[From "The Daily Telegraph," December 8, 1865.]
OUR RAILWAY SYSTEM.
To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."
Sir: Will you allow me a few words with reference to your excellent article of to-day on railroads.[80] All you say is true. But of what use is it to tell the public this? Of all the economical stupidities of the public—and they are many—the out-and-out stupidest is underpaying their pointsmen; but if the said public choose always to leave their lines in the hands of companies—that is to say, practically, of engineers and lawyers—the money they pay for fares will always go, most of it, into the engineers' and lawyers' pockets. It will be spent in decorating railroad stations with black and blue bricks, and in fighting bills for branch lines. I hear there are more bills for new lines to be brought forward this year than at any previous session. But, Sir, it might do some little good if you were to put it into the engineers' and lawyers' heads that they might for some time to come get as much money for themselves (and a little more safety for the public) by bringing in bills for doubling laterally the present lines as for ramifying them; and if you were also to explain to the shareholders that it would be wiser to spend their capital in preventing accidents attended by costly damages, than in running trains at a loss on opposition branches. It is little business of mine—for I am not a railroad traveller usually more than twice in the year; but I don't like to hear of people's being smashed, even when it is all their fault; so I will ask you merely to reprint this passage from my article on Political Economy in Fraser's Magazine for April, 1863, and so leave the matter to your handling:
"Had the money spent in local mistakes and vain private litigation on the railroads of England been laid out, instead, under proper Government restraint, on really useful railroad work, and had no absurd expense been incurred in ornamenting stations, we might already have had—what ultimately it will be found we must have—quadruple rails, two for passengers and two for traffic, on every great line, and we might have been carried in swift safety, and watched and warded by well-paid pointsmen, for half the present fares."[81]
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.
Denmark Hill, Dec. 7.