railway, which had proved so successful and was in full activity of construction on this side of the water. Accordingly, about the year 1830, the French began to desire that railways should be introduced into France. As a purely commercial speculation, however, there was but little hope of the railway system being adopted in that country ; and consequently, the government was induced to choose, in many cases, the plan of giving guarantees to those who were willing to become shareholders in any rail- way undertaking. It was natural that one of the first railways that would be thought of, was one which should connect Paris with London. Hence arose the Paris and Eouen Railway. The promoters of that line put themselves in communication with the directors of the London and Southampton Rail- way, and an endeavour was made to facilitate matters by an amalgamation of interests. The proposition which the French Board brought for- ward was favourably entertained; and ultimately a joint company was formed, called the Paris and Eouen Railway Company: one condition stipulated by the English and their friends being, that they should appoint the engineer. This was readily acceded to ; and the choice fell on Mr. Locke, who at that time had acquired a high reputation in England — one important element thereof being a confi- dence on the part of the public in the execution of his works within the estimates. " Mr. Locke, on arriving in France to make the neces- sary arrangements, was impressed, from the information given to him as to cheapness of labour, with the idea that he should secure lower prices for the work than he had been in the habit of allowing in England : but the preten- sions of French contractors seemed so much in excess of his expectations, that he suggested to the Board to invite FOREIGN WORK. 31 English contractors to come over and compete witli those of the country. This suggestion was adopted ; and several of the most prominent of the contractors in England were invited to examine the projects of the works, with a view to sending in tenders for their execution. Of these there were only three or four who really entertained the proposi- tion. Mr. Brassey and the late Mr. William Mackenzie were of that number; in fact, I believe, they were the only two who thoroughly and seriously examined the matter. They soon discovered that the real contest would be only between themselves. The French contractors, owing, perhaps, to a want of practical knowledge of the execution of this new kind of work, to their limited re- sources of capital, and, still further, to the short time (as it appeared to them (allowed by the engineer for the execu- tion of the line, framed their estimates on far too high a scale. " Seeing this, Mr. Mackenzie and Mr. Brassey, not un- wisely, agreed to join, and consequently tendered con- jointly for the contracts as they came out, and succeeded, by competition, in securing the execution of (with a very trifling exception) the whole of the works. This was Mr. Brassey's debut in Erance, and in fact the commencement of his practice in foreign countries. " The works were commenced in 1841 ; and the hne was opened to the pubhc in May, 1843. " Mr. Brassey fixed his residence on the line, and gave up the whole of his time and attention to it. In those early days this was, even to Mr. Brassey, a very heavy and important undertaking. Added to its extent, and the con- sequent and natural difficulties of organization and manage- ment, it possessed the new feature of being in a foreign country, where railway works were as yet unknown, and where, consequently, it was not easy to secure assistants in the shape of practical agents, foremen, and gangers, or even the necessary labourers, miners, and navvies accus- tomed to that style of work, and to the means of execution adopted by the contractor. All this considerably enhanced the difficulties, more especially as the whole time for com- pletion was very limited, and necessitated, therefore, great energy, decision, and discernment in organizing rapidly a 32 THOMAS BRASSEY. very large staff of employes of every description, and the bringing over from England numbers of workmen of all classes — amounting, at times, to several thousands." ' Railway construction has been one of the most gigantic series of enterprises of modern times, or of any times, and it seems to me that it cannot but be interesting to examine minutely how such enterprises were carried forward by one of the foremost men engaged in them. Mr. Brassey took separate contracts for various portions of the line, being always able to underbid his foreign com- petitors, from the knowledge he had already acquired in railway-making, and especially from his having begun to collect around him a staff of weU-tried and capable men. Throughout his life to form such a staff was one of Mr. Brassey's chief aims. He had, for this purpose, qualifica- tions of the highest order. In the first place, he was skil- ful in his choice of men. Then he had a belief in the men he had chosen. If a man could not do well one thing that he had been put to do, he did not get rid of him, but would give him a trial in another branch of work. Mr. Brassey became well known throughout the labour market as an employer who was very loth to part with any man whom he had once employed. He carried this practice to such an extent, that, in one or two rare instances, when his subordinates had opposed him, and even tried to go to law with him (but Mr. Brassey was a man very difiicult to go to law with), he did not refuse to give these men further employment.'' Moreover, he endeavoured so to regulate his work, that there should always, if possible, be employment for all his men, from the highest on the staff to the commonest labourer. This is a matter of great difficulty for the railway contractor. He is not in the position of a manufacturer, who may, even in times of distress, continue to employ his men, perhaps at a reduced rate of wages, but still employing them, heap- ing up goods for which there will be sure to come a demand at some time. But when there comes a slackness, or a dearth of railway enterprise, it is very difficult to continue to provide employment for all those persons who have been ^ Mr. Murton's evidence. ^ See Letter No. 2, in Appendix. FOREIGN WOIIK. 33 engaged in railway work during busy periods. The way in whicli Mr. Brassey managed, on these emergencies, was to subdivide the work he had to give into smaller portions ; thus endeavouring to provide work for all his stafE, for a given period, until better days should come round. It wiU naturally be a matter of some interest to the reader to know how our fellow-countrymen, especially the navvies, got on in a foreign land. Mr. Brassey provided for them medical assistance and hospital accommodation, subscribing always very liberally to the hospitals that were in proximity to his mien ; and afterwards, with his usual generosity, often continuing those subscriptions when his men had left the country. There was much, however, of difficulty for the English in a strange country, which their employer could not provide against. They had to be em- ployers as well as employed ; and their mode of instructing the Frenchmen working under them, or working with them, was at first of a very original character. They pointed to the earth to be moved, or the wagon to be filled, said the word " d — n " emphatically, stamped their feet, and some- how or other their instructions, thus conveyed, were gene- rally comprehended by the foreigner. This form of instruc- tion was only applicable, however, to very simple cases, and some knowledge of the language had to be acquired by the men, for they could not afford to employ interpreters, as was done by persons of a higher grade in Mr. Brassey's employment. Several of these, and of their sons, soon acquired a competent knowledge of the languages of those countries in which they had such large negotiations to direct, and orders of all kinds to give. But among the navvies there grew up a language which could hardly be said to be either French or English ; and which, in fact, must have resembled that strange compound language (Pigeon English) which is spoken at Hong Kong by the Chinese in their converse with British sailors and mer- chants. It must have had at least as much French in it as English, for it is stated in evidence that " the English learnt twice as much French as the Frenchmen learnt Eng- lish." This composite language had its own forms and grammar ; and it seems to have been made use of in other countries besides France ; for afterwards there were young D 34 THOMAS BRASSEY. Savoyards who became quite skilled in the use of this par- ticular language, and who were employed as cheap inter- preters between the sub-contractors and the native work- men. One of Mr. Brassey's agents, speaking on this subject, says: — " It was not necessary to understand a word of English, but to understand the Englishman's Italian or French. That I found in many cases. A sharp youth, for example, would be always going about with a ganger, to listen to what he was saying, and to interpret to his (the youth's) countrymen." It is pleasing to find that, after all, we have some power in the acquisition of languages, for several of these navvies did eventually acquire a considerable knowledge of French, not, of course, speaking it very grammatically, but still having acquired a greater knowledge of it, and a greater command of it, than they had of their native tongue. On this railway between Paris and Eouen there were no fewer than eleven languages spoken on the works. The British spoke English ; the Irish, Erse ; the Highlanders, G-aelic; and the Welshmen, Welsh. Then there were French, Germans, Belgians, Dutch, Piedmontese, Spaniards, and Poles — all speaking their own languages. There was also one Portuguese, but he was a linguist in his way, and could speak some broken French. This concourse of individuals, from various nations, took place wherever a railway was being constructed by English companies, in any part of the world which was not of a completely isolated character. It was therefore of great advantage that there should be some one language, such as that invented by the navvies, which should serve for the purpose of talk and instruction upon railways ; and it is not surprising that this language should have been adopted wherever the English came in considerable numbers to be employed in the construction of a line, in any foreign country. One of the first things to be arranged, was the lodging accommodation of the numerous bands of workmen, which frequently amounted to from ten to twenty thousand. Sometimes they were located in huts. On this particular railway (the Paris and Eouen line) there was no occasion FOREIGN WORK. 85 for the construction of huts, for there are many villages, lying close to each other, all along the course of the river Seine. It is to be noticed that the G-ermans were content with much poorer accommodation than the other labourers. To use the words of an eye-witnesp, " They would put up with a bam, or anything." Of the advantage which these railway worts proved to the poorer inhabitants of those parts of the country through which these lines were carried, it is difficult to speak too highly. The "natives," as our Englishmen always called them, were -provided with new tools, and learnt the use of them ; were taught new forms of labour, and the benefit of organization in labouring ; were paid regularly, and received a much higher rate of wages, sometimes double or treble that which they had been accustomed to earn. In making the railway from Charleroi to Givet, where the works were of a light character, Mr. Brassey sent out only a few Eng- lishmen, to commence and superintend the construction of the line. One of the sub -contractors thus describes the effect upon the natives of the introduction of railway work. " When we went there, a native labourer was paid one shilling and three pence per day ; but when we began to pay them two francs and two francs and a half a day, they thought we were angels from heaven." More provident and more abstemious than our countrymen, these natives co.ntrived to make considerable savings ; and they trooped back to their homes, often very distant, bringing not only sustenance and comfort to their wives and families, but having accumulated some capital for their own private en- terprises at home. There are extensive districts in which the material prosperity of the inhabitants has been per- manently raised by the savings which these hardy labourers realized, and brought back. In 1843, the Eouen and Havre Railway, a continuation of the Paris and Eouen line, was projected to complete the communication between Paris and London, by way of Southampton. " The works of the Havre railway were extraordinary in magnitude. The line, leaving the Valley of the Seine at Eouen, had to cross several important valleys to attain the plateau or summit level, and then to descend to the level 36 THOMAS BRASSEY. of the port of Havre. This necessitated a large bridge over the Seine, many tunnels, eight or ten in number, several large viaducts of 100 feet in height, and huge cuttings and embankments ; moreover, the whole of the work had to be completed in two years. Mr. Brassey took up his residence at Eouen, and laboured at this very heavy and important work with unbounded energy. I should say that, never up to that date, had such heavy works been carried out in so short a time. Although many of his people had had two years' experience in Prance, stUl, owing to the severe character of the work, there was much difficulty in obtaining the necessary labour, more espe- cially as regards the mining, brickwork, and masonry. The contractors were again obliged to bring over from England hosts of bricklayers, from London or from any place where they could be found ; and it may here be mentioned that, of all classes of railway labour, as a rule, the brickmakers and the bricklayers are the worst and the most unscrupulous, and great indeed was the trouble and expense they caused. The necessity also, of working night as well as day, rendered the supervision very diffi- cult, particularly in the tunnels, and much anxiety was thereby occasioned to the engineers as well as to the con- tractors. "During the progress of the works, a great accident occurred in the second section of the line, in the fall of the Barentin Viaduct — a huge brick construction of 100 feet in height and about one-third of a mile in length, having cost some ^650,000 ; and which had, but a very short time previously, elicited the praise and admiration of the Minister of Public Works, and the other high Prench officials who visited it. " This great downfall occurred a very short time before the proposed opening of the line. It is scarcely necessary here to seek to establish the causes of this failure ; very rapid execution in very bad weather, and being built, in accordance with the contract, with mortar made of lime of the country (but with which the other smaller works had been successf ally built), were no doubt the principal causes. " Mr. Brassey was very greatly upset by this untoward FOREIGN WORK. 37 event ; but he and his partner Mr. Mackenzie met the difSculty most manfully. ' The first thing to do,' as they said, ' is to build it up again,' and this they started most strenuously to do ; not waiting, as many would have done, whether justly or unjustly, to settle, by litigation or other- wise, upon whom the responsibility and the expense should fall. " Not a day was lost by them in the extraordinary efforts they had to mate to secure millions of new bricks, and to provide hydraulic lime, which had to be brought from a distance. Suffice it to say that, by their indomitable energy and determination promptly to repair the evU, and by the skill of their agents, they succeeded in rebuilding this huge structure in less than six months. " I should mention that, as one inducement to the con- tractors to open the Havre line a few months before the contract time, a premium of about ^10,000 was offered them. This of course they stood to lose by this accident. The Company, however, in consideration of their marvellous and successful efforts to redeem the loss of time, allowed them the benefit of this sum, but the whole of the re- mainder of the expense they themselves bore. This is one of the many cases where, in spite of all loss, of all difficulty, that determination never to shrink, upon any pretext, from a contract, fully evinced itself ; and therefore, it is a case worthy of note. "Allusion may appropriately be made here to Mr. Brassey's personal management of works; for, at this period of his career, he had not, as at a later time, multi- farious contracts in hand in different countries. He was therefore enabled to give up nearly all his time to the works ia France ; he, consequently, gave them his direct personal management, being assisted mainly by resident agents, each having the superintendence of a district of a few miles.^' ' Mr. Harrison, at whose house Mr. Brassey was at the time he received the news of the Barentin accident, says that the only remark he made, was simply, " I must leave you," and that he at once sent for Henry Chambers, who ' Mr. Murtou's evidence. 38 THOMAS BRASSET. had charge of the bricklaying at the viaduct, to give in- structions about the rebuilding. I have endeavoured to give somewhat of a survey of what were the elements, moral and material, which went to form a great railway enterprise in a foreign country. If we look at the several persons and classes engaged they may be enumerated thus: — There were the engineers of the company or of the government who were the promoters of the line. There were the principal contractors, whose work had to satisfy these engineers ; and there were the agents of the contractors to whom were apportioned certain lengths of the line. These agents had the duties in some respects of a com- missary-general in an army ; and, for the work to go on well, it was necessary that they should be men of much intelligence and force of character. Then there were the various artisans, such as bricklayers and masons, whoso work, of course, was principally that of constructing the culverts, bridges, stations, tunnels, and viaducts — to which points of the work the attention of the agents had to be carefully directed. Again, there were the sub-contractors, whose duties I have enumerated : and under these were the gangers, the corporals, as it were, in this great army, being the persons who had the control of small bodies of the workmen, say twenty or more. Then came the great body of navvies — ^the privates of the army, upon whose endurance and valour so much depended. It remains only now to imagine all these numerous bodies in full and harmonious action. To take this out of the field of imagination, and to give a real description of the scene, I cannot do better than quote the words of one of Mr. Brassey's time-keepers, from whose evidence I have gained much. " I think as fine a spectacle as any man could witness, who is accustomed to look at work, is to see a cutting in full operation, with about twenty wagons being filled, every man at his post, and every man with his shirt open, working in the heat of the day, the gangers looking about, and everything going like clockwork. Such an exhibition of physical power attracted many French gentlemen, who came on to the cuttings at Paris and Eouen, and looking FOREIGN WORK. 31 at these English workmen with astoniBhment, said ' Moi Dieu ! les Anglais, comme ils travaillent ! ' Another thinj that called forth remark, was the complete silence tha prevailed amongst the men. It was a fine sight to see th( Englishmen that were there, with their muscular arms anc hands hairy and brown." CHAPTEE V. LABOUEBES OF DIPFEEENT COUNTEIES, Foreign workmen. — Origin of tke word " navvy."- — The navvy's conduct abroad. — Foreign tools. — Plate-layers. — The miner. — The engineer. — The Piedmontese. — The Neapolitans. — The Germans. — The Belgians. — Tipping. — Belgian railway-making. — Belgian system of wages. — Mr. Hawkshaw on labour. THEEE is not anything which is more significant of a man's nature than his mode of working. Work is the outcome of the whole man. The same remark may be made of nations as of individuals ; and, throughout the world the different sections of it work very differently. Intellectually speaking, this difference is very manifest, and it is to he noted throughout the literature of the various nations that have any literature at all. Some peoples are habitually accurate, and delight in neatness and in finish ; others go about their work in a somewhat slovenly and imprepared manner, but aim at larger though less complete results. The individuals of some races can work independently, and so do their work best : others need a large amount of direction and supervision. Nor are these differences less visible in manual labour. A man such as Mr. Brassey, having to execute great works in foreign countries, had, of necessity, to pay great attention to these differences in the capacities of the various people by whom his work was to be executed ; and he had to apportion their labours and regulate his payments ac- cordingly. The first promoters of railways in England had one con- siderable advantage as regards a certain class of labourers who were at that time ready to their hands. The general subject of locomotion of all kinds, had for a long time attracted great attention in England. Eoad-making, as I LABOURERS OF DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. 41 , have said before, prospered to a greater extent in England than in any other country : hut it was not from the makers of roads that the contractors for railways drew their hest supplies of labour of the lowest, but not the least impor- tant, kind. The men who did the hardest work in railway making, were those who had been engaged in a similar kind of work, requiring cuttings and embankments, — namely, in the formation of canals. Hence the name of "navigator," which was soon abbreviated into that of " navvy." These men, having been employed in the construction of canals, were eminently fitted for railway making. Indeed, the work to which they had been accustomed was such as required, in some respects, even more care and attention than railway work ; for the best of brickwork and masonry, and well-made earth- works, were necessary to make a canal secure. Those persons, who had to direct the commence- ment of railway making, had far more dif&cult problems set before them than had been encountered by the con- structors of canals ; but, for much of the inferior work, the common labourer at canal making had received a training which more than fitted him for his share of the work on railways. The English navvy is generally, in the first instance, an agricultural labourer. He is, however, but an indifferent specimen of a labourer when he . first commences, and he earns only 'about two shillings a day. Gradually he acquires some of the skill of his fellow- workmen ; and then he rises into a higher class, receiving three shillings a day. Ultimately, if he is a handy man, his work becomes worth still more, and his wages will rise to four shillings a day. Mr. Ballard's evidence with respect to the amount of labour done by the English navvies is very precise, and very valuable. He states, iis his opinion, that " the labour which a navvy performs exceeds in severity almost any other description of work." He says that " a full day's work consists of fourteen sets a day." A " set " is a num- ber of wagons — in fact, a train. There are two men to a wagon. If the wagon goes out fourteen times, each man has to fill seven wagons in the course of the day. Each wagon contains two and a quarter cubic yards. The result 42 THOMAS BRAS SET. is, tliat each man has to lift nearly twenty tons weight of earth on a shovel over his head into a wagon. The height of the lifting is about six feet. This is taking it at fourteen sets a day ; but the navvies sometimes contrive to get through sixteen sets, and there are some men who will accompUsh that astonishing quantity of work by three or four o'clock in the afternoon — a result, I believe, which is not nearly equalled by the workmen of any other country in the world." There are no trades unions amongst the navvies, and there were very seldom any strikes. This statement appHes not only 'to the labourers who worked on the Paris and Eouen Railway, but generally to those employed throughout the course of all Mr. Brassey's railway under- takings. With regard to the conduct of the navvies, when off duty, in France they were at first rather troublesome. Brandy was cheap, and they had unfortunately a tendency to driuk it freely, which was not the French habit. Mr. Mackay, after admitting this tendency to drink on the part of his countrymen, goes on to say : — But after a short time the French found that they were » good- natured sort of people, who spent their money freely. Hence they were alwaj-s kindly received ; and even the gendarmes themselves began very scon to see which was the best way of managing the Englishmen. They got sometimes unruly on pay-day, but not as a rule. The English navvy came to his foreign work without wife or family. After he had been employed upon one railway abroad, he generally sought for similar employ- ment ; or, if he was an intelligent man, aimed at higher employment on other railways in foreign countries. The unmarried Englishmen frequently married foreign wives ; the married men, who had left their families behind them, sent home money periodically to their wives ; and in either case they often sent money to their parents. The navvy, like most of his fellow-countrymen, of what- ever rank or occupation, scorned to adopt the habits or the dress of the people he lived amongst. An accurate ob- server thus bears witness to this fact : — " I never found a navvy adopt any other costume, but the English navvy's LABOURERS OF DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. 