TEN MINUTES’ ADVICr 
 
 TO __ ' // V 
 
 SPECULATORS 
 
 EAILWAY SHARES. 
 
 BY AN OBSERYER, 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 W. STRANGE, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 MANCHESTER: • - 
 
 ABEL HEYWOOD, 58, OLDHAM STREET. 
 
 SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. 
 
V 'c 
 
TEN MINUTES ADVICE. 
 
 At the present time, when the name of Railways 
 is echoed from East to West; and from North to 
 South; a time when scarcely a village or hamlet 
 is not being compassed and surveyed—a time when 
 it is with difficulty (though but for a short distance) 
 to pass along the country, but you are beset on 
 every side with engineering difficulties; and, only 
 look around, and you may see a line of surveyors’ 
 colours, that, would, if but hoisted for another 
 purpose, make an army joyful; each, on its own 
 account, contending with the winds, and showing 
 forth its “ true blue colours ”, conscious of its own 
 prosperity when once brought into action. I say, 
 at a time like this, it cannot he considered out of 
 place or order, for any well-thinking individual to 
 
4 
 
 make an observation on the subject; and the writer 
 most respectfully lays before his readers this little 
 work on the subject of Railways, Railway Schemes, 
 and Speculation, in hope that it will be worthy of 
 any one’s perusal; and that he will be able to show, 
 that—which no railway prospectus has ever yet 
 admitted,—that railways (especially the new ones) 
 have had, and will have, very many difficulties to 
 contend with. 
 
 In the first place, I would remind the public of 
 the fact, that some of the old lines, for instance, 
 the Lond(Jn and Birmingham; and the Manchester 
 and Leeds, have far exceeded in cost their estimates 
 in parliament; and I would ask my reader, as a 
 reference, to look into the financial position of them 
 in their time. 
 
 I wish not to be misunderstood, for be assured 
 it is not my object in this small work, to bring 
 before the public the old, established lines for any 
 other motive than a comparison; and, as far as lays 
 in my power, to show, and prove, and expose the 
 fallacy and folly of the present rage for railway 
 
schemes; and, I would also keep clear of giving an 
 opinion of any separate scheme, but would wish to 
 deal with them as one and all, to show forth to 
 the public the impossibility of such a number of 
 undertakings, much less the many of so great a 
 magnitude, being successfully carried out, with 
 any beneficial result to the country or to the 
 shareholders. 
 
 I would next take the new schemes in a financial 
 point of view, and will venture to assert at once, 
 that the amount requu’ed is far too great for any 
 commercial country to advance, with safety to its 
 manufactures and commerce. Whatever may have 
 been said or written upon the subject, few have 
 been bold enough to condemn the principle on 
 which so many of the schemes have been got up. 
 Now, I will take upon myself to say, that a crisis, 
 far greater than the one now hanging over us, 
 must come, and that too at no distant period, if 
 the reckless and thoughtless spu’it of promoting 
 new schemes, does not at once cease; and numbers 
 of them be proclaimed bad, without troubling the 
 legislature to blot them out; for, if allowed to be 
 
carried on, the consequence will be—too much 
 money will be drawn out of the legitimate chan¬ 
 nel of commerce; and, should that occur, the 
 spirit of competition will cease with the manufac¬ 
 turers, and our country will then lose the proud 
 position it now holds as a mercantile and manufac¬ 
 turing nation; for I think it will be admitted, that 
 it is the spirit of competition that has made us the 
 people we are—the envy of surrounding nations. 
 
