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November 8,1856.] THE LEADER. 1071
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THE EARLY CLOSERS. The impatient friends...
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IMPERIAL STOCK-JOBBING. "We find ourselv...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
A Simple Railway Accident. The Accident ...
hire a man to watch , a line , it ought surely to use his eyes to their full power ; he could see forward and backward , as well as right before him ,- and should not telegraph , " line clear" until he saw the line clear . The driver of the express train , is undoubtedly guilty . His instructions are , when
he sees a danger signal ; , to pull up at the station that makes the signal . lie could have seen the signal eight hundred yards from the station , and yet his train was only stopped by the collision . The company ' s instructions presuppose that ; a driver seeing the signal could pull up at the signal station : either the instructions are founded on error or the
driver did not look out for the signal in time . That he was making up for lost time is likely , but on a line -where a telegraph system is supposed to secure that no train passes until the line is clear , -the driver has aio excuse for going beyond his proper speed : he ought to have known that no train could overtake him . The original error that caused loss of time has also to be investigated . As to the driver of the coal train , we find him stopping for an engine bolt , although he knew , or
ought to have known , that an express train was behind him . He was slackening his speed when passing the signal hut , and had he then stopped to mend his engine , the express ebuld have been signalled back at Boxmoor . To make a coal train precede ah express by a few minutes ^ seems very bad management , and the culpability of the company is indicated pretty clearly by a reference to Brqdsfrcno . The express train "was due at Boxmoor at 3 . 25 , and yet ten minutes
after that hour this coal train was allowed to creep along 1 jNo system of telegraphs can compensate for direct violations of the commonest principles of precaution . In fact ; it seems that the company , . relying on their new plan of telegraphing back and forward , think they cau send any number of trains on the line in time or out of time . The present rule has shown that signals will not avail where the traffic is covetously overcrowded and unscrupulously intermixed .
But ' the system' is clearly in fault . "We have express trainsgoing so fast that no danger signal can stop them ; and \ re have signal-men telegraphing that the line is clear before the preceding train is out of sight . "Either the instructions of the company are in fault , or the driver and signal-man are guilty of gross neglect . Another question suggests itself : Is there any necessity for trains at forty miles an hour ? Could not the journey between Iiondon and Derby , even for lords and ladies ,
be properly done at thirty miles an hour—a pace that would ensure safety ? Thackeray Bays , not without reason , that " we do not travel now-a-days ; we arrive at places ; " and Htjskin , in his late -volume , says , that " railway travelling is not travelling at all ; it is merely being sent to a place , and very little different from becoming a parcel . " , Wo forbear to "back Mr . Buskin's philosophy against modern progress ; but when we find ourselves sent like a parcel ( only not " tins side up , " nor " with care" ) , and flung against coal trains , we may consider whother such speed
as forty miles an hotu * , with collisions , is not haste rather than despatch . The wear and tear of the rails , and of the rolling stock , is also another consideration which might influence railway proprietors . But why talk of proprietors ? They are the shareholders , who , on somo of our ' grand' lines , aro receiving two per cent , dividend , or none at all , "Wlnlo the managers and secretaries of the Hval railways carry on a keen competition , both as to speed and faro—keen enough to « eep tho company alivo and their own snhines going . At Rending , thrco companies compete for tho bodies of tho townsmen
the Grreat "Western , the South "Western ,, and the South 3 Sastern offer , through themselves and their respective allies , to convey the people to Iiondon at very cheap rates ; and one company comes down to something ess than a . farthing a mile for second-class passengers ! Our * managers ' are rival undertakers ; our shareholders are dupes , and our passengers are parcels , sent at forty miles an hour .
November 8,1856.] The Leader. 1071
November 8 , 1856 . ] THE LEADER . 1071
The Early Closers. The Impatient Friends...