43 costume. I have seen him generally with a piece of string tied round his leg below the knee, and with high -low hoots laced up, if he could but get them made." Mr. Brassey, on commencing his work in France, must have had to consider with great care the comparative merits and powers of the English and French labourer. It was found that the tools in use abroad were of a most inferior description. The French used wooden spades. Their barrow was of a bad form, and they had very inferior pickaxes. These defects could easily be remedied, but not so the manner of carrying out the work, and the men's small power of working. This was such, that their work was found to be worth only two francs a day, while the English labourer would earn four francs and a half. In timCj however, the Frenchman living better and learning more, his work became worth four francs a day; and, gradually, in any work undertaken by Mr. Brassey in France, the number of the English labourers was lessened, and the number of the French labourers increased, imtil, at last, the great bulk of the railway work in that country was done by Frenchmen. There is one fact connected with the payment of wages which deserves, I think, to be noted. The Frenchman, as I said, received two francs a-day: the Englishman four francs and a-half. Now, the respective results of their work was not exactly in this proportion, for in the mere moving of earth it was found that the Frenchman was able to " shift," as they call it, half as much material as the Englishman. It seems to me probable that this dis- proportion in favour of the Englishman is an indication of the value attached by the contractor to any additional speed in the execution of his work, and for extra rapidity of execution under pressure more reliance could be placed upon the Englishman than the Frenchman. It is observ- able, throughout Mr. Brassey's career, that he attached great value to the rapid execution of any work he had undertaken ; and if any disaster occurred, his first thought seems to have been, not who was to blame, or upon whom the loss should fall, but how the work in question should most promptly be restored. The other matters were to be 44 TH03IAS BRASSEY. afterthoughts, and were always dealt with by him in the most liberal manner ; for the proverb that " It is no use crying over spilt milk," was often in his mouth, and was acted up to as well as quoted. As an instance of what I have just said, Mr. Henry Harrison, Mr. Brassey's brother-in-law, says, " I may mention that at Eugby, during the execution of the Trent Valley contract, there was a great difficulty as to bricks ; the clay was very unfavourable for making them, and, after a considerable sum of money had been sj)ent in making bricks of an inferior quality for the railway, it was found necessary to abandon the attempt, and to provide bricks from another source. I naturally felt greatly dis- couraged at the loss which the contractor had sustained ; but Mr. Brassey observing this, encouraged me not to be unduly depressed, saying that I must never take such troubles to my pillow ; as the loss of bricks was a matter of secondary importance so long as the line was completed within the stipulated time. This encouraging bearing on his part, in this and many other similar difficulties, was a great support to members of his staff, and often cheered them in their work amidst circumstances of great dis- couragement." But to resume the description of the contrast between the foreign labourer and the English. There were certain branches of the work which were specialities for them, "plate-laying," for instance, was originally, and remained for some time, an English speciality. Ultimately, however, the Frenchman acquired the art of plate-laying, and he does it now exceedingly well. There is one branch of work in which the English labourer has always been pre-eminent. I refer to that of a miner. It requires special energy and endurance, as the conditions under which a man has to labour are exceed- ingly imfavourable. His clothes are frequently saturated with water, and he has to breathe in a most oppressive atmosphere. Nor is this all. It requires very considerable courage to undertake the risks involved in that branch of mining which consists in the construction of tunnels. I adduce here the evidence of Mr. Charles Jones, who has had great experience in this kind of construction. He says : — LABOURERS OF DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. 45 The workmen have to labour in a space which is temporarily shored up by timber, and the pressure of the earth is constantly putting the timber structure to a great strain. At times you hear alarming creaking noises round you, the earth threatening to come in and overwhelm the labourers. On being asked whether, under these most trying cir- cumstances, the peculiar national virtues of the English labourer are not specially manifested, his reply was : — Yes ; it is often necessary to strengthen the temporary timber struc- tures by adding additional beams, or placing uprights underneath the planks overhead, which are yielding to the weight above them. It requires a considerable amount of courage in the men employed in this kind of work. If they shrink from facing a certain amount of danger, the whole structure would sometimes come in upon them, thereby en- dangering their lives, and retarding very considerably the progress of the works. It is a matter of some interest to observe what diffe- rences there are between the higher classes of Frenchmen and Englishmen employed in railways — for example, the engineers. Here, as might be expected, the difference of the national character was very visible. The English engi- neer had, to use a common phrase, more practical " go-a- headism " in him ; but then it m.ust be taken into con- sideration that the French engineer partook of the nature of his Government, and had a very different aim from that of the Englishman, following therein the views of his Government, which aimed at making everything most durable. Whatever he superintended, whether it was a bridge or a viaduct, was not merely to last for ninety-nine years, but at the end Of that time was to be as durable as ever. The different policy of the English and French Govern- ments, arising from the different natures of the two nations, is remarkable. The English Government, of which, soon after the commencement of railway-making. Sir Robert Peel was at the head, admitted to the utter- most, or nearly to the uttermost, the principle of free competition in regard to the formation of railways in England. I proceed now to give an account of the processes of working of some of the other foreign workmen, amongst THOMAS BRAS SB Y. whom Mr. Brassey brought his bands of English workmen as pioneers in the art of railway-making. Their tools were mostly of a similar nature to those of the French, which were only " Ply-tools " as one of Mr. Brassey's stafi graphically describes them. In the work on Italian railways, great difference was found as regards the character, and mode of working, of the different races who now constitute the Italian kingdom. The Piedmontese were found to be very good hands. Indeed, one of Mr. Brassey's agents, Mr. Jones, thus expresses his opinion of their merits : — " Por cutting rock, the right man is a Pied- montese. He will do the work cheaper than an English miner. He is hardy, vigorous, and a stout mountaineer ; he lives well, and his muscular development is good." Speaking of the Piedmontese generally, he says : — " They are quiet, orderly men ; they are not often tipsy or riotous ; and they go to their work, and do it steadily, putting by money before they go back to the hills." He then proceeds to make the following general observa- tion : — " It is found that all the people born in the mountains, and on poor lands, have more virtue than those who are born in the plains, and in luxurious places." With regard to the Neapolitans, they would come in large troops to the places where railways were being made ; and these troops were under the command of certain chieftains, as it were. The leading men, each of them followed by about a thousand labourers, would take a con- siderable length of earthworks to execute — for instance, ten miles of light earthworks, and side-cuttings. But they would not take any heavy work. The labourers brought with them their fathers and grandfathers and their male children ; but they left their women behind, in their native villages. Then they build huts of mud and trees, which, during the day, were left in charge of the old men, who also undertook the cooking. On account of the climate (I am specially alluding to work in the Maremma), thess bands of men could not work more than six months at a time; They usually earned a franc a day ; but sometimes at piece-work, they made very nearly two francs a day, working fifteen or six- teen hours ; but their work was chiefly that of removing LABOURERS OF DIFFKREST COUNTRIES. 47 light soil in baskets. As the witness well said, "English navvies would not understand this way of doing work." These poor Neapolitans, who, by the way, chiefly came from the South of Naples, near the Abruzzi, were a very frugal and temperate set of men. They ate bread and vegetables, and drank only waler. They had also tobacco, a little coffee, and a small quantity of goats' meat now and then. After their six months' work was done, they would return to the mountains, " with the old men and little boys, carrying the kettles and pans, and taking their money home with them." The men from Lucca were a race, who, for working powers, might be placed between the Piedmontese and the Neapolitans, being less hardy than the former, and more so than the latter. With regard to the Germans, it is worthy of remark, that in the opinion of a man who had great opportunities of judging, they had less endurance than the French. His words are : — " I have seen the Frenchmen ' harry,' that is, overcome their work, and distress the Germans in the power of endurance. And from that circumstance, during the last war, knowing Frenchmen very well, I felt almost certain that they would win the day." It must be noticed, ho"wever, that the Germans employed by Mr. Brassey on the Paris and Eouen Eailway were chiefly Bavarians. We now come to the Belgian workmen. They were, as might be expected, good labourers ; and they had had some experience in railway-making before Mr. Brassey's men came among them, for the King of the Belgians had already taken up railway-making. But they, like the rest of the world, were greatly behind the English in several of the processes of work. I will give a remarkable instance of their backwardness, which, moreover, is of general application. The English, very early in their career of railway con- struction, bethought them of the excellent idea of filling up the hollows from the heights — without any intermediate operation. They did not remove the earth which they took out from a height to form a cutting, to what is called a " spoil bank," except in particular cases. They aimed at 48 THOMAS BRASSEY. bringing the earth, which they were obliged to take from the height in order to reduce it to the proper level,' at once to the hollow which they had to fill up. This they did in a most ingenious manner. As they formed their line, they laid down temporary rails upon it; then they filled a number of wagons with the earth from the cutting ; and these wagons, when filled, were drawn by horses out of the " cutting " to a certain point near the end of the embank- ment." There, the wagons were detached from each other. Afterwards they were attached singly to the " tip-horse," who would trot or gallop with them nearly to the brink of the bank, where the horse being set free by a peculiar contrivance, would step on one side, and the wagon, run- ning on by its own impetus, and coming against a sleeper placed at the end of the rails, shot out the earth into the proper place. This process is one alike of much skill and some daring ; and the idea of it is very creditable to the inventors. Anybody who has watched the whole proceed- ing, must have been greatly interested by it. Indeed, one lingers on, watching the process with satisfaction. A very forcible phrase is in use among the the navvies, when they propose to send a large number of wagons heavily laden frojn the cutting to the spot where the wagons are to be charged. They say, " we'll run 'em in a red un ; " " red " standing in their language for large — a phrase which fully corresponds with other forms of their language. I will now give a description of how this process affected the Belgians, when they first saw it ; and I give it in the words of Mr. John Mackay, one of Mr. Brassey's sub- contractors : — The Belgians had never seen wagons before like ours. I began laying down a temporary road : they could understand that, but when I began to make a " turn-out" for a " lay-by," for empty wagons to come into as the full wagons pa'-sed, they could not make that out at all. They assisted me, but I was obliged to manage this work myself. At last 1 got the wagons on the road and began to fill them. I got the " tip " harness on to the horses, but had no one to drive, and so I was obliged to drive myself I then selected a nimble Belgian for the purpose of teaching him to become a driver, but I had to drive a horse myself for about two days. I gave this man a horse, and told him to start the first " set " of wagons — he looked round the horse, then at the spring bar that the chain was hooked to, but could not make it out. However, I got the first set of wagons filled, and, being driver,! drew the wagons out of the LABOURERS OF DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. 49 cutting to the tip ; but, to my great surprise, when I looked back, I saw that every man in the cutting was following me. They ranged them- selves on each side of the bank until they saw the first set of wagons tipped. They could not make out how I pulled the horse out of the road 5 or how the horse escaped, and the wagon went ahead. This went on for three or four sets, until they understood the mode of operation. Before Mr. Brassey's ageats went out, that comparatively humble instrument, the barrow, had been exclusively used by the Belgians in railway works. If there was a cutting and embankment contiguous, they took a small part of the earth from the cutting for part of the embankment, but all the rest they put out to " spoil." Then they made up the embankment by barrow-loads of earth from " spoil banks." I need hardly say that the English wagon, and the mode of using it just described, have now been gene- rally adopted throughout the Continent. I cannot here refrain from giving another remarkable instance of the character and ingenuity of the English, which although not manifested in railway work, was carried into effect by the English navvy. It occurred on the works of the Paris fortifications commenced at that time in Louis Philippe's reign, at the instance of M. Thiers. When the Paris and Rouen Eailway was completed, some of the Eng- lish navvies went up to Paris and tried to contract with the Government engineer to get some of the work to be done by " butty-gangs," and they obtained some work at French prices. There was a " fosse " or ditch all round the works, and the stuff from the ditch was taken out to be put behind the masonry. The Frenchmen used zigzag roads, to get up which was almost interminable, and all the stuff was taken by them out of the ditch by barrows, and wheeled up by this zigzag arrangement on planks, until they got to the top of the wall. When the navvies began working they at once put a pulley upon the top of the wall, to make a " swing run " with a rope, so as to be able to swing the rope, and the empty barrow went down to the bottom by its own gravity ; then they had horses on the top, which pulled the loaded bar- rows vertically up. They worked that way for about six weeks, and earned fifteen francs a day each. Then, no doubt, the French engineers began to see that these Englishmen were making them pay an enormous sum of money for the work, and they reduced the price ; and the Eng- lishmen, not having anywhere else to go, had to submit. When the next pay-day came round there was another reduction made to iive francs a day. Then the Englishmen began to slacken speed, and complain that their employers cheated them in the measurement and in their pay — they would not do more than five francs' worth of work a day, and took it easy. ■E 50 THOMAS BRASSEY. To reTert to the Belgians. There was one remarkable point to be noticed about the Belgian workmen, at least about those who were employed on the Sambre and Meuse Eailway. Money not being so easy, when easy at all, in any country as in England, the English contractor, or sub- contractor, invariably paid his men with great punctuality; a mode of payment which it had not always been in the power of the native contractor to adopt. "When Mr. Brassey took the Sambre and Meuse Eailway contract, his agent being always regularly supplied by him, introduced the English custom of paying the men every fortnight. After this had gone on for some little time, the Belgian labourers, in a body, petitioned to be paid monthly. This naturally rather astonished the contractors ; and one of them gives an account of the whole proceeding. He assembled his men together, and asked them what reason they had for making such a request. They replied that they would " rather have their money once a month, be- cause they would have more to take at a time." "But," said he, " you will want some ' sub,' ' during the month, and it will be quite as inconvenient to ' sub ' you as to pay." " No," they said, " they would not want any ' sub.'" He then asked them how they were paid by their own contractors. They replied, " every six weeks, sometimes every three months, and sometimes we get none at all." I believe their request was listened to. The truth was, as the sub-contractor remarks, " that they had implicit con- fidence in Englishmen, and they thought they could lay out their money better when they had a lump-sum at once." Mr. Hawkshaw says, speaking on the relative value of unskilled labour in different countries, " I have arrived at the conclusion that its cost is much the same in all. I have had personal experience in South America, in Eussia, and in Holland, as well as in my own country ; and as consulting engineer to some of the Indian and other foreign railways, I am pretty well acquainted with the value of Hindoo and other labour; and though an English labourer will do a larger amount of work than a ' A payment on account for " subsistence.'' LABOURERS OF DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. 61 Creole or Hindoo, yet you have to pay them proportionately higher wages. Dutch labourers are, I tliink, as good as English, or nearly so ; and Russian workmen are docile and easily taught, and readily adopt every method shown to them to bo better than their own." ^ ' See Letter No. 7, in Appendix. CHAPTER VI. MR. BRASSET's skill IN DEALING WITH SCHEMES AND ;\ CALCULATIONS. Skill in estimating. — Cost of railways at home and abroad. — Buckhorn V\'estei'n tunnel. — Mental calculation. — General accuracy. WE have seen how a railway is started ; how the enter- prise is manned ; and we have gaiaed some notion of how the work goes on when it is in full operation. This, however, gives but an inadequate representation of the labours of such men as Mr. Brassey, and the agents em- ployed under him. A large part, both of his work and their work, consisted in making calculations respecting the different schemes which were put before him ; many of which, as might be expected, after much thought and labour had been given to them, had to be rejected, or came to nothing,, at least for him. In fact, I am told that Mr. Brassey unsuccessfully tendered for works to the amount of nearly ^6150,000,000. In speaking of this investigation of schemes, one of Mr. Brassey's agents observes, " this forms a most interesting part of our experience, as it has occupied almost one half of our lives." There was no part of Mr. Brassey's work in which he showed more ability than in making these investigations, and coming to a conclusion upon them. Here, too, his sagacity in the original choice of agents, and in his subse- quent mode of dealing with them, came into full play. Moreover, his great powers of calculation, for, though not clauning any of the wondrous powers of a Bidder, Mr. Brassey held a high place among mental arithmeticians, found a fitting field for exertion. When any scheme was submitted to Mr. Brassey, he was accustomed to deal with it in this manner. The proposal was generally accompanied by plans and sections of some SKILL IN CALCULATIONS. 53 kind, and a few calculations. Mr. Bra.sscy then sent for one of his agents, in whom he had confidence, and who would probably be one of the persons entrusted to carry out the project if it were found to be acceptable. Mr. Brassey handed the papers to this agent, and asked him in general terms to look at them, and in the first place to say whether the figures appeared to him to be anything like what they ought to be, or what the work might be done for. The report of the agent was generally a verbal one, not occupying, perhaps, more than five minutes. If the report was such as to induce Mr. Brassey to suppose that there might be something in the scheme, he would say to the agent, " Then you had better go off and see to it." Mr. Brassey would always have the project considered by some of his own people on the ground ; and one of the points of investigation which he insisted upon being made with great accuracy, was the following : — namely, whether the length of line stated in the project was nearly the same as the length of the line would really be. His reason for causing this part of the enquiry to be made with care, was one which gives a good instance of his foresight, and shrewdness, especially as applicable to foreign railways. Very often on the length of the line depended the value of the Grovernment guarantee to the shareholders. If the line proved to be much longer than was supposed, the amount of money at first thought to be siifficient would not prove to be sufficient. Then subsequent loans would have to be obtained ; and Mr. Brassey's experience showed him that these subsequent loans were almost always obtained on unfavourable terms. The agent carefully ascertained the length of the pro- posed line ; examiaed the sections ; went into the price of material and the price of labour in the country. Finally, he " took out the quantities," using the plans and sections supplied by the promoters. The agent then came back to give a report to Mr. Brassey. When a Une had to- pass through easy country, the agent's labour in making the report, and Mr. Brassey's in coming to a conclusion upon that report, were but light. In a mountainous country, however, the labour was of a 54 THOMAS BRASSEY. very different kind, and the most minute investigation of details was necessary. As an instance of the manner in -which Mr. Brassey dealt with those whom he employed, I may adduce the evidence of one of his agents. He had gone for Mr. Brassey to investigate and report upon a proposed railway in Holland. With regard to this railway, Mr. Brassey was required to sign a preliminary contract, which involved on his part such a knowledge of all the circumstances as would enable him to frame his estimates. The agent says : — ■ The investigation which I had made was his only source of informa- tion. He said, " Let me see how you liave got at that." I came to his office, and it toolt us a quarter of an hour at least, to look over details, which was a great deal of time for Mr. Brassey to give to any one matter. The length of the proposed line was about 120 kilometres, and the estimated cost was about twenty-seven millions of francs. I had con- sidered it for a long time ; and when he went into the matter, in a quarter of an hour, or twenty minutes at the outside, he examined all the details. I mean to say, that in that short time he turned them all over, and stopped at the difficult points ; and in the ease of one of the bridge estimates, he went through my figures minutely, to see whether I had included all the details for the foundations, and had, in fact, included every detail which was likely to be involved in the execution of the work. He looked at the details for culverts, to see how I got at their price, and then investigated the calculations as to the price of the brick -work, of the stone-work, and the average quantities of earthwoi'k. I had worked them out, to see what the average was upon separate lengths of the line. At the end of this investigation, he said, " That will do." Never after that did he look into, any estimate of mine in such detail. At the same time that we dwell upon the apparently wonderful way in which Mr. Brassey, and other great employers of labour, come to these conclusions, so rapidly and yet at the same time so judiciously, we must recollect that the results of the experience of these men often assume a very distinct form. For example, in railway construction, large experience seems to show, as was pointed out in the last chapter, that there is very little difference between the cost of labour in this country and in foreign countries : at any rate, not such difference as cannot easily be allowed for. Of the enormous difference that exists in the expenses attendant on the construction of railways, and of the con- sequent care that must be taken in forming estimates, I SKILL JN CALCULATIONS. 