Page:Engines and men- the history of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. A survey of organisation of railways and railway locomotive men (IA enginesmenhistor00rayniala).pdf/46

 dividends are still being paid in great sums all over England,

A bright instance of competition and what it led to is famished by an incident at Nottingham Midland Station in August of 1852. The Great Northern had a running arrangement with another company, which in turn had running rights over the Midland into Nottingham. On the day referred to a G.N. engine ran the train of passengers into Nottingham. The trespasser was a conspicuous object in the station, and it was promptly captured. The process used was like that for capturing wild elephants, by putting others of its kind around it. Midland engines were called out and placed before and behind, and the prisoner was piloted to the yard!

Let us look at an example or two of the obstinacy and exploitation that was displayed. There was, for example, a clause in the Act for the Liverpool & Manchester Railway which said: "No steam engine shall be set up in the township of Burtonwood or Winwick, and no locomotive shall be allowed to pass along the line within those townships which shall be considered by, or by the Rector of Winwick, to be a nuisance or annoyance to them from the smoke and noise thereof." One landowner got £3,000 for a plot of land through which a line was to pass, and £10,000 for "consequential damages" on the coming of this great herald of commerce and prosperity. The Great Eastern had to pay £120,000 for a site which had been valued as worth £5,000. Railway lines were costly affairs. The track of the Brighton Company worked out at £8,000 per mile, the London to Birmingham at £6,300, and the Great Western at £6,696. The law was just as bad as the land. The legal casts involved in an abandoned and rejected scheme came to £82,000, and it was said that one barrister netted £38,000 in a single session of Parliament.

Stage coach owners found it unprofitable to carry the mails, and so disorganised delivery and opposed the new rival to their business. Canal companies had been paying tremendously high dividends, and shares in them stood at 20 to 40 times their normal value. The canal companies were therefore remorseless opponents of the swifter iron roads. Capitalist interests fought each other,