 The indefatigable industry of the manufacturer, 
 combined with resources at his command, and the 
 great amount of capital which flows in the channels 
 of commerce, which, if once drained of that spirit of 
 its existence—we shall most assuredly sink in our 
 commercial position much lower than we were in 
 the year 1840. Commercial bills, which now stand 
 so high in the discount market, will be neglected, 
 except at a very high rate of discount. But why 
 should they be neglected r Because, then, too many 
 of them will appear in the market; the evil, of which 
 I have been speaking, will commence with the small 
 tradesman who has began to take up shares, and 
 to pay his calls—^swallows up the whole of his ready 
 
7 
 
 money which should have gone to the dealer; the 
 consequence is, the dealer must either give him 
 credit, or draw upon him, of the two resources, nine 
 cases out of ten, the latter. This same rule will ap¬ 
 ply to the merchant and dealer, they having of late 
 had too much capital on hand on account of receiv¬ 
 ing their payments in cash, and have very likely been 
 tempted to invest in railway shares, then what fol¬ 
 lows ? the dealer receiving a large amount of accep¬ 
 tances, the merchant calling out for cash, discounts 
 high, which taking all the profit from the dealer, 
 leaves but a trifle for the tradesman; then comes 
 the crisis,—a complete disorganization of our com¬ 
 mercial and manufacturing system, a prostration 
 of our credit; and the effects will be much more 
 severe than they were on the occasion of the last 
 panic. I am aware these are strong words to ex¬ 
 press, but not too strong for the present times; 
 neither can there he with thinking and sensible men 
 two opinions with respect to the reckless spirit of 
 speculation which is now in possession of so many 
 men’s minds. We should not forget that even the 
 old established lines have not yet got that brilliant 
 polish and brightness on their rails, which should— 
 
8 
 
 to constitute an appearance of prosperity, look like 
 narrow streams of quicksilver, which thereby denotes 
 the large amount of traffic they are doing. My 
 advice is, be careful, at once make a stand against 
 the new schemes which are appearing every day; 
 and which I feel convinced are not of the least use 
 to any one, except a few of the profession, who 
 certainly do make something handsome out of them, 
 and to the no small loss of the shareholders. I 
 would also beg leave to remind those holders of 
 railway stock in lines which are now open, that any 
 tightness in the money market which may occur, 
 (and a little of it at this present time is in exist¬ 
 ence,) premiums would, and do, totter at its ap¬ 
 proach; bankers will refuse to advance on them, 
 their reply will be, “ No, sir, we cannot advance on 
 premiums, we can only adv’^ance on the capital stock 
 of the company”. So that at one moment may be 
 seen, that the individual possessed of twenty thou¬ 
 sand pounds of capital stock, at 150 per cent, 
 premium, makes him a man of fifty thousand; but 
 should this great crisis come, (and certain it is that 
 the legislation can and will put a stop to much that 
 is now recklessly going forward,) then the same 
 
9 
 
 individual with fifty thousand pounds, would! not be 
 able to realize by an advance from his bankers, 
 more than the sum of twenty thousand; the pre¬ 
 miums must lay dormant, except he sells, and that 
 would be at a very great loss. 
 
 This shows then, the position in which men of 
 capital would bcjplaced by this spirit—careless and 
 headstrong spirit of speculation—which I am sorry 
 to say is at the present time surrounding us. 
 
 I must say the more I look into the present 
 railway system, the further I feel convinced of the 
 impossibility of performing the great quantity of 
 labour which would be required to fully complete 
 the new schemes now in progress. Not a single 
 hint has ever yet fallen from any of the gentlemen 
 connected with these new schemes. All they re¬ 
 quire is, that the deposit be paid, a few surveyors 
 engaged, and then say they, “ There, now I think 
 we shall be able to go to parliament”; not a single 
 word as to how the line is going to be made, much 
 less even than this, have they to say about any 
 difficulties they may have to meet on their way. 
 
10 
 
 I will now take the amount of agricultural 
 labour in England and Wales; and I find, by 
 statistical researches, to be in round numbers, 
 one miUion. My honoured readers will please to 
 observe I am only taking England and Wales, as I 
 consider Ireland and Scotland have each their share 
 of railways to make. My estimate of the number of 
 labourers, that could be withdrawn from the agri¬ 
 cultural districts, would be one out of every five; 
 whieh certainly is as many as could be taken with 
 safety to the farmers, to leave them with a sufficient 
 number to gather in the fruits of the earth. Take 
 the number of this class of men in round numbers 
 at one million; and taking one, as I have before 
 said, out of every five, would give two hundred 
 thousand men for railway purposes; that is, of that 
 class of labourers to do the excavating, tunnelling, 
 brick-making, stone-getting, partially dressing of 
 stone, &c. &c., which I consider to be half the cost 
 of a line. I have taken this as an average, though 
 certainly some lines may be made which will only 
 take one-third of this class of labour, and another 
 will amount to two-thirds for excavating, tunnel¬ 
 ling, &c. In estimating the cost of each line or 
 
11 
 
 undertaking, at one-half of this kind of labour, I 
 consider the amount to be rather under than over. 
 