65 am enabled to give a very remarkable illustration. In the tunnel that was made on the Salisbury and Yeovil EaUway iQ 1860, the difference of expense was as follows : — The construction of a yard at one end cost £\.2, while a yard at the other end cost as much as .£120.'^ In reverting to Mr. Brassey's still as an arithmetician, I may make a remark, which I think may be of some service in the way of education. I thiak it may be ob- served that all the men who have great powers of mental calculation, or who, as lawyers, statesmen, men of business, or authors, show great readiness in speech -or action, or vast memory as regards facts, have made it a rule, or at any rate a practice, to rely upon that memory alone, and have not indulged in much writing of notes, to subserve the memory. If I am right in this statement, and I have many memorable examples, such as the late Lord Lynd- hurst and the late Baron Rothschild, to adduce in my favour, it would indicate that in youth great paias should be taken to cultivate the services of that most admirable friend and servant, the memory. I am particular in insisting upon this poiat in reference to Mr. Brassey. I am going to mention a striking in- stance of his powers of calculation ; but before doing so, I should like to show how he dealt habitually with his memory, and what trust he put in it. He never con- descended to that weak practice of making many notes. He had dealings with hundreds, I may almost say with thousands, of people. They came and told him their views and their wishes, their schemes, their intentions, and their grievances. He heard them all ; ^ and if he did not reply to them at the time, as it was often impossible to do, for he had to make enquiries in relation to what they stated, it was perfectly certain that they would receive answers in writing, showing a complete knowledge of all the facts which it was necessary for him to refer to. He was one of the greatest letter-writers ever known. Ee- taining ia his mind all he had to write about, he was ready at any halt ui his innumerable journeys, if it were only a halt of a quarter of an hour at a railway station, to sit ' Mr. Harrison's evidence. ' See Letter No. 5, in Appendix, Sg THOMAS BRA8SEY. dowB and write several letters, generally of the clearest and most distinct nature, embodying all ttie requisite facts and circumstances. This masterful memory would never have been attained if Mr. Brassey had been one of those persons who weakly, as I think it, rely upon notes, or written materials of any kind, in any matter where memory alone may be expected and encouraged to do the work. I now give the instance of his power of mental calcula- tion, which I have before alluded to. I take the words of one of his stafi : — After dinner Mr. Brassey, and Mr. Strapp, the principal representa- tive of the contract, were going into details of prices ; and Mr. Brassey called me to take a chair by them, and go into details of prices of diffe- rent kinds of work. I noticed especially, after we had given him the cost, for instance of a bridge — all the details of the bridge, and the total cost — he said ; " How many bridges of that kind are there upon the line at the same prices .' " Again, as to the culverts, or bridges of a different size. After going through the quantities of the masonry, we went into the earthworks, and talked about the nature of the material and average length of " lead" from the different cuttings, and how much would this cost, and how much such and such a bank would cost, or such and such a deviation, and the prices of different parts of the works. Then we came to the question of rails : — they would cost so much delivered at the station, and so much delivered on and along the line. There was a very great distance to convey them : but there was a great facility for carting during the winter months, owing to a great deal of wood being carted into the towns for the winter fires, so that we could get the rails carted by a sort of back carriage on sledges. We had to get all these details as to carting the rails, and we gave him the average cost of the rails on the line; and then, almost in a few seconds, he arrived at the approximate cost of the line per mile, mentally. Before ending this chapter, T should observe that Mr. Brassey's conclusions were hardly ever found to be wrong as regards the subject-matter upon which they were em- ployed, when that subject-matter was the construction of a railway. Whenever he fell into any difficulty, it was generally the result of some financial embarrassment ; and over such embarrassments no man can be said to have a complete control. They depend upon large general causes, against the operation of which a prudent man may some- times guard ; but by which even the most prudent of men, engaged in large commercial undertakings, are liable to be surprised. CHAPTER VII. ME. beasset's work becomes moee extensive. (a.d. 1845.) Attention to details. — Visits of inspection. — Would not enter Parlia- ment. — The Emperor of the French. — Mr. Brassey's activity. TV/r E. BEASSEY now entered into wLat may be called a ■'■ ' -L new phase of Ufa. He was no longer the contractor for one or two lines only, but had become a man to whom . many persons resorted when they were the projectors of great railway schemes. This is the kind of change which occurs to most men, of any note, in the course of their career. They begin by doing well some one or two things in which they are totally engaged, being obliged to attend to every detaU and to make themselves thoroughly masters of the work. They do not so much superintend as execute. It is sometimes found, however, that this change is not attended by fortunate results, and that the man who can govern and direct a few persons under him — those persons remaining constantly under his eye — is perfectly incom- petent to manage great undertakings in which men, who have performed functions exactly similar to his own, of which he is perfectly cognizant, are to be mere units in these his greater, or at least more extensive undertakings. The error which those commit who fail when they are obliged, in the course of their career, to enter upon a much larger field of operations, is, that they still pay too much attention to details. It is not every man who is fitted to be promoted from an inferior rank, however well filled by him, to one of generalship and wide command. But certainly Mr. Brassey was found to be equal to the change of position and of duties which he had now to un- -dertake. It is almost curious to observe, from the evidence 58 THOMAS BRASSEY. of all those who acted under him, how he was henceforward wont to look to results rather than to minute details. As his works extended — and in 1845 he had on his hands, no less than thirteen heavy contracts which alone represented a length of about 800 miles, scattered in various parts of Scotland, Wales, France, and England— he evidently took the greatest care not to waste his time, thought, or energy, upon any work of detail which he could get as well done for him by others. I always thought, what an admirable official man he would have made ; for skill in high office greatly consists in discerning and making use of the powers and intelligence of subordinates, and of reserving all that force, of which no man has much to, spare, for the solution of intricate questions and the determination of high re- solves. The man who is oppressed by details will never be able to do this. The man who has not in his own time dealt much with details, and learnt to master them, also will not be able to do this : and moreover, without having previously mastered details, he will never acquire that respect from his subordinates which he ought to com- mand ; for they believe intensely in the skill which their superior may be able to show in dealing with details. Henceforth Mr. Brassey was not to be found doing any of the work which an agent or sub-contractor could do just as well. His visits to his various works necessarily became more iofrequent. Indeed, one of his assistants remarks that if Mr. Brassey frequently visited any line, it was a proof that there was some difficulty there, or that some- thing was going wrong. His visits were stUl looked for- ward to as occasions for great rejoicing, as opportunities for the redress of grievances, and for the settlement of all questions of difficulty. He became, as it were, the great consulting physician in railway matters, only making his appearance on critical occasions. It must not be supposed, however, that he began to work less ; but only that his work, being of a different nature, did not demand the minute supervision which he had been accustomed to give to it. To use the words of one of his agents, " Mr. Brassey never ran away from the duties of his calling. He was a contractor for public works, and did not pretend to be anything else." He has been heard to MAP OF ENGLAND, SHOWING RAILWAYS CONSTRUCTED BY MR. BRASSEY. 60 THOMAS BRASSEY. say, " It requires a special education to be idle, or to em- ploy the twenty-four hours in a rational way, without any particular calUng or occupation. To live the life of a gentleman," he would add, " one must have heen brought up to it. It is impossible for a man, who has been engaged in business pursuits the greater part of his life, to retire : if he does so, he soon discovers that he has made a great mistake. I shall not retire : but if, for some good reason, I should be obliged to do so, it would be to a farm. There I should bring up stock, which I would cause to be weighed every day, ascertaining at the same time their daily cost, as against the increasing weight. I should then know when to sell, and start again with another lot." One day when Mr. Brassey and Mr. McClean were dining with Mr. Giles, the conversation turned upon the immense fortunes of several noblemen, and how men, born to ■£60,000 a year and upwards, spent their income. Upon which Mr. Brassey said, "I understand it is easy and natural enough for those who are born and brought up to it, to spend d£60,000 or even .£150,000 a year ; but I should be very sorry to have to undergo the fatigue of even spend- ing d£30,000 a year. I believe such a job as that would drive me mad." Neither would Mr. Brassey suffer himself to be allured from the labours which were most congenial to him, and in which he felt he could do most service to the world, by any employment which some people might consider to be of a higher kind.' He respefitfuUy but steadfastly refused all offers to bring him into Parliament. His ambition, as has been already stated, was to be the great contractor, to fur- nish large and continuous employment to his fellow- countrymen, and to the " natives " of other countries. He felt this to be a sufficient object of endeavour, and one that would occupy him throughout his lifetime, as long as his power of promoting so great an object remained to him. It cannot be said, either, that Mr. Brassey was much attracted by honours of any kind. One of his agents thus describes his reception of the Cross of the Iron Crown from the Emperor of Austria : — ' See Letter No. 3, in Appendix. EXTENSION OF WORK. 61 lleturning from Vienna, Mr. Brassey was waited upon at Meurice's Hotel, Paris, by one of his agents, wlio arrived in the room at the very moment his travelling servant Isidore was arranging in a little box the Cross of the Iron Crown, which Mr. Brassey had just before received from the Emperor of Austria. Made acquainted with the circumstance, the agent complimented his chief as to the well-merited recognition of his services, &c., and the conversation continued nn Foreign Orders generally. Mr. Brassey remarked that, as an Englishman, he did not know what good Crosses were to him ; but that he could well imagine how eagerly they were sought after by the subjects of those Govern- ments which gave away Orders in reward for civil services rendered to the State, &c. He added, that in regard to the Cross of the Iron Crown, it had been graciously offered to him by the Emperor of Austria, and there was no alternative but to accept this mark of the Sovereign's appreciation of the part he had taken in the construction of public works, however unworthy he was of such a distinction. " Have I not other Crosses ? " said Mr. Brassey. " Yes," said his agent ; " I know of two others, the Legion of Honour of France, and the Chevaliership of Italy. Where are they ? " But as this question could not be answered, it was settled that two duplicate crosses should be procured at once (the originals having been mislaid) in order that Mr. Brassey might take them across to Loiwndes Square the same evening. " Mrs. Brassey will bo glad to possess all these Crosses." This simple remark of Mr. Brassey's contained a world of meaning, for although lie attached no importance to such matters himself, he knew and appreciated the great interest taken by his wife in all things touching his fame. I may here remark that when Mr. Brassey received the Cross of the " Legion of Honour " from the Emperor of the French, the Emperor invited him to dinner at the Tuileries ; and at this dinner Mr. Brassey sat near the Empress, with whose grace and manner he was much charmed, and was especially pleased with her kindness in talking English to him during the greater part of the time. " Although the great bulk of the enterprises achieved by Mr. Brassey was the formation of railways, with all their appurtenances, still his operations were by no means limited to this branch ; he interested himself and took pro- minent part in various other vast projects, such as steam- ships, mines, engine factories, marine telegraphs, and in many cases he became the main support and the largest proprietor of many of these costly undertakings. " Mr. Brassey may therefore be said to have been a man of almost universal utility to the civilized world, and the 62 THOMAS BRASSEY. results of his long industrious career have not been merely the accumulation of a colossal fortune for himself and those to follow him, but have had a far more important character, great services rendered to mankind ; and as such, his memory cannot fail to be regarded vrith pride not only by all who knew him, but by all his countrymen and the world ia general." ' Mr. Brassey's personal activity is well described by Mr. Henry Harrison, his brother-in-law. He says, "I have known him come direct from France to Rugby. Having left Havre the night before, he would have been engaged in the office in London the whole day ; he would then come down to Eugby by the mail train at twelve o'clock, and it was his common practice to be on the works by six o'clock the next morning. He would frequently walk from Eugby to Nuneaton, a distance of sixteen miles. Having arrived at Nuneaton in the afternoon, he would proceed the same night by road to Tamworth; aijd the next morning he would be out on the road, so soon, that he had the reputa- tion, among his stafE, of being the first man on the works. He used to proceed over the works from Tamworth to Staf- ford, walking the greater part of the distance ; and he would frequently proceed that same evening to Lancaster, in order to inspect the works then in progress under the contract which he had for the execution of the railway from Lancaster to Carlisle. The journey which I have described from Havre, via London to Eugby, thence over the Trent to Stafford, and by railway to Lancaster, to inspect the Lancaster and Carlisle line, was a route which he very commonly followed." ' Mr. Miirton's evidence. CHAPTER YIII. THE GEEAT NORTHEKN EAILWAT, (A.D. 1847.) Mr. Ballard. — A quaking bog. — Bridges in tlie Fen district. — Number of men employed. — The Brassey Shield. IN this Chapter will be described one of Mr. Brassey's most important enterprises — namely, the formation of the Great Northern Railway. Some of the greatest diffi- culties depending upon the construction of this railway were solved by the intelligence of Mr. Stephen Ballard. But never were Mr. Brassey's qualities for choosing fit men, for appreciating their work as it proceeded, and for dealing wisely and kindly with them, more conspicuous than on this occasion. It is noticed elsewhere how many of Mr. Brassey's chief agents rose from small beginnings, and became persons distinguished for their capability in the management of the greatest affairs. Mr. Ballard was no exception to this rule. He was intended for a nurseryman ; was employed for two years in the gardens of Messrs. Lee and Kennedy of Hammersmith ; and afterwards went to Hewell Grange to learn kitchen gardening. When he came to years of discretion, he determined to learn building, and spent three years as an apprentice to Mr. Lucy of Cheltenham. He was then appointed by Mr. Biddulph, the grandfather of Mr. Michael Biddulph, M.P., as manager of the Hereford and Gloucester Canal ; and, after the completion of that work, he was made the resident engineer of the Middle Level Drain, part of the Great Bedford Level in the Pens. That work was on the point of completion when Mr. Bal- lard first became acquainted with Mr. Brassey. The introduction was quite accidental, and took place at the railway station at Cambridge. Mr. Brassey was then returning to London from a visit of inspection to the 64 THOMAS BRAS8EY. country through which the G-reat Northern Railway was intended to pass. Mr. Brassey was not a man to be easily daunted by the diificulties of any undertaking ; but anyone, who knows the Fen country, must be well aware that there were difficulties which would cause any contractor to feel very anxious about the prospects of an undertaking in a district of such a peculiar nature. The person who had in- troduced Mr. Ballard to Mr. Brassey was Mr. Smith, the agent of the contractor for the great Sluice of the Middle Level Bank. After these gentlemen had got into the rail- way carriage, Mr. Brassey mentioned that he had been looking over the line of the proposed Great Northern Rail- way, which was to pass through the fens ; and with regard to a certain quaking bog which he had examined, he said, " You can stand upon it, and shake an acre of it together." He added, that he hardly knew what to do with the rail- way there, but that it must be carried over. He supposed that he must make a float, and float it over. Mr. Smith replied, " Ton had better get Mr. Ballard's adTice as to the best way of passing over that quaking bog : he has had considerable experience in fen-work in our Middle Level Drain." The result of this interview was, that Mr. Ballard became the principal Agent for Mr. Brassey as regards the works that had to be carried out in the Ten country. The Fens which Mr. Ballard had to master were those adjacent to Wittlesea Mere, which is now drained and has good crops growing on what was once the bottom of it. The depth of the bog was no less than twenty-two feet, and it extended on a level for about three miles". Mr. Ballard divided the Fen country which he had to deal with into three districts ; and made a report to Mr. Brassey showing the different modes of treatment that should be applied to each district. Mr. Brassey imme- diately adopted the conclusions arrived at in that report. There were certain portable engines held to be necessary for the work — engines of a kind that were then very rarely used. One, however, had already been made by the well- known firm of Clayton and Shuttleworth, which engine, by the way, it had taken them six weeks to make, while now ' they are turning out about four of these engines every day. 1 A.D. 1872. THE GREAT NORTHERN RAIL ir AY. 6S Tliis engine liad been sold to a farmer, but Mr. Ballard persuaded him to give it up upon payment of a certain sum. The next thing was to provide a large quantity of faggot-wood. For this purpose he caused 100 acres of faggot- wood to be cut down. A platform was then con- structed of the stakes thus cut, placing them end to end the reverse way. Then, upon the first layer of stakes, a layer of peat sods was placed ; afterwards stakes were placed longitudinally, upon which another layer of sods was put. Then a transverse layer of stakes ; upon this a third layer of sods. By this time a sort of raft had been formed, upon which the soil was gradually piled up, giving the water time to run out. I will here avail myself of Mr. Ballard's own words :^ — " The effect was to displace the water, but to leave the solid parts behind. This is not to be done by suddenly adding on great weight, but by a gradual and slow increase of weight, so that the water has time to escape without carry- ing away with it the solid matter. That plan has suc- ceeded, and you may go to any height you like if you treat ' peat in that way." A further difficulty, of much apparent m^agnitude, occurred in reference to the bridges which had to be con- structed in the Pen country. Here again I had better give the constructor's own words : — " I will explain the way in which we made the bridges — they were intended to be piled. The peat was twenty-two feet deep, and I pointed out to the engineer the difficulty of sufficiently bracing the piles, their tops being only about three feet above the soft bog. " The piling was given up, and we made rafts of timber on which brick walls were built. These gradually sank, care being taken to so dispose the weight as to keep the walls perpendicular, and finally these walls were tested with rails of a greater weight than that of any train that could pass over them. "We did not load too quickly, but left it ; we put a little load on, and left it ; and then the water had a chance of escaping. We only compressed the peat beneath the raft, without displacing it, for if we had once displaced it we must have gone down to the solid." The result of this intelligence shown by Mr. Ballard in 66 THOMAS BRASSEY. conquering the difficulties of the Fen country, was, that what had been considered beforehand the most difficult part of the work, turned out to be the part most easily accomplished. At that period certain difficulties arose as regards the financial part of the undertaking, and there was even some doubt whether a part of the works on the line should not be stopped. It was a notable feature in all Mr. Brassey's undertakings, that he could not bear to leave anything undone or half done. He might have made large claims for any delay occasioned by these financial difficulties. On the contrary, however, he arranged to facilitate the enter- prise by taking the Company's mortgage Bonds in lieu of cash, as also did Mr. Ballard, who had engaged with Mr. Brassey to take a share of the profits — a percentage for his services. It may be noted that the Great Northern Com- pany behaved with a very proper liberality to Mr. Ballard. He had sold his Bonds at a loss, and eventually they made that loss good to him. The evidence of Mr. Ballard is as interesting and valuable as regards his superior, as it is respecting the men who worked under him.