THE EARLY CLOSERS . The impatient friends of the Early Closing Movement are asking for a parliamentary enactment to prohibit the carrying on of retail trades after eight o ' clock in the evening . A strong objection to such a proposal is the impossibility of giving effect to it ; but , as its authors are sincere , it is very desirable to divert them from the pursuit of a chimerical scheme , and to engage all the friends of the important reform in question in the support of -practical measures . A perusal of the address lately published by the Honorary Secretary of the Early Closing Association , will tend to dispossess their minds of the idea that little progress lias been made , and that nothing can be effected with legislative intervention . A large majority of employers , Mr . XilwaI / Ii reports , have assented to the principle of Early Closing . Only an inconsiderable minority resist it— -a minority limited , in many cases , to one or two persons in each trade throughout an extensive district . Of course , the one argument of the non-content is , that late hours of business are profitable . The objection , that if young men enjoyed additional leisure they would employ it disreputably , is an impertinent pretence , or , at least , could only be sincerely urged by a man ' serenely unconscious that he is a , fool ? That children should be overtasked
to keep them out of mischief was a pre-rail way idea ; but that young men and girls should be overworked tor the same reason could he maintained by none but a scoffer or a dolt . It is really charitable on the part of the secretary of the association to suppose that controversialists of this class have feelings or senses to which he may successfully appeal . Of course , over-work is demoralizing ; of course , the assistant is as likely to profit by reasonable leisure as his employer . If the draper who said , " So intolerable was his condition that he often lias wished that death
itself would terminate his misery , " had been disposed to pass his time disreputably , why he had Sunday for his indulgence , and if he spent that day in ' desecration , ' it was , probabl } ' -, because he spent the other days of the week in servitude . Dr . Copland's opinion , that " excessive labour is only another term for sickness , suffering , and death ; " and Mr . GfRAiNGEJi ' s opinion , that " nearly threefourths of the diseases prevalent in the metropolis are traceable to over-work , " may be taken as an antidote to the whole mass of prejudice existing In connexion with this subject .
The difficulty is to convince those shopkeepers who say that if they did not keep their shops open others would , and this is tlie class which solicits an . act of Parliament . IBut the groat remedy , in such a case , ia in the hands of tho public , which might be induced not only to adopt a habit of early purchases , but to discountenance those tradesmen who refuse to allow humanity to have any influence
over their business affairs . It is encouraging to lonrn that so much progress has been made ; and it certainly is to bo deplored that a minority should stand in tho way of a great social reform . But , instead of being driven to the expedient of petitioning the Legislature for a compulsory law , wo think tho best friends of tho movement will go to work with
renewed confidence in tie means already at their disposal . They say they have a majority ; if they have obtained that without parliamentary help , they may surely hope to prevail with the dissentient minority .
Imperial Stock-Jobbing. "We Find Ourselv...
IMPERIAL STOCK-JOBBING . "We find ourselves often compelled to retrace our . steps , and to reproduce our -words , in order to establish our relative position towards certain of our contemporaries . Lately , Cayenne , the political penal settlement of the French . Imperial Government , was discovered by one or two of our daily contemporaries , who are now beginning to discover the singular and alarming fact , that persons high in the councils of Louis' Napoleon are addicted to stock-jobbing , and are even chargeable with making the policy of France subservient to their operations on the Bourse . The semiofficial Pays indignantly repudiates the generous equivocation of the Times which would sever the responsibility of the Emperor from that of his confidential advisers . Our readers will perceive from the subjoined article , which appeared in our columns on the 9 th of June , 1855 , that we said then what our contemporaries are saying now . The only difference between the practices of the Imperial intimates in June , 1855 , and in November , 1856 , is , that in the one case they jobbed the war , and in the other they are jobbing the peace .
IMPERIAX STOCK-JOBBING . { The Leader , June 9 , 1855 . ) The Paris correspondents of the London press have lately been complaining that certain telegraphic despatches from tlie Crimea have been kept back , either wholly or in part , for some time after they have been , known to have arrived at theTuUeries . The French journalists have also observed the fact ; a pardonable reticence lias
prevented them from commenting upon it . The oddest thing about the matter is , that the despatches in question are precisely those which , when they become public , exercise the liveliest influence upon the Bourse ; and , to make the joke perfect , it is genei'ally found , when the news does come out , that some mysterious person or persons have operated upon the market to no inconsiderable extent .
It is perfectly well known that whe n Louis Napoxeost lived in London , he got his living by doing a little stock-jobbing now and then ; and , as he was occasionally able to pick up a crumb of information through his acquaintances there and connexions abroad , he is generally supposed to have made a little money tliat way . At that time a Corsican was employed by him , and it was in his name that the transactions in Capel-court were carried on .
That Corsican may now ho daily seen very busily employed upon the Bourse ( and the Boulevards . The taking of Genetchi was announced in London by the Secretary to the Admiralty in time for late editions of the morning papers ; but it was very late in the afternoon , and just about tho close of the Bourse , that the agence Havas was selling the despatch as an important piece of intelligence to the various journals of Paris . So well was thia managed , that tho Presse of that afternoon said not a word about it . During the whole of that day the transactions upon the Bourse were more than usually brisk .
Any one . who walks into tho garden of the Tuiieries and sees the electric wires diverging from a small cabinet at the northern end towards every point of the horizon ( looking like reins by which a single pair of hands may drive the world ) , will find it difficult to bclievo that tlie tenant of that cabinet could have been ignornnt of that important piece " of news for an hour after its roccption in London . Wliat was to prevent him
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 8, 1856, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_08111856/page/15/
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