 Take then the wages of each man at £40 a-year, 
 which, one with another, will, I think, not be far 
 either under or over-rated; and also taking into 
 account the loss of time, from illness or wet wea¬ 
 ther, (which, in either case, they would not be able 
 to earn any thing,) by this rule, the sum they 
 would receive amounts to eight millions per annum. 
 Take also into account, eight millions more for car¬ 
 riages, engines, stations, rails, &c. &c., making 
 together the sum of sixteen millions per annum of 
 capital, that can with safety be brought to bear on 
 this class of work; and, with such an amount in¬ 
 vested yearly, the country would he benefited; and 
 to adopt this system commerce would flourish, the 
 working-man would get “a fair day’s wage for a fair 
 day’s work,” and plenty of employment for years to 
 come. 
 
 On referring to the parliamentary returns of last 
 session, the different acts which were then obtained 
 for railways in England and Wales, will take by this 
 
12 
 
 system nearly two years to complete, say nothing of 
 any that were in progress before that time. Now, if 
 the reader who does me the honour to peruse this 
 little work, will carefully take my estimates of the 
 amount of labour which can with safety be taken 
 from another source, and employed for the forma¬ 
 tion of railways, and compare it with the amount of 
 labour that would be requmed to make the new 
 lines that will be presented at the next session,of 
 parliament, taking them at hundreds of millions, 
 I am sure every thinking man must see the fallacy 
 of promoting such a number of undertakings, with 
 the certainty of the greater part of them falling to 
 the ground. I would here call the attention of my 
 readers; that, taking sixteen millions a-year for 
 England and Wales, also seven millions for Ireland 
 and Scotland, making the sum of twenty-three 
 millions to be yearly paid for railway purposes. 
 This amount, taken yearly from the accumulating 
 wealth of this country, and which I calculate at 
 something upwards of forty millions, thereby lea-v- 
 ing more than twenty millions for the advancement 
 of our maritime and manufacturing purposes, dock 
 extensions, and other improvements. It is there- 
 
13 
 
 fore at once seen that any amount of capital beyond 
 the sum of twenty-three millions taken for railway 
 purposes, must curtail the advancement of our 
 mercantile system; and should that but lose its 
 present elevated position, railways will certainly 
 become—^but a very poor investment indeed. 
 
 Individually, I have every confidence in the pre¬ 
 sent government, with the first financier in Europe 
 at their head; and I am sure they will not pass 
 more schemes of this description than the country 
 may require. 
 
 On this occasion I have made no allowance for 
 the demand for agricultural labour that must spring 
 up from the prosperous position of our manufac¬ 
 tures and commerce. And before taking my leave, 
 let me be understood; I am no enemy to railway 
 systems, only when they become an evil, which 
 certainly is the case at the present time, and which 
 I am endeavouring to prove. All I ask is, that we 
 may be more cautious, and consider well what we 
 are doing. For myself, I must admit my opinion 
 is, that if railway extension but be judiciously 
 
14 
 
 managed, with true sincerity and forethought, they 
 -will become, what they were intended to be, an open¬ 
 ing to the immense resources of this great empire; 
 they will be messengers of peace, and of civilization; 
 the poor man’s blessing—and the rich themselves 
 may frankly acknowledge, that they with the rest 
 of the community, for any exertions they may 
 have made for obtaining a line, are well and amply 
 rewarded. 
 
 
 HEYWOOP, PRINTER, OLPHAM-STREET, MANCHESTER.