^ It would be a pity to condense this or to give it in any other but his own words, as it affords such a good exemplification of character : — It was impossible to walk along the line without receiving from him very valuable instruction — his experience was so very great, and he had such a comprehensive way always of looking at a diificult point. That was very remarkable and peculiar in him. If he came down to look at a line of Railway, he would walk over it, look at the crops of the country, and regard easy works as beneath his notice : he never looked at them ; but if there was a difficult point, as he could see by the section, then there was something to look at, and he would go and always put hie thumb on the sore place : he would not waste his time in looking at little light matters that he knew were easy enough, hut he always went straiglit to the sticking-place. He economized his time and brought his experi- ence and judgment to bear where they were useful. He applied to engi- neering, that peculiarqualityof concentration which is equally necessary in all other walks of life, in order to achieve success. He had great in- dustry and always applied it in the right way. He would not fritter away his time upon trifles, when there was a more important thing to occupy his attention. He was very quick indeed in discovering beforehand, to the astonishment of those who had the management of the work, where there would be a pinch, and he would say, " If you do not do this, you ' Chapter V. p, 41. THE GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY. 67 will be wrong." He could look at a thing and foresee the state it would be in six months hence. His discernment was very acute, and he would point out to us where we were to pi'ovide for difficulties, which we might ourselves have overlooked ; but i-egarding which the moment he men- tioned them there could be no difference of opinion. The largeness of these imdertakings may be appreciated ■vrhen, as in the present instance, it is found that at least from 5,000 to 6,000 men were employed. A slight mistake in the direction of the labour of these men, for even a few days, would be a very serious matter in a pecuniary point of view. This may illustrate to us the great responsibility which attached to the work of all those persons who had the guidance and governance of these great undertakings : for it is a loss to the State as well as to the individual em- ployers of labour, when labour is in any way misplaced or misdirected. Those who were interested in the Great Northern Rail- way and Mr. Brassey's other contracts acknowledged his services in a very splendid and artistic way. They col- lected nearly ^2,000, and employed the proceeds in having fall-length portraits of himself and Mrs. Brassey painted by the late Mr. Frederick Newenham. They also presented him with a silver-gilt shield, a very exquisite w^ork of art, which was exhibited in the Exhibition of 1851. This shield was designed by Mr. H. P. Burt, and has in the centre the Brassey arms, surrounded by portraits, enamelled in gold, of twelve of the engineers under whose direction Mr. Brassey had executed important works. There are also twelve views of the principal works he had executed up to that period : and outside them a blue ribbon in enamel, bearing the names of thirty-six of Mr. Brassey's agents. The shield measures a yard in diameter, and was presented to him in March, 1851, CHAPTER IX. riNANCIAL MANAGEMENT. System of accounts. — Mr. Tapp's opinion. — Monetary difficulties in Spain. — Paper money. — The Bilboa Bank. — Mr. Brassey's credit. — A Carlist chief. — Eemuneration of agents. — Cheerfulness over finan- cial losses. MR. BEASSET'S financial management of such great undertakings as those which have already been de- scribed, is very interesting and instructive from its exceed- ing simplicity. Mr. Tapp, who was Mr. Brassey's financial secretary and confidential adviser upon all monetary matters, has furnished conclusive evidence upon this point. It appears that Mr. Brassey's mode of keeping the accounts of all his railway undertakiugs was purely local in its nature. On each contract the agent was responsible to Mr. Brassey for the money he received ; and Mr. Brassey always looked to that agent to give him informa- tion, in London, as to the way in which the contract was being carried out. " He kept no regular check upon it, but simply noted that so much money had been sent to such and such a work. Beyond that no one knew anything of the account ; he relied upon the cashier to keep the accounts, and he was supposed to audit them every month, and always to be in a position to give Mr. Brassey any in- formation he required." In contrasting this mode of keeping accounts with that adopted by any of the great spending departments of Government, such as the Admiralty, it is to be noticed that they have not only a local account of the same nature as that which was furnished to Mr. Brassey, but also a general account for the whole service, minutely kept in London. Such a system may be necessary for a great G overnment department ; but it is one which it would FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT. 69 have been very unadvisable for Mr. Brassey to adopt. His secretary, however, admits that " it requires a man like Mr. Brassey to carry out such a system as he adopted, because it is one particularly liable to abuse. He was very fortu- nate in that respect, for I am not aware that any one of his representatives ever deceived him, or robbed him. But still, other people, who are not possessed of the same dis- cernment of character as Mr. Brassey, might, in my opinion, be very much imposed upon by relying implicitly upon one person." When asked whether the honest service which Mr. Brassey thus received from his agents was, in the witness's opinion, a proof of the general honesty of mankind, he thus rephed : — " Not exactly that. I think it rather more shows that he placed so much confidence in those whom he employed, and put them as it were so much upon their honour, that they would not deceive him, and that people who might not have acted uprightly with other people, did so with him because they felt responsible to him, and also a certain amount of pride in being confided in by him to such an extent, that they really carried on the business as if it was their own." I cannot but think that the system of trust which Mr. Brassey adopted xmiformly, with respect to all those who worked under him, was such as would be generally success- ful if carried out with that perfect faith and completeness which he always manifested in these transactions. There were few, if any, of the great undertakings in which Mr. Brassey embarked that gave so much trouble in respect of the financial arrangements as the Spanish rail- way from Bilbao to Tudela. The Secretary thus recoimts the dif&culties which they had to encounter : — The gi'cat difficulty in Spain was in getting money to pay the men for doing the work — a very great difficulty. The Bank was not in the habit of having large cheques drawn upon it to pay money ; for nearly all the merchants kept their cash in safes in their offices, and it was a very debased kind of money, coins composed of half copper and half silver, and very much defaced. You had to take a good many of them on faith. I had to send down fifteen days before the pay day came round, to com- mence getting the money from the Bank, obtaining perhaps £2,000 or £3,000 a day. It was brought to the office, recounted and put into my safe. In that way I accumulated a ton or a ton and a half of money, every month during our busy season. When pay week came, I used to 70 THOMAS''BRASSEY. send a carriage or a large coach, drawn by four or six mules, with a couple of civil guards, one on each side, together with one of the clerks from the office, a man to drive, and another a sort of stable man, who went to help them out of their difficulty in case the mules gave any trouble up the liilly country. It was quite an operation to get this money out. I was at the office at six o'clock, and I was always in a state of anxiety until I knew that the money had arrived safely at the end of the journey. More than once the conveyance broke down in the moitntains. On one occasion the axle of our carriage broke in half from the weight of the money, and I had to send off two omnibuses to relieve them : I had the load divided, and sent one to one section of the line, and one to the other. Q. Was any attempt made to rob the carriage ? A. Never : we alwaj's sent a clerk armed with a revolver as the prin- cipal guard. We. heard once of a conspiracy to rob us; but, to avoid that, we went by another road. We were told that some men had been seen loitering about the mountain the night before. The payment of wages to tlie men employed on this Spanish railway affords a good illustration of the service that was done, in an indirect manner, to many countries where British enterprise was introducing the railway system. On this occasion the Basques were taught the use of paper money. Mr. Brassev's secretary, whose difficulties in procuring and distributing a metallic currency have already been seen from his own description, naturally en- deavoured to make use of the paper money as more por- table and less difficult to count. This was done by using the notes of the Bank of Bilbao for 100 reah,^ equal iii value to about £\. It may be noticed, by the way, that the Bank increased its profits to such an extent, that the shares were doubled in price while Mr. Brassey was work- ing in that country. ' Mr. Tapp remarks, " That the \00-real gold piece is worth exactly 250 pence, or 1,000 farthings ; and if ever a decimal currency should be adopted in England, it would be the most convenient form for the unit of value, as it would not disturb the relative values of the lower denomina- tion of coins used by the poor, a great difficulty in framing any new system of currency. " It would also represent exactly five dollars, and so pass without difficulty in the United States, South America, Portugal, and China, and to some extent in India and the Indian Archipelago. It would represent twelve and a half Austrian silver florins, and pass in France, Bel"-ium aiid Italy as twenty-six francs. ° ' "I cannot understand how, in the many systems of uniform currency advocated by writers on finance, it has been lost sight of; the twenty- FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT. 71 Inevitably, however, amid such a conservative people as the Basques, there was some difficulty at first in getting this paper currency into circulation. When they came to receive an account, and I gave them so many hundred reals in notes, and the balance in silver ; they would take up the silver, and stand waiting and say, " This is not the amount of my account." I said, " You have not taken up the notes." " What are these — where am I to get the money for them ? " " Go to the Bank, and you will get the money." Then they went immediately to the Bank and changed the notes — the first time hesitatingly, but after the second and third times, finding that they were always paid, they took them home, and kept them till the next market-day. During Mr. Brassey's occupation of that part of the country, for occupation it may be called, seeing that he and his partners had 10,000 men in their employment, he succeeded in obtaining from Madrid a supply of 100-reaZ pieces, which are very difiicult to obtain at Bil- bao. There is one circumstance mentioned by this finan- cial agent, which gives a good insight into the manner in which credit was attached to Mr. Brassey's name. By some unavoidable accident Mr. Tapp was once left at Chambery, during the construction of another railway, without any arrangement having been made for paying the men ; no authority had been given to him to sign cheques, and the person who could sign them was absent. He says : — ■ I went to the Bank, and told them how I was left, and that I had a large " Pay " to make, and asked them to let me have the money on my own cheque, and I was allowed to draw as much as £28,000 on one occasion. The natural financial difiiculties of constructing a rail- way in Spain were added to by the strange kind of people Mr. Brassey's agents were obliged to employ. One of the sub-contractors was a certain Carlist chief whom the Government dared not arrest on account of his great in- fluence. Mr. Tapp thus relates the Carlist chief's mode of settling a financial dispute : — five franc piece, which public opinion seems drifting towards, will prove most inconvenient for division into small sums in countries inhabited by the Anglo-Saxon race, by whom the greatest part of the trade of the world is carried on." 72 THOMAS BRASSEY. When he got into difficulties Mr. Small, the district agent, offered him the amount which was due to him according to his measured work. He liad over 100 men to pay, and Mr. Small offered him the money that was coming to him, according to the measurement, but he would not have it, nor would he let the agent pay the men. He said he would have the money he demanded ; and he brought all his men into the town of Orduna, and the men regularly bivouacked round Mr. Small's Office : — they slept in the streets, and stayed there all night, and would not let Mr. Small come out of the Office till he had paid them the money. He attempted to get on his horse to go out — his horses were kept in the house (that is the practice in the houses of Spain) ; but when he rode out, they pulled him off his horse and pushed him back, and said that he should not go until he had paid them the money. He passed the night in terror, with loaded pistols and guns, expecting that he and his family would be massacred every minute, but he contrived eventually to send liis staff-holder to Bilbao on horseback. The man galloped all the way to Bilbao, a distance of twenty-five miles, and went to Mr. Bartlett in the middle of the night, and told him what had happened. Mr. Bartlett immediately got up and went to the military Governor of tlie town, who immediately sent a detachment up to the place to disperse the men. This Carlist threatened that if Mr. Small did not pay the money, he would kill every person in the house. When he was asked, " Would you kiil i» man for that ? " he replied, " Yes, like a fly," ' and this coming from such a man who, as I was told, had already killed fourteen men with his own hand, was rather alarming. It is not sttrprising to find that Mr. Brassey and his partners lost a very large amount upon the Bilbao Rail- way. This loss, ho-wever, must not altogether be attributed to the difficulty of dealing with the Spanish people. It must be confessed that the estimates, in this instance, were wrongly framed. It was supposed that the material to be dealt with was half earth, and half rock ; but instead of that it turned out to be mostly hard rock. Then again the climate is a very wet one. Moreover, not only wet days, but fete days ought to have been allowed for. The conse- quence was, that Mr. Brassey's people were not able to work more than 200 days out of the 365 in the year. The general results of this witness's evidence are pecu- liarly interesting on account of the light they throw upon Mr. Brassey's character. It was only after the secretary's return from Spain that Mr. Brassey gave him orders to make up a list of all his property. The secretary had to obtain his information from other people, such as the secre- taries of the companies in which Mr. Brassey held shares. ' " Como una mosca," FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT. 73 " This took a long time to complete, so m.uch so, that after I thought it was completed, in the next two years amounts kept cropping up, and I found, from some corre- spondence, that there was money that we knew nothing about, but we ultimately got it put into books in a regular way, and by degrees got the account correct and perfect." This ignorance of his resources may be thought to indi- cate some carelessness on Mr. Brassey's part ; but the truth is, that he was a man very indifferent to the possession of money. His mind was always occupied in getting the work through that he had undertaken, and there was a certain apparent carelessness about his own private affairs which only gives us a higher notion of the unselfishness of the man. It was not connected with any deficiency of financial ability. Mr. Brassey knew thoroughly well a good investment from a bad one ; but he never seemed to take the trouble to think about investments. As his secretary observes, "I remember urging him very much to sell some shares when they were at a large premium, but he would not do it. He seemed to consider it a thing unworthy to be attended to, as if he thought some one else would lose by it, and that he would be taking the profit away from some one else ; or that, having gone into the thing from its origin, and being to some extent responsible for its initia- tion, he ought to see it through, without getting out of it over some one else's shoulders. I do not know exactly why, but I never could get him to sell any of the shares which he subscribed for previous to the panic of 1866. " I believe he felt that he had been one of the promoters, and if he got out of it, others might get out, and he would not abandon a ship in difficulties." We learn from this witness the way in which Mr. Brassey remunerated his agents. " It was a system of paying sometimes by salaries and sometimes by a percen- tage on profits. The salaries which Mr. Brassey gave were decidedly not large ; but he assigned to his princij)al agents a percentage upon the profits of the imdertaking. In some instances these agents received cheques varying from d63,000 to ^16,000. Indeed, several of those gentlemen who served under him succeeded in realizing fortunes." This witness, like many others, speaks of the exceeding 74 THOMAS SUA S SET. cheerfulness of his employer, especially when he was tried by difficulties and disasters in the work, and by considerable pecuniary losses. He says : — " I remember Mr. Bartlett, who had known Mr. Brassey as a younger man than I did, telling me that Mr. Brassey never appeared so happy as when he had lost .£20,000. Whether it was that he made an effort at cheerfulness to throw it off his mind, I cannot say ; but Mr. Bartlett said that he used to rub his hands, and that anyone would have supposed that he was delighted rather than otherwise. I remember, even at the time of the panic, when things were at the worst, Mr. Brassey saying one night, at the West- minster Palace Hotel, " Never mind, we must be content with a little less ; that is all." That was when he sup- posed he had lost a million of money." During the construction of the Bilbao line, shorly before the proposed opening, it set in to rain in such an excep- tional manner that some of the works were destroyed. The agent telegraphed to Mr. Brassey to come immediately, as a certain bridge had been washed down. About three hours afterwards another telegram was sent, stating that a large bank was washed away ; and, next morning, another, stating the rain continued, and more damage had been done. Mr. Brassey, turning to a friend, said, laughingly : " I think I had better wait until I hear that the rain has ceased, so that when I do go, I may see what is left of the works, and estimate all the disasters at once, and so save a second journey." No doubt Mr. Brassey felt these great losses that occasionally came upon him much as other men do ; but he had an excellent way of bearing them, and, like a great general, never, if possible, gave way to despondency in the presence of his offtcers. This witness concludes his evidence in these words : — " As to mere money-grubbing, he had not any of that in his composition, but he knew the value of money as well as anyone, and how far a pound would go ; but he had no greediness to acquire wealth, and he was always willing to give away a portion of his profits to anyone who was in- strumental in making them, and that to a remarkable extent." CHAPTEE X. FINANCIAL DIFFICTJLTIES. (a.D. 1866.) Difficulties in 1S66. — Victoria Docks. — Danish contracts. — Lemberjj and Czcrnowitz Railway. — Evesham and Eedditcli Eailway. — War- saw and Terespol Railway. — Queensland Eailway. — Great Western Branches. — Great Eastern Eailway. — Barrow Docks and Euncorn Bridge. — Mr. Wagstaff. — Chevalier Ofenheim. — The Cross of the Iron Crown. HITHERTO the narrative of Mr. Brassey's labours has chiefly been one of unexampled success, and there has been very little in the way of adversity to vary the narrative. The falling of a viaduct — earthwork turning out to be of a much more difficult kind than was expected ■ — a scarcity of labour, and the like, were only momentary evils, scarcely sufficient to chequer the continuous success. But in the year 1866, Mr. Brassey had to encounter an amount of financial difficulty and trouble which was suffi- cient to overwhelm almost any man, and which, though he bore the weight of it with great fortitude, had, in the opinion of some of those who knew him best, a considerable effect upon his health and life. When we come to know the secret history of any great firm, or of any man whose financial enterprises have been very large and extensive, we almost always find that there has been a period of great difficulty and great peril — in short, a financial crisis. It is not altogether unpleasing to men of smaller means, when contemplating their own diffi- culties, to find that their great compeers have had to struggle through similar difficulties, and to overcome simi- lar dangers to those which they themselves have had to encounter. The private crisis, too, generally comes at a time of public crisis — perhaps of panic — and when or- dinary financial resources are for the moment unavailable. •^Q THOMAS BRASSET. Difficulties have an ingenious way of coming together, as if on set purpose, and by pre-arrangement amongst them- selves, at the most inopportune conjuncture. We see this in the Hves of great statesmen, and great generals, as well as in the lives of those who take the lead in com- mercial enterprise. And in the year 1866 the difficulties which Mr. Brassey had to encounter, advanced in a com- pact body against him. I will recount them one by one. In the first place, there were liabilties in connection with the Victoria Docks, to the amount of ^600,000. Then there were the Danish contracts. In these con- tracts for certain railways in Denmark Mr. Brassey was associated with Messrs. Peto and Betts. The partners had obtained a loan from the General Credit Company of .£300,000, upon an agreement to pay it back at the end of three years. This sum became due in 1866, at the time of the failure of Sir Morton Peto and Mr. Betts. The firm of Messrs. Peto, Brassey and Betts had also at that time large engagements outstanding for rails for the Danish contracts, involving very heavy liabilities. In fine, their liability for the Danish works may be stated at about ^800,000. Then there was the Lemberg and Czerifowitz line. Mr. Brassey had received bonds from the Company to the amount of =£1,200,000 ; but, at the moment, these bonds were worth very little more than so much waste paper. An effort was made to place them in a foreign market, which succeeded only to the extent of .£13,000 ; and from that time they were perfectly unsaleable. Meanwhile Mr. Brassey had to pay from ^40,000 to .£50,000 a month for wages alone on that line. There was also the Evesham and Eedditch Eailway for which Mr. Brassey was entirely paid in shares ; and I must also mention the Warsaw and Terespol Eailway, the pay- ment for which was to a great extent made in bonds of which very few could be sold before the line was opened. The Queensland Eailway also involved heavy liabilities, and until the settlement of the account by the government of the colony some time later, nothing could be counted upon from this source. Then there were several contracts in the West of FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES. 77 England, for lines in connection with the Great Western Company, such as the Wellington and Drayton line, the Nantwich and Market Drayton line, and many others. For these works Mr. Brassey was paid in the shares of the Company, which were at that juncture totally unsaleable. I may also mention that the Great Eastern Eailway Stock, largely possessed by Mr. Brassey, was entirely useless as a financial resource. The hst of difficulties is not yet complete : there was also a heavy loss going on at the Barrow Docks and at Euncorn Bridge, amounting to ,£4<4,000. In fact, the liabilities coming upon Mr. Brassey in that eventful year were so heavy that his property, of every kind whatsoever, was " largely committed." Such a man as Mr. Brassey was sure to have made devoted friends ; , and they were not wanting to him on this occasion. I must especially m.ention Mr. Wagstaff, who was of eminent service to him. He had been for many years a most inti- mate friend of Mr. Brassey's, whose confidence in his judgment, and reliance upon his friendship, were such that Mr. Brassey could not bear to undertake anything, or, at any rate, to prosecute any undertaking, without imme- diately informing Mr. Wagstaff, and seeking for his aid and counsel. It is needless to give an account of all the details of those transactions by which Mr. Brassey was enabled to push his way through his great difficulties during that critical period. One remarkable circumstance, however, deserves special notice — namely, that in spite of these financial difficulties, be persevered throughout that year in his old system of bringing works rapidly to a con- clusion. Mr. Tapp says, " That Mr. Brassey was recom- mended by Mr. Glyn, Mr. Wagstaff, and indeed by almost all his friends, to delay the Lemberg and Czernowit;z works." The reader will remember that these required from ^40,000 to <£60,000 a month for wages. "Still Mr. Brassey would go on. He would not stop the work ; and it was a fortunate thing that he carried them on, because he was paying the interest of the shareholders, which amounted to over ,£120,000 a year. He had to pay them until the line was opened, when the Government guarantee came into force; and instead of being finished in January, 78 THOMAS BRASSEY. it was finished in the previous September or October — four months before the contract time, and that added very much to his prestige in Austria." It not only added to his prestige, but it brought into play large funds which had hitherto been unavailable, for the Anglo-Austrian Bank now found that they could do a profitable business by selling the bonds, of which Mr. Brassey possessed more than a milHon. Certainly Mr. Brassey's bold, we may almost say audacious, perseverance in his accustomed course of finishing work as quickly as possible, at any loss, and at almost any hazard, was amply successful on this critical occasion. The difficulties under which this Austrian line was com- pleted were very great. These were not merely financial, but such as must arise from a state of war. Mr. Brassey was admirably seconded in his efforts to complete this railway by Mr. Victor Ofenheim,^ director- general of the Company, who also acted as one of Mr. Brassey's advisers on Austrian questions. The worts were at that time progressing chiefly at Lemberg, five hundred miles from Vienna. The difficulty was how to convey the money from Vienna to Lemberg to pay the men. The intervening country was occupied by the Austrian and Prussian armies, who were on each side of the line, that is on that part between Cracow and Lemberg; for Mr. Ofenheim had succeeded without much difficulty in getting the money carried on the Northern Carl-Ludwig Eailway as far as Cracow. However he was full of energy, and was determined to get on somehow or other. They said that there was no engine ; that they had all been taken off ; but he went and found an old engine in a shed. Next he wanted an engine-driver, and he found one, but the man said he would not go, for he had a wife and children ; but Mr. Ofenheim said, " If you will come, I wUl give you so many hundred florins, and if you get killed 1 will provide for your wife and family." They jumped on to the old engine and got up the steam. They then started and went at the rate of forty or fifty miles an hour, and passing between the sentinels of the opposing armies; and Mr. ' Now the Chevalier d'Ofenheim. FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES. 79 Ofenlieim states that they were so surprised that they had not time to shoot him. His only fear was that there might he a rail up somewhere. But he got to Lemherg, and that was the saving point of the line — they made the ' pay ' — otherwise the men would have gone away to their homes, and the line would have been left unfinished through the winter, and they would have had to wait until the next spring before they could have returned again, but that difficulty being overcome got the line duly opened. Mr. Ofenheim's conduct on this occasion is a notable instance of the influence Mr. Brassey exercised over those who worked with him, as well as those who worked for him : for Mr. Ofenheim had become a devoted friend, as well as a skilful and daring representative of Mr. Brassey. The Emperor of Austria, with that appreciation shown by monarchs for devoted service — a thing they naturally very much approve of — was much struck by what he had heard of this daring feat in getting to Lemberg, and sent for Mr. Ofenheim, and asked this pertinent question : " Who is this Mr. Brassey, this English contractor, for whom men are to be found who work with such zeal, and risk their lives ? " The answer must have been satisfactory, for the Emperor said Mr. Brassey must be a very powerful man, and sent him the Cross of the Iron Crown.' CHAPTEK XL ME. BEASSET's wealth. How Mr. Brassey employed his capital.— An instance of liberality. — Temporary embarrassments. — Causes of wealth. AFTER giving an account of the financial difficulties wtich Mr. Brassey had to encounter at a late periqd of his career, it will be well to say a few words about the financial result, which, as the world knows, was a very suc- cessful one. The acquisition of a great fortune by any man is not a thing which is intrinsically pleasing to the rest of man- kind. Accordingly, they have invented divers sayings against the acquirers of large fortunes ; such as that Arabic one, " Happy are the sons of those fathers who do not go to a good place," meaning thereby that great riches are seldom inherited from those who have gained them with entirely clean hands. The more just observers of mankind have been wont to say, that their fellow-men are seldom more innocuously employed than in amassing wealth. The truth is, that whatever fortunes Mr. Brassey and others of his calling accumulate are seldom or never ascer- tained and realized until their death, or until misfortune overtakes them in their lifetime. The capital that Mr. Brassey dealt with was never idle. As soon as any part of it ceased to be wanted for one great work, it was required for another, which either had to be commenced or was entering into a phase of full activity. It must be recol- lected, that a main object with Mr. Brassey was to furnish sufiicient work for all that staff of skilled agents and for those large bodies of workmen whom he had collected around him. He had never the feeling of being a man of realized fortune — a millionaire, as we term it. HIS WEALTH. 81 Of the numerous acts of Mr. Brassey's kindness and generosity, one may be quoted as an instance, viz. tiiat of one of his old agents, of much merit and worth, who had imfortunately lost the whole of a competent independence, which he had acquired in Mr. Brassey's service. Mr. Brassey, anxious to give him the opportunity of recovering himself, confided to him several missions connected with new projects. In the last of these the agent was taken suddenly ill before reaching his destination, and died im- . mediately after his arrival ; almost at the very same time, his wife, whom he had left in good health in England, succumbed to a still more sudden attack. A family of six children were thus left orphans, and without any sort of provision. Mr. Brassey had already made an advance of several thousand pounds, for which he held as security a policy of insurance on the life of his agent. This he im- mediately relinquished in favour of the children, and further headed, with a substantial sum, a list of subscrip- tions made by the friends of the deceased for the orphans. Though very liberal in reheving all cases of distress, which came within his immediate cognizance,^ and espe- cially those which originated amongst persons of his own staff, his name does not figure largely in subscriptions to pubhc charities. He had other uses for his money, and these other uses were continually pressing upon him, but some notion may be formed of Mr. Brassey's habitual libe- rality, when I state that it is estimated that during his lifetime he gave away about ^£200,000. Occasionally, in the course of his life, as happens to most men of very extended affairs, he was greatly embarrassed, for the moment, to provide small sums, as we must call them — twenty or thirty thousand pounds, for instance — which were suddenly and urgently wanted in his business. There were times at which, if he had died, he would have been found, comparatively speaking, a poor man. A man so situated can scarcely feel himself to be the pos- sessor of millions, even though he might know that if his property were favourably realized at some particular time, it would amount to millions. ' See Letter 4, in Appendix. 82 THOMAS BEASSEY. The acquisition, however, of such a fortune as Mr. Brassey left hehind him requires some explanation, though, as will be seen, it needs no apology. There are two causes to be given which led to the ac- cumulation of the wealth that Mr. Brassey left behind him. One was the small extent of his personal expenses. He was a man who hated aU show, luxury, and ostenta- tion. He kept up but a moderate establishment, which the increase of his means never induced him to extend. The second and far more important cause was the im- mense extent of his business. That extent was gained not only. by his intellectual qualities, but by his moral qualifi- cations. Other men were very desirous of dealing with a man who was not only of known skill in his work, but who was of good repute for uprightness, for promptitude, and for going through thoroughly with anything which he had once begun. He never haggled or disputed, or sought by delay to weary people into his terms. His transactions were frank, distinct, and rapid; and there was no man who could less abide any loss of time in the completion of any of his enterprises. The success of such a parson is almost inevitable. As one of his enthusiastic admirers, who had been employed by him from the first, and knew him well, was wont to say, " If he'd been a parson, he'd have been a bishop ; if a prize-fighter, he would have had the belt." It was not from excessive gains in any one transaction, or even in several transactions, that his fortune sprang. It will, perhaps, surprise the reader to learn the small per- centage of profit which accrued to him from all his enter- prises, taken as a whole. It was, as nearly as possible, three per cent. He laid out seventy-eight millions of other people's money, and upon that outlay retained about two millions and a-half. The rest of his fortune consisted of accumulations. CHAPTER XTI. MB. bkassbt's costtbacts. (a.d. 1834-1870.) APPENDICES are, I am afraid, in these days of multi- tudinous books and easy reading, very frequently skipped even by those persons who may be considered dili- gent readers, anxious thoroughly to understand everything about which they read. I have, therefore, resolved to put the following Table of Mr. Brassey's Contracts into the body of this work, rather than relegate it to the doubtful region of appendices. It shows, more forcibly than any words of mine can show, how vast and various were the labours of Mr. Brassey. Indeed, I must own, that even after I had endea»voured to follow closely the records of his most labo- rious Ufe, I was astonished at perceiving, in this condensed tabulated form, how great his labours had been. The reader will also note how his work gradually in- creases upon him, and will now better understand how Mr. Brassey's attention was, by degrees, diverted from the actual superintendence of one or two works, to the general supervision of many great works going on at the same time. There were periods in his career dui'ing which he and his partners were giving employment to 80,000 persons, upon works requiring seventeen millions of capital for their completion. I subjoin a list of Mr. Brassey's contracts ; for the com- pilation of which I have to thank my friend, Mr. Arthur Kicketts. So numerous were the contracts, that he is still uncertain whether there may not be some omissions here- after to be supplied. THOMAS BBASSEr. cn l« H ^ •S C ) ^ s < ?5 « 1 H g <- 5^ ^ ^ -« O O W s ~ 'a H O ^ t a, 5j o 00 1— 1 00 r-H 1 i ^ 1 i I-] &s V, .= »— 1 3 ^1 03 m iJ Kl s a >3 a ■ft Ph = 1 ^ U U t-'fc (4* t<' fr-' -^' t*' ^' ^ ss g a ^a a ss • w .£ ■^ . (U SJ d 'S d B 0) ^■I ^ u s; (U cd d »-id u Ph 3 ^ s — ^ g >^ • -a • ■ t S >, d ca 1^ s -^ >^ X 5 J :3 >> c S _, h X CS s^ 1 , 1 US Is Pt3 '5 1 s i'.l '5 Pi d ■ s 6 & f4 h s g S 4w S SS SS ^ o i •1 1 wis ,j h u t-' ^" ^' s 3 S s .^H^a « « ■ (1< B." o o (; ' "i "i .P ■^" f=^SO^PH •rt ■ P3 b Cq ^^ Oi" as s ta-^^ 4d fehJcq ^ m CQ cQ tn TO ■ rt -PS -IS •« •« Ph I*< fri pti fij o S SS oS|g =S o £ SSSSSSsS s s s s s V g en II -s ss . .2J 0.2 0.2 g.S §.2J §.2 g.2 g _ _ _ - oi d 1) ■""^ ^ '" S (B S 03 « 4) = (U =5 N N M N ■" a H C H C "a S d 4) « & t4 tl ss ^ ss £ op a >, m *- >. H ft i^ ■y F 4) Rj >» ■n s CQ is IS TS 'ni ^ ^ G. « M ^ o o a m & cd ■^ •-a a> « >StH ti 5=-S -« -« ^?i ■ p3 ^ Ti "oT 1 C3o s c a d 13 0-O • ,J3 'S s 1 g .E=^ P s .3 en u t/j rt 86 THOMAS BRASSEY. I Hl« d ^ ^ •. p. Ogilvie r. Bartlett r. Milrov . r. Ballard . S i 0) 'o a 1 ■o 3 • S. W ffl ft . h ^ t4 h h f 'Eb a 03 •« J2 (1. »< m 4) 3 oT^ 0) a ii ■a -^ rt-^ a ^ 03 CO OS CQ ro OS OS oT aT 0? oT o P3 piH*'^ >» a «\g E S o «^ - - tJM. , 5 « i-'^ a j ^ w o a ^^-i O O 1^0 C ■3 fi ! £-0 n ^ CLi RAILWAY AND OTHER CONTRACTS. 87 Ui r-HIr- « bD ^iiiiliiiiiiiiiiiliJiii|ilflt «■••«••■•«■ • a • • • § . '^ . . . z, Sc^Sa ■ • g • . . 2 .f g I I ll IHIMIIIIII i lll^l^lll p^ (3 w a s a ^ ,ji2;^ri|^g|J_ « B| igSfiiaai S g g g g g g ggggggggg g ^gsgggg^^ PU 04 Ph Ph gS gSgSgg . jj^ t,^ t,4i t,.« CQ ro m iiQ p< Puin Oi !^ g,. • ^^n S,?i • ■ .g^ S'S oS% O ii ©■"S %n . t;?^ ■Sm . ■£« ^,\ ft-mS 1^;: i.^- g^ ■ ?'l^ ^1- •§1" •I? b; P4 §1 rt 1 B P ^ E5 g g - & •« M * ^fl„:§ .3 1 g ■3 «°^ g ■1 O I? 1 P Branch ord and 1 Italian ij .9 5 1 1 Arpley Woodf Centra THOMAS BRASSEY. 3 I O to M ■ .t^ bo g g g ggg g g g Hi t4 h t^ Ch fL4 » bo a; a o H - o f^ •S3 gg Pi g» . gg[.,0 S gg CL, •g. ogg .g. gm r3 s ^ d fl WJ eS « <»■ S oi* o O CP pq fe M fet< ggg g*g^ '3 P4 r. ^ ^ ^ ■■a,.i^ ^a rt W3 « a 5 !? art bD f II •oo •e 1 ■3 jM «-s S ffr 3 e3 i = 13 O) T3 i 03 :! ■^ ^ P4 s& O O ^ H •Pi a • ^ ■a S = .^^ . rt o h -O <1>^Z ; J hj g .S '3 ^ g S" n •S a I E= § .£ £• '3 3 ■31 l-S .SCO O lU RAILWAY AND OTHER CONTRACTS. 89 O vO "* b-CSJ m §^-l^g|g5 S I i^ ^ S-"^ §•" I S3"". ^ S|3S-Slfe-S St »4 ti ti h' h F*' ri ri Fh* t^ ^ tn* ^ ^ P^ Fh tn U »^ h t4 h ti h' h* h fn* b ^ tn tj pi ^"W 8= a tn w (i,' : 4J tj *> " pa . g . . . . . . g C4 d 3 0" g S .? d . S a a S 5 g a ■ • S • ^- a S §5 as I - S.S.2ja|!Ha ,? sS-2-2^n£^ - ii -a g 2 §::*''.§■= • • J • ■ a • ".s -s a ■ •?, » a 3,S Ss a.S.2° 5^ S .S 2 S « " Sci; t2 »w hj s- -a -c! .a ?- >■ ;a . a.m wt3T3 -a >-ti . is >*s "?■? O gg WobfefHOOco _ gg ffifeCu &< o&< feoa OO g I gggggggg i2 ggg g gg ggg gg ■ a "IT t: .s ■ '3 ■■o - ■ ■ "els 's ■ ■ ■ s ;s • 90 THOMAS BRASSE7. g a tn* PH h ;^ t^ t4 tl t4 U rH h' ^* t4 g ggggggggg g a c0 -CtC-S g t4 ^ t4 3gg fe port o W g gggg g h fr<* f' N g g g gggg g g g g g g -^ Tb cs "O ts ta 'O ^ ^o) '-- [i! '3 "qj 'ai ixtix^n [^ 1x1 pel ^ ^ ^ h ^ h (i t4 ggg g g g g a ELI fit Ogilvie , Harrison Field . Ogilvie . Ogilvie . Field . 1 Parent . Baddicomb M. Peto, M Mr. Betts M. Peto, SI Mr. Betts KOfq u gg^^r gg gggggg s ^gg • --£2 •3fi . .« d o to «^ o ^ bo S i'g ^ 5 ■|n ^ ■a P'o « « 0) p 1-2 I Hi t^m g "6- bo ^ S fl t3 rt S3 y M w o ^ o mpSHP £ g ff ^ '3 RAIL WAV AND OTHER CONTRACTS. 91 CO c s .£ S .2J .2 .2.8 O 3) S & r& bOKoa O § 2l ^ ;4 Fh F^ h Fh ^4 -ri I *t sss^ ^ssss ^ ^ aaa aa B sa — yw — V- ■'-'V*' Wy^ ^-v*' '— /-' Wy*^ „-A- ^-^ .^-^—v ■ ^ "^ li -^ f^ P5 e8 'pd * 1 1 -a S- ^ s- .-2 . !" 1 a o d -a O ja O o 1 1 a s a w s 1 e ^ -Jl ■ d -J, 13 (3 a. IH-I M o S 1 ft 1 ■3 m •-a • d If- III ■to S d N d CQ 1 d 1 1 M 1 1 i II o 1> 1-3 s 1 3' ire CO ■S in oo 1 o fcH ■"" ^ -' CHAPTEE XIII. THE ITALIAN BAILWATS. (a.D. 1850-53.) Turin and Novara Kailway, — Count Cavour and Mr. Giles. — Propowd Lukmanier Pass Kailway. — Turin and Susa Railway. — The Victor Emmanuel Railway. — Bartlett's boring machine — Buffalora Extension Railway. IT would far exceed our limits to enter into a detailed account of every great enterprise which Mr. Brassey undertook, either by himself, or in partnership with others. There are, however, certain remarkable points connected with several of these undertakings, which ought not to be passed over in silence. I will begin with the railway from Turin to Novara. Count Cavour had intimated a strong desire to bring capital into his country for the purpose of constructing railways ; and he naturally looked to Englishmen for assis- tance in attaining this desirable object. His wishes were responded to by our countrymen. Negotiations were ac- cordingly commenced with the Count ; and Mr. Brassey, Mr. Prank Mills, and Mr. ISTetlam Giles were the contrac- tors who, under the sole name of Mr. Brassey, arranged the conditions of a concession from the Piedmontese Govern- ment for the line from Turin to Novara. The preHminary agreement entered into with M. Paleo- capa, the Minister of Public Works, was as follows : — That the Piedmontese Government was to subscribe a fourth of the capital, Mr. Brassey a fourth, the Provinces a fourth, and the public a fourth, no interest being guaranteed. The Piedmontese public, however, did not understand railway matters, and were totally disinclined to subscribe for their share. Count Cavour sent for Mr. Giles one 94 THOMAS BRASSEY. morning, and said, "We are in a difficulty: the public have subscribed for very fevr shares ; but I am determined to carry out the line, and I want to know if Mr. Brassey will take half of the deficiency, if the Government will take the other half ? " A promise was given on Mr. Brassey's part, that he should do so, — a noticeable instance again of how Mr. Brassey's partners as well as his agents could venture to act for him on very critical occasions. It was shortly afterwards announced that the subscriptions were covered ; the Piedmontese then took heart, and applied for a very much larger amount of shares than that which had been originally offered to them. Count Cavour made an appeal to the promoters of the railway, saying " The public are now crying out that they cannot get a share, and the shares are at a good premium. Will you give up some shares, as I am anxious to whet their appe- tite for other enterprises by letting them taste a profit on their first speculation ? ' Cavour was asked, " How many do you want, supposing that the Grovemment will give up as many ? " He replied, " Will you give up 2,000 ? " He was assured that Mr. Brassey did not care about "jobbing the shares," and there was no doubt he would do what the Count wished. The matter was shortly afterwards dis- cussed with Mr. Brassey, and he willingly gave up the 2,000 shares, they being then at more than £2 premium. This railway from Turin to Novara was a very success- ful undertaking, as the traffic proved far more remunera- tive than even the original promoters had estimated, and the line was completed for a less sum of money than had been expected. Mr. Brassey, in discussing these trans- actions made this notable remark, " That railway has been completed for about the same money as was spent in obtaining the Bill for the railway from London to Torh." The length of the Turin and Novara Railway was 60 miles. The total charge of the Sardinian G-ovemment against Mr. Brassey for the concession was exactly ^100. It is therefore not wonderful that Mr. Brassey had the opinion that the system of concessions by a G-overnment to Companies was very superior to the Parliamentary system which is adopted in this country. Count Cavour said to Mr. Brassey, shortly after the THE ITALIAN RAILWAYS. 95 railway was in operation, "I am told the Hne per se is yielding 14 per cent. ; and yet there was a time when I could not induce my Piedmontese to take a share ! " The successful construction of this line from Turin to No- vara brought, as might be expected, an immense number of applications from all parts of Piedmont for the extension of the railway system. In fact, there was, as I am informed, " a perfect /wrore for the construction of railways through- out the country." Mr. Brassey was concerned in several of these enterprises ; ^ but it is not necessary to enter into any details respecting their construction. Count Cavour was very grateful to Mr. Brassey, and repeatedly thanked him for the liberal and spirited way in which he had responded to the wishes of the Piedmontese Grovernment. The proceedings which took place in reference to the proposed formation of what was called the Lukmanier Line, from Locarno on the Lago Maggiore over the Luk- manier Pass to the Union-Suisse Railway at Coire, are worth noting; I wiU give them in the words of Mr. GUes :— "It so happened that I had been interested in the original concessions from the Cantons Grisons and Tessin, of the Lukmanier Line, and at an interview between the Count and Mr. Brassey, Cavour said, ' Now, Mr. Brassey, I want you to do something for us in this matter, in which I- take a great iaterest.' Mr. Brassey replied, ' EeaUy, I know nothing about it ; but,' pointing to me, ' Here is a man who knows everything about it — he has spent time and money upon it, promoting it. Perhaps your time, therefore, would be saved by explaining your views to him, and if I can assist them I shall be happy to do so.' So the Count said to me, ' Come and see me to-morrow morning.' I may mention that it was not unusual for Count Cavour to see people in the summer-time at five o'clock in the morning. My appointment was at six o'clock. I waited upon him as appointed. We then discussed the Lukmanier, and we came to an arrangement. I said, ' There are no ' surveys ' in this matter, or no reliable surveys — they are all made by the people in the country. Will you share part of the 1 See List of Railways, ante, pp. 84-92. 96 THOMAS BHASSEY. expense of a definitive survey ? ' He replied, ' I do not think, in the present position of matters, it can be done. It is in Switzerland ; and the Swiss are so touchy about any interference of a foreign Grovernment, that I think our doing so would have a prejudicial rather than a beneficial effect; but I should be glad if Mr. Brassey can see his way to making them without any assistance from us.' I spoke to Mr. Brassey about it, and the surveys were made in the spring of 1868, and Count Cavour was asked to meet Mr. Brassey and the promoters at Coire, for the purpose of inspecting the line. " Cavour came to Coire on July 27, 1858. Mr. Brassey had fully intended to accompany the Count over the line, but unfortunately could not do so, as he had to complete the line to Cherbourg, which the Emperor Napoleon was to open on August 5. Immediately Cavour came to Coire, it set in to rain in torrents, and he was delayed a day. Mr. Giles waited upon the Count by appointment at six o'clock on the succeeding morning, and found him reading Macaulay's ' History of England.' He said, ' Wonderful and delightful book this ; it is as exciting as a champagne breakfast.' They then discussed the proposed Lukmanier line, and the Count said, ' I very much regret Mr. Brassey is not here, as I have looked forward to the pleasure of going over the line with him, and thoroughly understanding how he proposes to construct the two sections, and the carriage road over the mountain. I am already acquainted, through M. Sommeiller, that Mr. Brassey thinks it better to make a good tunnel even in fifteen years than a bad one in six years. I think so too ; indeed, I shall be dis- posed to accept whatever Mr. Brassey proposes, as I have full confidence in his opinion. I should like very much to go over the line with him ; and if you wiU inform me when he will be at Coire, I will do my best to return, and accompany him over the line, as I am most anxious to have my lesson from the most experienced contractor in Europe, and so be able to discuss the question au fond, and with a full knowledge of the facts.' " ' There was a grand dinner at Coire in honour of Count ' Mr, Netlam Giles's evidence. THE tTALIAlf RAILWAYS. 9? Cavour tlie same day, at wMcli the Count said: "Mr. Brassey is one of the most remarkable men I know ; clear- headed — cautious, yet very enterprising — and fulfilling his engagements faithfully. We never had a difficulty ■with him. He would make a splendid Minister of Public Works ; and," he added, laughing, " if report be true, he understands the Finance Department equally as well." This praise from Count Cavour was the praise of a man who was himself a consummate master in the management of affairs. Mr. Giles, who throughout these transactions was in frequent communication with the Count, says of him, " as a man of business, I never met his equal, except in Mr. Brassey." After the revolution of 1848, political considerations, and probably strategical views, entered very largely as important circumstances in the arrangement of the system of Piedmontese railways. It was not only Count Cavour, who was then the Finance Minister, who was anxious for the introduction of British capital for the purpose of railway construction. The Prime Minister, D'Azeglio, and the Minister for Public Works, M. Paleocapa, were also m.ost anxious to promote the same kind of enterprise. In 1850 a railway was planned to extend the Turin and Genoa line from Turin to Susa by Mr. Charles Henfrey. Previously there had been before the Piedmontese Govern- ment the project of tunnelUng through Mont Cenis. In- deed, as far back as 1841, this project had been brought forward by Mons. Medail ; and later, the Chevalier Maus had prepared a detailed project for a railway and tunnel, and had been allowed to make experiments with a boring machine of his own invention at the Government works. The condition of the national finances of Piedmont, how- ever, entirely prevented the adoption of so great a scheme ; and the Government, therefore, cordially received the proposal, made through Mr. Henfrey, of constructing a cheap line of railway between Turin and Susa. Its object was to facilitate the means of communication with Prance - — Susa lying at the foot of the Mont Cenis Pass. " By the construction of this line," as Mr. Henfrey ob- 98 Thomas bUassEY. serves, " railway communication would be complete from the Alps to the Mediterranean, and the first link in the chain of international communication with Prance and the West of Europe would he forged." A contract for its construction was made between the Piedmontese Govern- ment and Messrs. Brassey, Jackson, and Henfrey. The Piedmontese Government engaged to take one half the shares, and the contractors the other half. Moreover, the Government undertook the surveillance of the works, and to work and maintain the line at fifty per cent, on the gross receipts. In continuance of the same great plan of making rail- way communication between Piedmont and France, a survey was made by Messrs. Brassey, Jackson, and Henfrey, on the northern side of the pass of Mont Cenis, down the valley of the Arc, to Chambery, and thence to the French frontier at Culoz. The Piedmontese Goverhment had promised to give their support to this project. But here a French company stepped in, and proposed to Messrs. Brassey, Jackson, and Henfrey, that if they would withdraw their demand for a concession, they (the French company) would ensure to them the execution of the works, which offer was accepted. It was called the Victor Emmanuel EaUway, in honour of the King of Sardinia. . The works on this line were commenced in 1855 and completed in 1858, under the superintendence of Mr. Thomas Bartlett. " It was," Mr. Henfrey says, " during the construction of this railway that Mr. Bartlett first brought into use his machine for boring rock, the principle of which was appropriated, with but faint recognition of his claims, by the Italian engineers, for the boring machinery of the Mont Cenis Tunnel. It may safely be said that, in the absence of such a machine for facilitating the boring of rock, the Sardinian Government would not have undertaken so gigantic a work as the Mont Cenis Tunnel — 12,220 metres, or 7| miles long, through sohd stone ; and it is gratifying to find that the importance of Mr. Bartlett's invention has been fully appreciated in France, as will be seen by the following extract from a brochure, entitled " Geologie des Alpes et du Tunnel des THE ITALIAN RAILWAYS. 99 Alpes," recently published by the eminent geologist, M. EUe de Beaumont : ' — "En 1855, im Anglais, M. Bartlett, construisit une machine perfora- trice, qui fut essayee avec un plein succes k Genes et a Chamb6ry. " Au premier aspect on eroyait avoir devant soi une simple locomotive ; mais au piston de la machine i, vapeur s'ajoutait un second piston plein d'air, dont la tige 6tait armfe d'une barre k mine. L'air faisait inatelas, et emp&hait les chocs trop brusques de se transmettre au piston moteur. La barre a mine frappait jusqu'a 300 coups a la minute. " Le problems de la perforation m&anique etait r^solu ; mais on ne pouvait raisonnablement songer k utiliser une machine a vapeur dans un trou d'une profondeur de plusieurs kilometres. Le peu d'air respirable que I'on aurait pu envoyer aux ouvriers anrait 6t4 bien promptement vici^. " Ici intervint I'idde f&onde de I'emploi de l'air comprim^ comme force motrice en remplacement de la vapeur. Eien n'etait plus k propos que d'employer, au lieu d'elements irrespirables, de l'air pur qui, apres avoir servi a transmettre la force, ventilerait la galerie. " L'honneur de cette importante application de l'air comprim^ appar- tient aux trois ingenieurs Sommeiller, Grandis, et Grattoni, qui con<;urent ensemble cette idee pendant une mission dont ils furent charges en Belgitjue et en Angleterre." ^ Nothing, as my readers know, is more difficult than to proportion exactly the respective merit due to inventors who have had the same object in view, and have adopted somewhat similar means for effecting the same. I am particular in mentioning this invention of Mr. Bartlett's, because Mr. Brassey, with his usual generosity to those he employed, gave Mr. Bartlett .£5,000 in aid of the expenses connected with the construction and trial of this machine. While the Victor Emmanuel Eailway was being con- structed, Mr. Brassey and Mr. Henfrey contracted for making an extension of the No vara Eailway from that city to the west bank of the Ticino at BufEalora, and also for the construction of the Chivasso and Ivrea Eailway. " It will be seen," as Mr. Henfrey says, " that the rail- ways completed by Mr. Brassey and his partners formed a continuous line from the then Trench frontier at Culoz, on the Ehone, to the old Austrian frontier at BufEalora on the ' Paris, 1871. ' For a full and lucid discussion of the relative merits of Bartlett's and Sommeiller's Boring Machines, see the report of the debate at the Institution of Civil Engineers, Feb. 16, 1864. 100 THOMAS BRASSEY. Ticino, with the exception only of the pass over the Mont Cenis ; and the years during which these contracts were executed comprised that bright period in the history of Italy, during which the kingdom of Sardinia, emerging from comparative obscurity, took its place by the side of the great Powers of Europe. "Looking at the chain of events, we may reasonably speculate as to whether the facility for the movement of troops and supplies afforded by the railway communication for the whole distance from Paris to the Austrian frontier, excepting only the pass of the Mont Cenis, was the weakest argument or inducement brought forward by Cavour in soliciting Napoleon's aid for his country. "We may speculate also as to whether these railways would have been so opportunely completed without the aid of British enterprise, at a time when it was most required ; and perhaps be justified in concluding, that our country- men may thus have borne a humble part in bringing about the greatest result of modern civilization — the unification of Italy," CHAPTEE XIV. THE GEAND TKXTNK EAIEWAT of CANADA. (A.D. 1852-1859.) Messrs. Peto, Brassey, and Belts. — Division of tUe work. — Mr. James Hodges. — Eailways in America. — Bogie engines. — Mr. Eowan. — The steam excavator. — Wages to Canadians. THE Grand Truni: Eailway of Canada was one of the most important undertakings in which Mr. Brassey was ever concerned. This railway supplies a means of in- tercommunication through the valley of the St. Lawrence during the whole of the year, an advantage, which, owing to the river being frozen over for at least six months an- nually, had previously been enjoyed only during the summer. Even during the season, when the navigation is open, the means of transport, by water, are imperfect. Sea-going vessels, of 700 to 800 tons burden, could proceed safely as far as Lake Ontario ; but the limited dimensions of the Welland Canal made it necessary that the produce from Lakes Brie, Huron, Michigan, and Superior should be conveyed to Lake Ontario in smaller vessels, not exceed- ing 300 tons burden. The Grand Trunk Eailway was in- tended to obviate the necessity for this transshipment of cargo. The first conception of this vast undertaking is due to the Honourable Erancis Hincks, and the Honourable John Boss, who was for some time the Speaker of the Canadian House of Assembly. During the summer of 1852, at the request of the Pro- vincial Government of Canada, Messrs. Peto, Brassey, and Betts undertook an examination of that coimtry, with a view to the development of a complete system of railways. 102 THOMAS SSASSEY. The execution of this task was entrusted to Sir William Jackson (who was afterwards associated with the con- tractors in their undertaking), and to Mr. Alexander Eoss as Civil Engineer. With the information thus obtained, a complete scheme for the Grand Trunk system of railways, including the Victoria Bridge, was prepared and introduced to the public under the auspices of Mr. Thomas Baring, and Mr. George Carr Glyn, the agents in England for Canada. Mr. Robert Stephenson subsequently acted as Consulting Engineer to the Company, Mr. Alexander Ross being the Company's Engineer for the whole undertaking. Mr. Eoss designed all the important " works of art ; " the rest of the engineering being done by the contractors under him : the agents carrying out their work without any superior control. The railway was divided into four dis- tricts, the agents in command of these districts being on an equal footing with one another. They were in the habit of having consultations; but were not placed under the authority of any engineer-in-chief. Mr. Eowan, profes- sionally educated as a civil engineer, Mr. Hodges, Mr. Eeikie, and Mr. Tait, were the respective agents. Hereafter, some account will be given of the extent and nature of some of the works on this remarkable line, which is one that forms a most important link in the system of American railways, opening up large districts of valuable land, and connecting the Brie and Great Western of Canada Eailroads, and other lines of lesser importance. But, previously, it will be desirable to give a description of the nature and qualifications of the workmen in the great American continent, and their implements, as contrasted with the British workmen and their appliances. This account will be chiefly taken from evidence fur- nished by the principal agents employed by Messrs. Peto, Brassey, and Betts in the construction of the Grand Trunk Eailway. The person upon whom I rely mostly for information in the present instance, is Mr. James Hodges. He began life as a carpenter, and was apprenticed to a carpenter and builder in Brompton. In 1853 he went to Canada to aid in carrying out the works of the Grand Trunk Eailway, 104 THOMAS BEASSEV. and remained there until the Prince of Wales had laid the last stone and put in the last rivet. Mr. Betts had the entire supervision of the local management of the line ; but Mr. Brassey went over to Canada to see the progress, as was his usual custom in all works ia which he was con- cerned, and also took part in the financial operations. Mr. Brassey landed at New York, and Mr. Hodges went to meet him. The Americans showed the greatest atten- tion to Mr. Brassey. Special cars were attached at the end of the trains for him, in order that he might have the best opportunities of seeing the country through which he passed ; and the managers of the various lines always went with him. As might be expected, he was greatly struck, and much delighted, with the new things which he saw in America. He was especially pleased with the granaries, and with the processes for cooling the grain adopted there, which are thus described : — By means of a thermometer, which is thrust into the middle of all large masses of grain, the Americans have the means of ascertaining its tem- perature. Be it ever so large a mass they find but directly it is heating. They then let it run down a long shoot, perhaps for 100 feet. It is tlien elevated again ; and as it passes down rapidly through the air, it cools ; and this operation also helps to brighten the surface of the grain. It is then in a cool state stored again, being returned back by means of little tin buckets which are driven continuously by steam engines. This sys- tem is now frequently used. What, however, doubtless had most interest for Mr. Brassey must have been the works in America similar to his own in England ; and herein he must have been struck by the contrast between the American Railway system and the English. Mr. Hodges justly says \- — " In America, a railway is like a river, and is regarded as the natural channel of civilization. Extended into a thinly populated district, it is the pioneer of civilization; it precedes population; and is laid down, even before common roads are thought of. As the expectation of traffic is, in many instances, but small, the cost of construc- tion must be kept down as much as possible. With this object in view, timber is universally substituted for the more costly materials made use of in this country. Tressel bridges take the place of stone viaducts, and, in places in THE GRAND TRUNK RAILWAY. 105 wHch in this country you would see a solid embankment, in America a light structure is often substituted." In order to facilitate the construction of railways, the American G-overnment has sometimes reserved a belt of territory, perhaps a mile in width, half of which is granted to the promoters of the railway. In South America the same principle has been adopted, and even carried further by the Argentine Republic. That G-overnment gives the whole of this belt to the railway company, with the excep- tion of certain portions of land near existing towns, or in places where it anticipates that great towns will hereafter be built. Of course it would be impossible that such a principle should be adopted in a country like Great Britain, wliich is so thickly populated, and where land is so valuable. Mr. Hodges dwells much upon the very ingenious and successful modes of facilitating labour by machinery, in use among the Americans, and adopted by them on account of the scarcity and consequent dearness of labour. He also notices the exceptional skiU which the ironmasters have attained in that coimtry and in Canada, being stimu- lated thereto by the difficulties arising from the distances which separate the iron mines from the beds of coal. Many articles (he says) are made of cast iron in America, which in this country can only be produced in wrought iron. For example, cast iron wheels are made in America of a very superior quality to any which can be procured in this country. Here, cast iron wheels cannot be made to stand the same wear and tear as those made by hand : whereas in America, cast iron wheels are made to endure a very considerable amount of wear and tear, and the leading wheels of the locomotives, as well as all the wheels of the railway carriages, are constructed of cast iron ; but the railway authorities in this country would not sanction its use for these purposes. In America, cast iron wheels are made of chilled iron, and they are found to answer their purpose admu-ably. The marvellous ingenuity displayed by the Americans in the construction of all light machinery strikes the intel- ligent observer very much, and was, no doubt, thoroughly appreciated by Mr. Brassey. The greater part of the roll- ing stock for the Grand Trunk Eailway of Canada had to be constructed at Birkenhead. For this purpose work- shops were estabUshed; but previously to commencing iiny of the workj the contractors of the railway sent two 106 THOMAS BR ASSET. clever mechanics throughout the United States, to examine the principal establishments in which similar railway stock was constructed. It must hare struct everybody who has had any intimate acquaintance with America, how thoroughly fearless individual Americans often are of com- petition ; notwithstanding that as a nation, they do not exhibit a similar fearlessness. These two mechanics were welcomed wherever they went ; were supplied with draw- ings of all the best machines, and with every information requisite for their instruction. It is to be recollected that this was in the year 1853 : and at that time there were no such things made in England as miorticing or planing machines, both of which are now so common. These machines were supplied by American manufacturers to the workshops of the "Canada Works " for the Grand Trunk Railway. It is some com- fort to our national vanity to find that Mr. Hodges, after giving due praise to the American manufacturers for the lighter kind of machinery, adds : — " I am bound to state, on the other hand, that in the construction of machinery for undertaking heavy work, England has carried the palm against every other nation. "For this description of work Mr. Whitworth has given tools to the world which no other maker could have pro- duced." On the G-rand Trunk Railway the contractors were obliged to adopt the American system of locomotives : these American engines were all constructed with " bogies." It is well known that " the bogie carriage yields to every irregularity in the railroad, whether it be horizontal or lateral, whereas, in an ordinary English locomotive, the leading wheels would soon be worn out from the violent oscillation and vibration arising from the traffic on the rough railroads which exist in America." It may be noted that Mr. Hodges justly claims the " bogie " as an English invention ; and he adds, " in real truth most of their (American) ' inventions ' are English., which they have adopted." His remarks with respect to the relative merits of English, American, and German labourers, are very valu- able, as coming from one who has had such large experience THE GBAND TRUNK RAILWAY. 107 in the employment of labour. He speaks of the notable fact that, many of the most ingenious English mechanics were addicted to drinking ; and he comments upon the in- jurious effects of Trades IJnions. And here I must again give his own words : — lu England, the Trades Union dominates everywhere, and it soon ruins a man. He can only do just what its rules px-escribe, and what he is allowed to do, and it is only one particular sort of work that he does. But in America, on the contrary, he is obliged to do all sorts of things. I am ready to admit that if a man only makes the head of a pin, no man can do that so well as the man who does that alone ; but his intellect becomes cramped by that fact, and he soon loses all grasp of mind : but when he gets to the States he has perhaps to chop down a tree, or ex- temporise a pail, and that makes a man altogether different : — his intel- lect becomes clearer : — although he is not so good a machine, he rapidly rises in the scale of intellect. In England he is a machine, but as soon as he gets out to the United States he becomes an intellectual being. I do not think that a German is a better man than an Englishman ; but I , draw this distinction between them, that when the German leaves school he begins to educate himself, but the Englishman does not, for, as soon as he casts off the shackles of school, he learns nothing more, unless he is forced to, and if he is forced to do it, he will then beat the German. An Englishman acts well when he is put under compulsion by circum- stances. In executing the works that had to be effected on the Grand Trunk Railway, it was to be expected that the engi- neers, the contractors, and the agents should be led to con- sider the various contrasts to be found between American and Canadian work, and British work. It was the first time in the history of railways that those who had to con- duct British enterprise abroad, found themselves in contact with men of their own race. Mr. Rowan's reflections upon this matter are very interesting and valuable. In giving his evidence upon the Grand Trunk Railway, he was ques- tioned minutely upon various points connected with the relation of British workmanship to foreign workmanship generally, and especially of that part of workmanship which relates to invention. It was put to him that as labour is much more costly in America than in England, a stimulus was given to American manufacturers to produce articles which involved the least employment of labour. To this he entirely assented. It was then suggested to him that technical iastruction is more developed abroad than in England, and his reply was as follows : — " My conviction 1G8 THOMAS BRASSEY. is this, that we always in England excel the continental producers in the manufacture of any material that has once been established ; but I think that improvements are most likely to originate on the continent from their greater theoretical knowledge. I believe that they possess much higher theoretical knowledge than we do, but there they stop. When a new invention or improvement has been established, and comes out of the dominion of rigid theory into that of practice, then I am of opinion that the Englishman always beats the foreigner." As an instance of an invention which has been largely used in America, on account of the scarcity of labour there, Mr. Rowan mentions the Steam Excavator, and he says that : Towards the last, in consequence of tlie extreme cost of labour, we em- ployed steam excavators, not because they were cheaper than men, but because they supplied the want of labour, and enabled us to get on faster. A steam excavator is found to be profitable only in very hard material, such as hard pan, in which a very large force is required to excavate. In lighter materials, such as sand or gravel, it is more expensive to use than men at five or six shillings a day. "VVe used them notwithstanding, even in filling ballast, and I undertook a large quantity of ballasting myself in that way. This scarcity of labour gave rise to great difficulty in the execution of the railway works on the Grand Trunk Line. Wages were very high. A man who received five shillings in England per diem, would receive seven shillings and sixpence in Canada. This difference in the rate of wages was caused not only by the scarcity of labour, but by the circumstance that, in Canada, out-of-door work is impos- sible for four months in the year. When Mr. Brassey went over to Canada to inspect the works, he suggested that they should endeavour to bring up a large body of French Canadians from Lower Canada. This suggestion was carried into effect by Mr. Rowan. A large niunber of Lower Canadians were brought up in organized gangs, each having an Englishman or an Ameri- can as their leader. These gangers received a guinea a week for each man they brought. The French Canadians, however, except for very light work, were almost useless. They had not physical strength for anything like" heavy work. THE GRAND TRUNK RAILWAY. 109 They could ballast, but they could not excavate. They could not even ballast as the English navvy does, continuously working at "filling" for the whole day. The only way in which they could be worked was by allowing them to fill the wagons, and then ride out with the ballast train to the place where the ballast was tipped, giving them an oppor- tunity of resting. Then the empty wagons went back again to be filled ; and so, alternately resting during the work, in that way, they did very much moi'e. They could work fast for ten minutes and they were " done." This was not through idleness, but physical weakness. They are small men, and they are a class who are not well fed. They live entirely on vegetable food, and they scarcely ever taste meat. These men, however, though their powers of work were but feeble, proved to be of great use, inasmuch as their com.ing prevented the stalwart men from leaving. Mr. Brassey's main object in going to Canada was a financial one. The Canadian Grovernment had lent three millions of money to the Grand Trunk Company ; and these three millions had a priority of interest over all other claims^ upon the shares. Mr. Brassey succeeded in persuading the Canadian Q-overnment to remit the priority of their claims, which proved a great assistance to the Company. In considering the difficulties which attend any railway enterprise, the first thing to be noticed is the nature of the ground through which the railway has to pass. Another difficulty, however, may be occasioned by the nature of the adjacent country. In the construction of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, this second difficulty must have been very great, when it is remem.bered that the conditions of the country through which the railway had to pass, were such, that a third of it passed through cultivated ground, and the other two thirds through forests. It may easily be imagined what difficulties this created in the way of housing men, procuring provisions, and bringing these pro- visions within reach for daily consumption. CHAPTER XY. GRAND TEUNK BAILWAT (cONTI'STTJED). (a.d. 1854-1860.) The Victoria Bridge. — Tlie ice bridge. — A council of Indian chiefs. — Ploating dams. — Mr. Chaffey's steam " traveller." — Description and opening of the bridge. THE following account of the difficulties whicli had to he encountered in constructing the Victoria Bridge, of how these difficulties were surmounted, and of the success- ful issue of the undertaking as a great work of construc- tion, has, with very little alteration and abridgment on my part, been taken from a paper written by Mr. Hodges. It will be duly valued by the reader, as a succinct and complete narrative of the construction of one of the most admirable works which have ever been accomplished by British skill and enterprise in our Colonies. The difficulties connected with the construction of the Victoria Bridge, and the doubts entertained as to its prac- ticability, even after the inauguration of the Company, induced the Board of Directors to ask Mr. Eobert Stephen- son to examine and report upon the design, which he did iQ the summer of 1863, visiting Canada for that purpose. The structure, as it at present exists, was carried out from the designs of Mr. Stephenson and Mr. Ross, and under their joint responsibiUty. " The site of the bridge is at the lower end of a small lake, called La Prairie Basin, which is situated about one mile above the entrance to the canal, at the west end of Montreal Harbour. At this point the Saint Lawrence is 8,660 feet from shore to shore, or nearly a mile and three quarters wide. The most serious difficulty in the con- struction of the Victoria Bridge, arose from the accumula- THE GRANV TRUNK RAILWAY. HI tion of the ice in the winter months. Ice begins to form in the Saint Lawrence in December. Thin ice first ap- pears in quiet places, where the current is least felt. As winter advances, ' anchor ' or ground ice comes down the stream in vast quantities. This anchor ice appears in rapid currents, and attaches itself to the roots in the bed of the river, in the form of a spongy substance. Immense quantities accumulate in an inconceivably short time, in- creasing until the mass is several feet thick. A very slight thaw, even that produced by a bright sunshine at noon, disengages this mass, when, rising to the surface, it passes down the river v^ith the current. This species of ice ap- pears to grow only in the vicinity of rapids, or where the water has become aerated by the rapidity of the current. Anchor ice sometimes accumulates at the foot of the rapids in such quantities as to form a bar across the river, some mUes in extent, keeping the water several feet above the ordinary level. " The accumulation of ice coatiaues for several weeks, until the river is quite full. This causes a general rising of the water, until large masses float, and moving farther down the river, unite with accumulations previously grounded, and thus form another barrier ; "packing" in places to a height of twenty or thirty feet. " As the winter advances, the lakes become frozen over. The ice then ceases to come down, and the water, in the river, gradually subsides, till it finds its ordinary winter level, which is some twelve feet above its height in summer. The 'ice bridge,' or solid field of ice across the river, becomes formed for the winter early in January. By the middle of March the sun becomes very powerful at mid- day, and the warm heavy rains rot the ice. The ice, when it becomes thus weakened, is easily broken up by the winds, particularly at those parts of the lakes where, from the great depth of water, they are not completely frozen over. This ice, coming' down over the rapids, chokes up the channels again, and causes a rise of the river, as in early winter. "In order to avoid the dangers consequent on these operations of nature, the stone piers of the Victoria Bridge were placed at wide intervals apart ; each pier being of the 112 THOMAS BRASSEY. most substantial cliaracter, and having a large wedge- sliaped cut-water of stone work, slanting towards the current and presenting an angle to the advancing ice sufficient to separate and fracture it, as it rises against the piers. The piers of the bridge were in fact designed to answer the double purpose of carrying the tubes, and of resisting the pressure of the ice. In each of these respects they have fully answered the important objects sought to be attained. " It was the duty of Mr. Hodges, as the agent of Messrs. Peto, Brassey, and Betts, to find suitable stone for the Victoria Bridge. The best stone was found on lands in possession of the Indians, and it became necessary to enter into negotiations with the chiefs of the tribe to whom the land belonged. " A conference was arranged to take place on a Sunday, after church, that being the only time when a number of them could be brought together, sufficient for the transac- tion of so important a business. The assembled chiefs, thirteen in number, were not arrayed in jjaint and feathers, after the manner of Cooper's heroes, but were miserable, dirty-looking old men, with long hair, and they all smoked short clay pipes. At first they were disinclined to treat with Mr. Hodges, on the ground of his extreme youth. But, upon being assured that he was not less than forty, their objections were overcome, and no further difficulties were experienced in the conduct of the negotiations. " The stone quarries thus obtained were situated at Point Saint Claire, sixteen miles west of Montreal, and about half a mile from the track of the Grand Trunk Eailway. The stone is a very hard limestone, and, when exposed to the atmosphere, becomes of a light grey colour. " The Saint Lawrence, where it is crossed by the Victoria Bridge, varies from five to fifteen feet in depth during the summer, and its bed is of limestone rock, with large boulders on the surface. This led to the contrivance of floating dams, which were warped into position, and scuttled immediately upon the opening of the navigation, and which were pumped out and taken baok to a place of safety before the ice came down. These " caissons " were THE GRAND THUNK RAILWAY. 113 188 feet in lengtli, and 90 feet in. width. Tlieir bows were wedge-shaped, to stem the current, and the stern was made so that it could be removed, when the masonry was com- plete, thus enabling the floating dam to be shifted to various positions. "The first caisson was towed to its position on May 24, 1854. " The first working season at the Victoria Bridge was a period of difficulty, trouble and disaster. The agents of the contractors had no experience of the climate. There were numerous strikes among the workmen. The cholera committed dreadful ravages in the neighbourhood. In one case, out of a gang of two hundred men, sixty were sick at one time, many of whom ultimately died. After the harvest, towards September, the cholera at length disap- peared ; labour became more plentiful ; and the work in consequence proceeded more satisfactorily. "In the year 1855 great difficulties were experienced from the financial state of the Company, and the rise in the value of money, caused by the Eussian War ; but the works were nevertheless prosecuted with much spirit ; and the abutment on the south side of the river was com- menced. " Before leaving England for Canada, Mr. Hodges made a sketch and description of a steam-traveller. One of the most eminent firms in England was consulted and employed to accomplish what was required, and, after two years of experiments and an expenditure of some thousands of pounds, a machine was sent out, which could never be made to do very much more than move itself about ; and which, after various fruitless attempts to make it avail- able, was thrown aside, and never used afterwards. In the meantime the same descriptions and drawings were shown to Mr. Chaffey, who was one of the sub-contractors, and had been in Canada a sufficient length of time to free his genius from the cramped ideas of- early life ; and during the winter of 1854 and 1855, the rough, ugly, but in- valuable machine was constructed, and in the subsequent spring was in full work. " This celebrated steam-traveller, as constructed by Mr. Chafiey, was erected at the junction of the Champlain 114 THOMAli SriASSEV. Railway with the temporary track for the bridge works. By it the whole of the stone for the works on the south side of the river was shifted. This traveller had a span of sixty feet, and ran along rails supported on gawntrees/ 1,300 feet in length and 50 feet in height, between which the stone was sorted and stacked ready for work. This machine unloaded the wagons, and stacked with the greatest ease the largest blocks of stone, some of which weighed ten tons. Over 70,000 tons of stone were twice moved by this machiae. Only one man was required upon the traveller, while one other could stack the stone. " And here it may not be out of place to observe again concerning the emigrant mechanic, who in his new home so often has to perform work without either proper mate- rials or appliances, and is so often driven to contrive simple labour-saving machinery, how superior he becomes to the man he was when he first left home. It is curious to remark how a plodding man of this description, shut out, as he is usually considered to be, from all means of gaining information or knowledge, will become, in a short space of time, self-reliant, competent, and able. He may have scarcely any means or appliances at his disposal to accomplish that which, a few years before when at home, with everything at hand, he would after repeated attempts have abandoned as impracticable. " This is only one illustration amongst many which could be adduced showing the development of the talents and skill of the members of Mr. Brassey's stafE ; men who, when they left home, gave little evidence of iDeing above the ordinary mark, but who, in a foreign land, in difficul- ties proved themselves full of enterprise and resource. " The shortness of the working season in Canada iu- volvsd much loss of time. It was seldom that the setting of the masonry was fairly commenced before the middle of August, and it was quite certain that all work must cease at the end of November. " Notwithstanding these disadvantages, the amount of material used in 1856, was. Masonry, 829,120 cubic feet ; puddle clay, 13,223 cubic yards ; timber, 344,450 cubic feet. ' A kind of permanent timber scaffolding. THE GRAND TRUNK RAILWAY. 115 " In June, 1858, it was decided that a great effort should be made to complete the bridge by the end of 1859. Every individual concerned put forth his utmost exertions, and on August 12, 1859, the foundation-stone of the last pier of the Victoria Bridge was laid, in the presence of some few spectators; and it is interesting to note that in just six weets and two days from the date of commencing that pier, 108,000 cubic feet of masonry were laid, the whole being completed by September 26, 1859. "It is impossible to describe all the difficulties ex- perienced in the prosecution of the works : such as the ' shoving ' of the ice at the commencement, and at the breaking up of the frosts ; from the collision between float- ing rafts of vast dimensions, in some cases 250 feet in length, and the temporary staging, erected for the purpose of putting together the tubes ; and from innumerable other causes. The whole of the iron work for the tubes was prepared at the Canada Works, Birkenhead — an establish- ment erected by Messrs. Peto, Brassey, and Betts, expressly for the manufacture of the bridge work and rolling stock for their Canadian Contracts. At these works every plate was finished ready to be fitted into its proper place ; and I must draw attention to the extraordinary perfection obliged to be attained in the preparation of this ironwork. I am informed that in the centre tube, consisting of no less than 10,309 pieces, in which nearly half a million of holes were punched, not one plate required alteration, neither was there a hole punched wrong ! The importance of this accuracy may be estimated, on considering that, had any portion been carelessly prepared or even wrongly, marked, a failure might have been the result, involving the delay of a year in opening the bridge, and consequently, a loss of many thousands of pounds. Great credit is therefore due to Mr. George Harrison, the manager of the Birkenhead Works, and to his able assistants, Mr. Alexander and Mr. Heap, for the successful completion of their share of the task. " The following details and quantities of the materials used at the Victoria Bridge, together with the numbers of the men and horses employed, may be found interest- iQg:— 116 THOMAS BRASSEY. Total length of the tubes, 6,512 feet. Weight of iron in the tubes, 9,044 tons. Number of rivets in the tubes, 1,540,000. Number of spans, 25 ; viz. 24 from 242 to 24'/ feet each, one 330 I'eet. Quantity of masonry in piers and abutments, 2,713,095 cubic feet. Quantity of timber in temporary worlcs, 2,280,000 cubic feet. The force employed in construction included 6 steam boats, and 76 bai-ges, representing together ] 2,000 tons, and 450 horse power. 3,040 men. 144 horses. 4 locomotive engines. "At length, all difficulties having been successfully overcome, the bridge, of which the first stone vras laid on July 20, 1854, was completed, as had been intended, in 1859. " The bridge was first opened for the passage of trains on December 19, 1859, and the formal inauguration by His Eoyal Highness the Prince of "Wales, took place in the following yeto. "The devotion and energy of the large numbers of workmen employed can hardly be praised too highly. Once brought into proper discipline, they worked as we alone can work against di£B.culties. They have left behind them in Canada an imperishable monument of British skill, pluck, science, and perseverance in this bridge, which they not only designed, but constructed." After warmly commending the staff of superintendents by whom he was assisted in constructing the works, and the workmen who laboured under their directions, Mr. Hodges observes that the successful accomplishment of his great task was primarily due to the spirit and inspiration lie derived from the confidence reposed in him by his employers. " Looking back," he says, " at all the various diflSculties, practical and financial, by which the work was from time to time embarrassed, it scarcely admits of a doubt that, in the hands of other and less energetic and persever- ing contractors than Messrs. Peto, Brassey, and Betts, it would not have reached the successful issue to which it has been brought. Amid every discouragement they stood stoutly to their task ; and when the hearts of all' around them seemed to fail, their encouragement, enterprise, and assuring confidence, kept everythuig going." As Mr. THE GRAND TRUNK RAILWAT. 117 Robert Stephenson eniinciated, in the course of an address on the subject of the bridge at a dinner given to him in 1863 bv the engineering profession of Canada, at Toronto, " the contractors left even the engineers themselves little more than the poetry of engineering." CHAPTER XVI. THE CRIMEAN RAILWAY, ETC. (A.D. 18.52-65.) Sii' Morton Pete's account. — Eailway stores. — Mr. Beattie. — The Vic- toria Docks, London. — Thames Graving Doclts. — Mid-Level Sewer. — Steam cranes. — East London Rail way. — Danish Railways. — English and Danish education, SOME of the minor works whicli occupied Mr. Brassey's attention during that very busy period of his life, from 1852 to 1865, deserve especial notice. When I say " minor works," I only mean that they were not works of such length and magnitude as the Great Northern line, or the Grand Trunk Eailway of Canada. Almost every one of tliese minor works, however, possesses a peculiar interest of its own, and is therefore worth recording. The first of them, and not the least remarkable, is the Crimean Eailway. It is not only noticeable as being one of the greatest feats in railway making that has ever been known, but also as showing what is likely to be done in times of great danger for this country by those who are called the " captains of industry." The action of Govern- ment may be found on sudden emergencies to be rather stiff and constrained. That unwise habit of distrust, which seems to be creeping into the management of Government departments, may exercise large sway. The individual action of those departments will thereby have been crippled, and the fear of incurring responsibility in- creased. The result of neglecting the advantage of personal selection in the choice of agents, may, at a time of crisis, be found to be as injurious as the opponents of the present system imagine it will be. An economy, intense in small matters, and slack in great concerns, may have been THE CRI3IEAJV MAIL WAV, ETC. 119 adopted by the nation, and by tliat time have done its ■worst. Still, however, as long as we have men in theposi-. tion of Mr. Brassey, and partaking of his nature, we shall have some persons who may, on a sudden emergency, come to the aid of Government, and play for a time its part, until it recovers itself, and is refitted for vigorous action. I prefer to give in Sir Morton Peto's own words, ad- dressed to Mr. Thomas Brassey, the account of what was done by himself, Mr. Brassey, and Mr. Betts, in this re- markable undertaking. Sir Morton says, " When I under- took this work in 1854, at the request of the late Duke of Newcastle, on the part of the Government, before doing so I took your father's advice, and he strongly urged it on - me as a public duty, and promised me his aid in every possible way, and the whole was carried out at cost price, without any profit being charged. . " The organization of the detail and transport — a most laborious duty — was undertaken by my late lamented brother-in-law and partner, Mr. Betts, the general direc- tion and administration resting with myself. " We saw your father daily at this time. He advised on all the points, and helped by every means in his power, and I should not do his and Mr. Betts' memory justice, if I did not state that to them fully as much as, if not more than to myself, is the credit of the execution of the work really due. " Our exertions were seconded by every railway company — the directors opening their stores for our free use at cost price. "We succeeded in sending out twenty-three large steamers with men, horses, railway engines, commissariat and other stores, in a very short space cSf time, and within the first twelve days of the arrival of the first convoy we laid seven miles of line ; and the soldiers handing shot and shell to each other were superseded to that extent in that time ; and before the completion of the siege thirty-nine and a quarter miles of line were laid to every part of the front, and seventeen locomotives engaged in the conveyance of stores, &c. &c. I received a letter from Field-Marshal Burgoyne, then General Burgoyne, on his return from the command of the Engineering Staff, stating it was impossible 120 fHOMAS BR AS SB V. to overrate the services rendered by the railway, or its effect in shortening the time of the siege and alleviating the fatigues and sufferings of the troops. " I shall not do right if I do not refer to the admirable services of Mr. Beattie, our chief agent, who for three weets after the commencement of the works never retired one night to rest, and died in four weets after his return to England, from the effects of his devotion to duty in his engagements in the Crimea." The next work I shall mention is the Victoria Docks, London, for the making of which Messrs. Brassey, Pete, and Betts contracted. "These were all carried out," Sir M. Peto says, " by Mr. W. Hartland for the firm, under the direction of Mr. Gr. P. Bidder, and were opened to the public in 1857. They are entered from the Thames, imme- diately below Blackwall, by a lock, having a depth of water on the cill of twenty-six feet at Trinity high water. They have a water area of over a hundred acres, divided by eighty-feet gates into a tidal basin of about twenty acres, and a wet dock of about eighty acres. They have vaults for wines, and warehouses for general merchandise, to the extent of about twenty-five acres of floor. " The City warehouses for wines and general goods are in Fenchurch Street, and were constructed with a floor area of about five acres. They are in direct railway com- munication with the Docks. All the warehouses, quays, dock gates, &c., are supplied with, and worked by Sir William Armstrong's hydraulic machinery, and are con- nected with all the principal railways of the kingdom. " The same firm constructed the Thames Graving Docks (Edwin Clark's patent), with an entrance from the wet dock of the Victoria Dock, having a water area of about fifteen acres, and hydraulic machinery and lifts for docking and under-docking vessels of all capacities." Then there was the Northern Mid-Level Sewer, which Mr. Brassey contracted with the Metropolitan Board of Works to make. This, though only twelve miles in length, was a work of great magnitude and difficulty, and occupied nearly three years in construction. The line of sewer runs RAILWAYS IN DENMARK. 121 from Kensal G-reen, passing- under the Bayswater Eoad, Oxford Street, and Clerkenwell, to the Eiver Lea. Mr. Brassey took the greatest interest in this undertaking, which is, by some persons, considered one of the most dif&cult works that have ever been done in this country. It was necessary to tunnel under houses and streets, and also to cross the Metropolitan Bail way with' a very large tube. This work is noticeable because, for the first time, 'I believe, cranes worked by steam were generally employed in sewers for hoisting the earth from excavations direct into the carts in which it was to be removed. The method hitherto adopted had been that of lifting the earth from stage to stage by manual labour. The adoption of the new system enabled the contractors to dispense with a great deal of this manual labour, which is always found to be more costly in London than elsewhere, and it also accelerated the execution of the works. Another work of small extent, but of great labour and difSculty, was the East London Railway, running from New Cross, through the Thames Tunnel, to Wapping. The difficulty in this construction was caused by the depth which had to be attained in order to arrive at the Tunnel. A tunneled approach was rendered unavoidable by the nature of the ground. Until the main drainage was carried into effect, the water used to rise up to the surface in great quantities. This railway was also a work in which Mr. Brassey took a very great interest. Indeed, wherever there was a difficulty in any of his works, there he was sure to be found. His brother-in-law, Mr. Henry Harrison, who was engaged in the construction of this railway, speaks of Mr. Brassey's fearlessness when examining the works. " He would walk without the slightest misgiving along a plank only twelve inches wide, over a chasm fifty feet deep." Among the minor enterprises, though it was an enter- prise of no light kind, the construction of railways in Denmark must be mentioned. Five hundred miles of railway were made by Messrs. Peto, Brassey, and Betts in Denmark, extending from. Eendsburg and Tunning to 122 THOMAS BRASSEV. Aalborg in Jutland, with branches across the island of Punen, and across different parts of Schleswig. This system of railways also crosses Jutland to the town of Holstebro. These Danish railways were constructed slowly, for the contractors were only allowed by the Governmejit to do a certain amount of work annually — averaging in value generally from ^200,000 to ^300,000. It consequently took ten years to complete this system of railways. The work was mainly executed by Danes, for though English sub-contractors were at first taken out to Denmark, they were soon got rid of, as it was found that the cheapness of rye whisky, namely, about one shilling a gallon, was too great a temptation for them, and destroyed their powers of working. The account that Mr. Eowan (the agent of Messrs. Peto, Brassey, and Betts) gives of the powers and habits of the Danes of all classes who were employed in these railways, is very interesting, and such, in fact, as rendered it desir- able not to omit the mention of these works in Denmark, which otherwise were not of high interest. When the English sub-contractors were got rid of, Danish sub-contractors were taken on. The Danes were found to be a very steady, and altogether very superior class of men. Mr. Eowan gives similar praise to the Danish common labourers. It must be observed, however, that they take their time to do their work in, beginning in summer at 4 o'clock in the morning, and not leaving off until 8 o'clock in the evening. How different is this mode of working from that of the Enghsh navvy, who, as we have seen, will sometimes get through an immense amount of labour early in the afternoon, lifting during the day nearly twenty tons weight of earth on a shovel over his head into a wagon. The Danish labourers have five inter- vals of rest in the day, these intervals lasting each for half- an-hour. In Denmark rent is cheap ; and the food of the common labourer, chiefly consisting of black bread, is also cheap ; but fuel and clothing are dear. The labouring classes, however, in Denmark, dress much better than the same classes of workmen in this country. BAIL WA YS IN DENilARK. 123 Mr. Eowan notices that the Swedish worlrmen drauli more than the Danes. They were energetic and polite, but troublesome ; in short, they were not as steady as the Danes. It is gratifying to find that, after all, the British navvy is the king of labourers. Mr. Eowan evidently was greatly pleased with his Danish labourers ; but when pressed with the question whether a Danish workman sur- passes a British navvy, he replied in these words : — " No man is equal to a British navvy ; but the Dane, from his steady, constant labour, is a good workman ; and a first- class one will do nearly as much work in a day as an Englishman." In the mere construction of the Danish railways there was not much which need be noticed. Occasionally there were very heavy and troublesome earthworks, so trouble- some, indeed, that Mr. Brassey was sent for, to be con- sulted as to how the work should be dealt with ; but there was not anything of that very special character that de- mands to be recorded in the history of railway enterprise. The character of the people, and the effect that their edu- cation has upon their character and conduct, are the main points worthy of notice in the story of these Danish works. Mr. Eowan had great opportunities of observation in refe- rence to these particulars. The superintendence of the railways was entirely in the hands of military engineers, who were all trained in the Polytechnic school of Copen- hagen. They had the very highest theoretical education ; but, as Mr. Eowan says, they possessed no practical know- ledge whatever on leaving these schools. The same state- ment may surely be made about the students in all schools, whether Danish or British. This remark, however, does not furnish a complete reply to Mr. Eowan's observations ; and the further statements which he makes give a good illustration of one of the most important points to be attended to in education. "The great fault of Danish technical education is the overdoing of it. The young men are kept in school till they are twenty-five. They come out highly educated ; utterly ignorant of the world, but educated to a tremendous height." The main point in which Mr. Eowan found that these highly educated per- sons were deficient, was decisiveness. " They have been in 124 THOMAS BRASSEY, the habit of applymg to one of their masters for every- thing, finding out nothing for themselves ; and the con- sequence is, that they are children, and they cannot form a judgment. It is the same in the North of Germany ; the great difficulty is, that you cannot get them to come to a decision. They want always to enquire and to in- vestigate, and they never come to a result." The foregoing is a very important statement. There is great reason for thinking that of all the qualities which are needful for the wise conduct of human life, decisiveness is the one which can least afford to lie dormant. It soon dies away by inanition, if not exercised. Moreover, it is very questionable whether it can be revived. Experience seems to show that if young people are not trained to decide, or at least not encouraged and allowed to exercise decisiveness, they will never be able to evoke this quality in after life when it is wanted. If this be so, it is a matter which requires the most serious consideration at the present time, when the British nation, or rather its Government, is in- troducing a system tending to promote the laborious acquisition of knowledge at an early period of life ; which system, however, as the opponents to it contend, may pro- duce a well-instructed and docile, but, at the same time, an unthoughtful, unoriginal, and indecisive race of men. I make no excuse for this short digression, any question relating to Education being of so much significance at the present moment. I may add, that I believe that our success hitherto in colonization, which has far exceeded that of any other people in the world, has greatly arisen from the fact of our possessing more decisiveness than those other people, and from our education having been less stimulated by material rewards, so that our youth have been accustomed to think a little for tliemselves, without being induced to turn their thinking at once into profitable courses. Mr. Eowan gives an anecdote which serves well to illus- trate his preceding statements : — " I was some time ago speaking to a man of business in Denmark, who is an ex- ception to Danes generally, and extremely energetic and a man of great powers, besides being altogether a man who would make a first-rate man of business in England. I HAIL WATS IM DENMARK. 125 said, " My friend, will you tell me why it is you are so different from all your countrymen?" "Yes," he said, " because I learned my busiuess in Liverpool." I said, " Will you go further, and tell me where is the difference between Liverpool and Copenhagen? " He said, "I will tell you in one word. If I had been learning my business here, and I came to a difSculty, I should straight go to one of my superiors in the office, and he would take a great deal of trouble to tell me how to get over the difficulty, and show me how it should be done. But when I was in an office in Liverpool, and I came to a difficulty, and went to my superior there, and asked him to explain it to me, he said, " Do not bother me about it ; find it out ! " " And," he added, " that is the secret." The constructors of railways in Denmark had, as might be expected, an evil time of it during the war. The Danish Government seized the rolling stock of the company. The sub- contractors were obliged to assist in making military earthworks. The railway banks were formed into regular fortifications, and had to euffer bombardment. Indeed, as Mr. Rowan observes, " tho combatants on either side had no compunction in seizing our materials, and in making our people work for them." The only further evidence given by Mr. Eowan which need be alluded to on this subject, is evidence of a similar character to that so often given before as regards the con- fidence placed in their agents by these great contractors. The estimates for the Danish work were agreed upon by Mr. Eowan and the Grovernment agents in detail ; and the figures were never objected to when they were sent home to Messrs. Peto, Brassey, and Betts. " I do not know," Mr. Bowan says, " of a single instance, in which one of their agents has failed in that respect (in respect of mis- using the confidence reposed in them) : they prove them- selves worthy of the trust, and that shows what there is to be gained by placing confidence in others." CHAPTER XVn. WOEKS IN" AUSTEALIA. (a.d. 1859-1863.) Mr. Wilcox. — Australian prices. — Emigration. THERE are some men, tlie interest in whose lives, when these come to be recorded, lies wholly in the results of their daily work. There are other men in the record of whose lives the daily work they did is of no account with posterity, and may be summed up by the biographer in a few careless sentences. It is in vain that Charles Lainb, apostrophising the India House, exclaims : " Thou dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham or a Whit- tington of old. Stately house of Merchants, with thy labyrinthine passages and light-excluding pent-up offices, where candles for one half the year supplied the place of the sun's light ; unhealthy contributor to my weal, stern fosterer of my living, farewell ! In thee remain, and not in the obscure collection of some wandering bookseller, ' my works ! ' There let them rest, as I do from my labours, piled on thy massy shelves, more MSS. in folio than ever Aquinas left, and full as useful ! My mantle I bequeath among ye." It is in vain, I say, that this great humourist endeavours to persuade us that these were his works, which we know were not his works, at any rate for us ; and we for ever refer to the obscure collection of some wandering book- seller for our knowledge of that much- suffering, most gentle, and most loving soul. On the other hand, there are some men in whose career thought and action are so happily blended, at any rate happily for the biographer, that their daily labours form an admirable thread to the main narrative of their biography. WORKS IN AUSTRALIA. 127 These are great warriors, statesmen, conquerors, and dis- covers of new lands. Again, there are lives in wLicli the interest centres in great works done, not exactly of a continuous character, not exactly affording a good thread for biographical narra- tive, but of which it may be said, in the forcible word, that adorns and illustrates the so-called " monument " of Sir Christopher Wren ; Gircumspice. This was eminently the case with Mr. Brassey's life. The hundreds and thousands of persons who are daily piassing over railways, constructed by his energy, ability, and perseverance, might well, when looking at many a re- markable and difficult construction on these lines, and speaking of his merits, exclaim, Gircumspice ! I am now going to treat of Mr. Brassey's work in Australia. There is one point of interest which it lacks — namely, that it was not subjected to his personal inspection or supervision. But, on the other hand, there is a very important reason why the work in Australia should be brought before the reader; and that is, because it bears closely upon the great subject of Emigration — a subject which must have the deepest interest for all thoughtful men in this over- populated country, which wiU yet have to consider the whole question of Emigration, with far more care than it has hitherto bestowed. Before entering into the details which have been furnished to me of the construction of these Australian railways, I would remark, that the evi- dence which we get about Emigration in this indirect manner from persons who have gone to Australia, with a purpose entirely foreign to the general subject of Emigra- tion, is likely to be most valuable evidence. It will be full of knowledge, and yet it is not probable that it will be based upon any pre-conceived opinions regarding Emigra- tion, or that it wiU have any personal bias regarding the interests of emigrants. I feel that I am not deviating improperly from the main subject of this work in following out these indirect con- sequences of the late Mr. Brassey's labours. Nothing, I am confident, would have more delighted that good man, than to find that his work, in distant countries, had directly 128 THOMAS BRASSEY. promoted the welfare of the native people amongst whom that work was accomplished, and that it had developed special information indirectly bearing upon the future welfare of his countrymen. I now proceed to give the result of the evidence of one of the principal persons employed by Mr. Brassey in the construction of Australian railways. This gentleman's name is Mr. Samuel Wilcox. Before going to Australia, as one of Mr. Brassey's agents, he had been employed under Mr. Ballard on the Great Northern line, and also in Holland, on the line between Utrecht and Eotterdam. He had also been employed in the construction of the Paris and Caen Eailway. During his employment on these lines he had enjoyed ample experience of the way in which Mr. Brassey dealt with his agents, and with all the persons, from the highest to the lowest, acting under him. In March, 1859, he went to Australia in company with Mr. Rhodes, another esteemed agent of Mr. Brassey's. The lines they had to construct were in New South Wales, and were called the Great Southern, the Great Northern, and the Great Western Railways. There is nothing in the construction of these lines for which it is needful to claim the attention of the reader. I mean that there were no remarkable engineering difficulties which had not often been surmounted in Mr. Brassey's previous undertakings. But- the cost of the labour deserves to be carefully noted. Taking, for instance, any twenty miles of the Southern line as an illustration, Mr. Wilcox states, that if he had to lay down a similar length of line in England, upon English terms, the difference of expense in favour of England would be j£3,000 or d64,000 a mile ; in both cases exclusive of the rolling stock. The system of organization was the same in Australia as it had been in England, namely, that of sub-contracts for all parts of the work. The iron work, the rolling stock, and plant of all kinds, came from England, but not, of course, the timber. It will now be interesting to see the rate of wages. Labourers earned from 7s. to 8s. per day, and at piece work would make 9s. A mason averaged 12s.,- a bricklayer received from lis. to 12s., and a car- penter would earn from 10s. to 12s. WORKS I.Y AUSTRALIA. 129 Now comes the question of food and its expense. Here I prefer to give the witness's own words : — Q. Have you considered the cost of Jiving ? A. Yes ; a man would live uncommonly well there for about 8s. or 9s. a week individually. Q. Suppose he had a wife and a family of four children ; what would it cost them ? A. I can hardly tell you that. Q. Take a man spending 1 Os. a week there ; if he had been living in England would it have cost him Ss. ? A. He would get as much bread and meat there as he could eat, but here he could hardly look at it. As long as a man with a family is kept from drink there, he can, in a very short time, get sufficient money to start and buy a piece of land, and become " settled." Q. May it not be said that a good stout labourer in England could not live as a navvy for less than 8s. a week ? A. Not living as a navvy does. I do not think that he could live on 8s. a week ; living generously as a navvy has to live. Out there he could live very much more amply supplied at 10s., and really on less than 10s. In the case of some of the men I have known camping out together, the rations did not come to more than 8s. 6d. per week. Q. Did you find that a working man, placed as he appears to be in Australia in exceptionally advantageous positions with regards to means, drinks more ? A. Yes ; he does. Q. In short, there is a great deal of drunkenness there ? A. Yes ; and the drink is more expensive ; they charge you more there ; they charge you 6d. for a glass of beer, and tliey charge for a bottle of beer 2s. 6d., which you get for Is. in England. This is what may be expected ; hut it is very vexatious to find that the great advantage which the English labourer gains in Australia, from the increased rate of wages and from the comparative cheaj)ness of living, is counteracted by his disposition to spend more money in drink ; and that the result shown by Mr. Wilcox's evidence is that a working man in Australia, having greater means at his command, does drink more than a labouring man in England. Mr. Brassey's agents foun'l that it was desirable to get labourers from G-reat Britain ; and their efforts are thus described : — " Mr. Brassey wrote to Mr. Milroy, and got him to select a lot of men in Scotland. Mr. Harrison selected some, and Mr. Ballard took a great interest in the matter, and also picked out a lot : altogether from England and Scot- land we got 2,000 men. We had to provide them with an K 130 THOMAS BRASSEY. outfit, Id accordance with the regulations of the Grovem- ment. The cost to us, for selection and outfit, averaged about £h, and the cost to the Grovemment, for the passage, about £12 in addition : the cost of each man, therefore, was ^£17, or ^£34,000 altogether." It is worthy of notice that Mr. Brassey's agents did not attempt to get back from the men the amount of money that had been paid for passage-money. "We sacrificed that," Mr. Wilcox says, " to get the men there. Having men in the country, we knew that they must work for somebody ; and we also knew that we were in a position to pay them as much as, or more than, any one else. They were at liberty, on landing, to go where they liked ; and some few, not a great number, but some few, never came to the works at aU ; but we found that we got a great part of them, and more came out by other ships." At the time this evidence was taken, it was put to Mr. Wilcox whether, as an emigration agent for the time, he was not in a better position, than the authorities of a parish in England, which might wish to promote emigra- tion. He admitted that he was, and for two reasons : — First, because the parish has no employment to offer the emigrant when he gets out to Australia ; and, secondly, because the parish wants' to get rid of the worst men ; whereas he, as Mr. Brassey's agent, wanted to get hold of the best men. His views, however, on this part of the sub- ject, must be held to have reference rather to the benefit of the colony than of the home country. The subject was then discussed in reference to the in- dividual emigrant ; and though the witness admitted that a man who did not succeed in England would not succeed in Australia, his conclusion, after all, came to this, " that the worse kind of man could not contrive to starve in the new country," and that " there is nothing like pauperism in Australia." He was then pressed with a question ; whether, taking it for granted that the least successful working man would not become a pauper in Australia, it would be a safe venture to send out say 20,000 people a year to that colony. His answer was most distinctly in the affirmative. The labour market would absorb them all ; and emigration frOBKS IN AUSTRALIA. 131 miglit take place, on a very much, larger scale than has hitherto been attempted, withoiit overstocking the labour market ; but he added this judicious proviso, " That the emigrants must not be sent out in too large batches, in order that they may be got away, up country, without being compelled to finger unemployed at the port of entry. If a vessel went to New South Wales and to Queensland every fortnight, with 400 or 500 emigrants, they could be taken away without difficulty." This witness also confirmed the evidence we have had before from other persons, " that work at the ' diggings ' did not, upon the average, yield the same rate of wages as other employment." The foregoing evidence must be admitted to be very valuable as regards the general question of Emigration. The other point which I wish to insist upon is, that which I have before alluded to regarding the almost unlimited trust which Mr. Brassey placed in his agents. At that remote distance he could not well supervise or control the estimates, and certainly he did not attempt to do so. When asked, " Did Mr. Brassey look over your figures ? " the witness replied, " No, I had to take the work before I consulted him." Q. " He was absolutely in your hands ? " A. " He was indeed." The final questions put by Mr. Brassey' s son to this witness brought forth answers which may be instructive to all employers of labour : — Q. Did your correspondence with my father produce upon your mind the impression that you were labouring with and for a watchful employer ? A. I do not think it was so much that, as the extreme confidence he always placed in his assistants. I think they could not help feeling that they had his confidence. Q. Tou would say, I suppose, therefore, that the stimulus with you to exertion in Australia was rather the feeling that you enjoyed the unlimited confidence of Mr. Brassey, than that you were working under any kind of super- vision ? A. Just so. I could not say too much in his favour. CHAPTEE XVIII. THE AEGENTINE BAILWAY. (A.D. 1864.) The Eosario and Cordova Railway. — Mr. Woolcott's evidence. — Cor- dova. — Dr. Scrivener's account. OP all Mr. Brassey's undertakings there is not one ■wMch Las more a,ttraction for me, and wMcli, I think, will more interest my readers, than the Argentine Railway. I have for a long time thought that South America offers the finest opportunities for emigration and colonization. I have in another work,^ given a description of the climate, the trees, the fruits and the cereals, which are to be found in some parts of that magnificent con- tinent. I subjoin this extract: — "It has lakes, rivers, and woods ; and in the character of its scenery much resembles an English park. It is rich in trees of every description — cedars, palms, balsams, aloes, cocoa-trees, walnut-trees, spice-trees, almonds, the cotton plant, the quinaquina that produces the Jesuits' bark, and another tree of which the inner bark is so dehcate and white that it can be used as writing-paper. There is also the ceyba-tree, which yields a soft woolly substance, of which the natives make their pillows. " The fruits of this most fertile land are oranges, citrons, lemons, the American pear, apples, peaches, plums, figs, and olives. The bees find here their special home ; and twelve different species of them are enumerated, some of which form their nests in the trees in the shape of a vase. The woods are not like the silent forests of North Ame- rica, but swarm with all kinds of birds, having every ' " Spanish Conquest in America," vol. iv. THE ARGENTINE RAILWAY. 133 variety of note and feather, from tlie soft colours of the wild dove to the gay plumage of the parrot ; from the plaintive note of the nightingale to the dignified noise of those birds which are said to imitate the trumpet and the organ." I thiak that this Argentine enterprise of Mr. Brassey's will have more important results than any other of his undertakings. There can be no doubt that the railways which Mr. Brassey and his various partners constructed in Great Britain, France, Italy, and Austria, would have been constructed, though not perhaps so quickly or so well, by other persons : but the Argentine Railway is an enterprise of a most peculiar nature, fraught, as I trust it will be, with the greatest results. It is the first time in the history of railway constructions that railway promoters have been great colonizers. Hitherto colonization has mostly been preceded by conquest ; and that fact alone has placed immense difficulties in the way of judicious colonization. Conquest, indeed, is too favourable a word to describe the buccaneering expeditions which, from the earliest periods of the world's history, have led to the dis- covery and occupation of new lands. The principal point to be noticed in the formation of this Argentine Eailway, is the contract entered into by the Argentine Grovemment with the promoters. That Grovem- ment, in their concession, engaged to put the company in possession of one league of land on each side of the rail- way throughout its entire extent, commencing at the dis- tance of four leagues from the stations of Eosario and Cordova, and one league from each of the towns, San Geronimo and Villa Nueva, subject to the condition of such lands being peopled. The contractors for the rail- way, Messrs. Brassey, Wythes, and "Wheelwright, accepted from the railway company one-half of the above-mentioned lands ia part payment of their contract price. There were no special difficulties in. the construction of the Argentine Eailway. Indeed, so easy was the ground that for part of the way the rails had only to be laid on the sleepers over the bare earth, a simple trench at either side being dug to carry off any surface drainage. I doubt whether, in the history of railway enterprise, ' "\l|//rtl\ll ^^ h \4J/ < ►J < H P O S. REFERENCE LIBRARY, 28 Volumes at Various Prices. (8/. los. per set.) BLAIR'S Chronological Tables. Comprehending the Chronology and His- tory of the World, from the Earliest Times to the Russian Treaty of Peace, April 1856. By J. W. Rosse. 800 pages, i&s. Index of Dates. Comprehending the principal Facts in the Chronology and History of the World, from the Earliest to the Present, alphabetically arranged ; being a complete Index to the foregoing. By J. W. 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