The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-02-20 00:00:00

LIFE AT HIGH PRESSURE.

In London, on Friday evening in lasL week, Mr.
W. H. Greg read a paper on" Life at High Pressure,"
to a crowded and brilliant audience at the Royal In-
stitution, Albemarle-street. Taking as the most salient
characteristic of life in this latter portion of the 19th
century its speed, its hurry, the rate at which we
move, the high pressure at which we work, the ques-
tion to be considered, he said, was, whether it is worth
the price paid for it. Life seems fuller and longer for
the speed, but is it truly richer and more effective?
We have fallen into a habit of valuing speed as speed,
with little reference to the objects sought, or the use
to which we put the time so gained. Our love of and
pride in rapidity of movement are neither rational
nor healthy sentiments. Baron Hubner, in his
"Promenade autour du Monde," gives an admirable
illustration of this. He crossed the Atlantic thrice
in ten months, and almost invariably, when off
Newfoundland, the sky was leaden, and the fog
was thick, and on one occasion the vessel was close to
an iceberg, which, if they had struck, they would (he
was coolly told by the captain) have gone down in two
minutes. This northern passage is taken to shorten the
voyage. "Each departure for Queenstown or New
York is registered in the newspapers with the utmost
exactness ; the same with the arrivals. Hence this
frantic haste to arrive first. If they were to follow a
more southerly course (to the south of the 42nd degree),
they would certainly be slower by two or three days,
but the security would be doubled. They would meet
with far less ice and no fogs; there would be no risk of
striking against icebergs, and of disappearing alto-
gether, or of sinking the fishermen's boats, which are
so numerous on those Banks." The physical conse-
quences of all this needless haste—this double quick time
in all our movements—are serious enough. The rapidity
of railway travelling produces a chronic disturb-
ance in the nervous system of those who use it
much; the anxiety to be in time, the hurrying pace,
often running, to catch trains which are punctual in
starting, whatever they may be in arriviog, cause a
daily wear and tear, as well as accelerated action of
the heart, which sometimes has a fatal and sudden ter-
mination. The proportion of the population which
habitually travel by rail is already large, and is
increasing year by year; thoasands are injured, and
scores killed, and to neither of the scores nor of t"Le
thousands was the speed essential to more than a few.
The moral effects of the high pressure style of life are
still worse. A life without leisure and without pause
—a life of haste and excitement—a life filled so full
(even if it were full of interest and toil) that
we have no time to reflect where we have been
and where we intend to go, what we have
done and what we plan to do, can scarcely be deemed
an a.deqsate or worthy life. It is a life which
assuredly Will not approve itself to us in those hours of
enforced qsdet and inaction which age or sickness
brings sooner or later to all. Few estimate adequately
the degree in which an atmosphere of excitement is
fatal to the higher and deeper life; the subtle poison
which it disseminates through the whole character;
how it saps solidity and strength of mind, how it daily
becomes more necessary, and with what "inexorable
logic" it at once enfeebles and renders abnornisaly
sensitive the subtle organisation of the brain; and how
far by slow and sure gradations it carries us on
towards a mental and moral condition, which may
justly be pronounced unsound. But our "life at high
pressure" is shown even more in our style of work
than in our rate of movement. The world is grow-
ing more exacting in its demands from all labourers,
except merely manual ones, and life, in one way or
the other, is becoming severer and severer to nearly
all. The eminent lawyer, the physician in full practice,
the minister, and the politician who aspires to be a
minister, even the literary workman, or the eager man
of science, are one and all condemned to an amount
and continued severity of exertion, of which our grand-
fathers knew little, and which forces one after another
of them to break off or break down in mid career,
shattered, paralysed, reduced to premature inaction or
senility. The barrister must make hay while the sun
shines, because for him it generally shines sis late, and
his career is so often divided into two equal portions
—waiting wearily for work, and groaning and sinking
under its excess. The physician cannot in middle
life refuse or select among the crowding patients whom
he has looked and longed for through the years of his
youth; while the statesman or the member of parlia-
ment in office has constantly to undergo a degree of
prolonged pressure which it is astonishing that so many
can endure. "There is little reason, in my opinion,"
said Macaulay, "to envy a pursuit in which the
most its devotees can expect is that by relinquishing
liberal studies and social comfort, by passing nights
without sleep, and summers without one glimpse of
the beauties of nature, they may attain that laborious,
that invidious, that closely watched slavery which is
mocked with the name of power." One effect of this high
pressure existence is that it leaves even the successful
man who has gained much to retire upon, nothing to
retire to ; for literature, science, domestic ties, public
and philanthropic interests, nature itself, have all
been neglected and lost sight of during the mad rush
and struggle of the last 30 years, and these are
treasures the key to which soon grows rusty, and
friends once slighted cannot be whistled back at
will. " Ah, monsieur !'' said Talleyrand to a young
man who, in the bustle of business and ambition, had
never learned ot had forgotten to keep up his whist —"Ah,
monsisur, quelle triste vitillesse roes vous preparez
People maintain that this excess of toil is unavoidable,
that you must keep the pace or fall behind, and be
trampled down by competitors who are more am-
bitious, more concentrated or less-inclined to measure
and appraise the objects and the worth of life; and
that in a civilisation like ours, moderation is for-
bidden to those who would succeed at all, or not ac-
tually fall. It may be so, though lam not quite con-
vinced it is so, and, at least, if men must work over
hard,-they need not work over long; they might yield
the vacant place to younger and needier aspirants.
But if it be thus, that it is thus is precisely my indict-
ment against the spirit of the age. Excess is en-
forced ; moderation—that which to the wiser Greeks
seemed the essence of wisdom—is forbidden, or appears
to be so. Again, it is an universal complaint, the sub-
tantial truth of which cannot be denied, that life to a
vast proportion of the middle classes is becoming more
difficsilt and more costly. The increased riches of the
wealthy and higher wages of labour have created an
increased demand for most articles, and .in those
articles consumption has overtaken production. For
instance, meat and all farm produce has risen so as to
cause serious inconvenience in many families, and the
actual cost of living is 25 per Tit, higher than it was
twenty-five years ago. Plodding clerks, government
officials, retired officers, clergymen, and scientific or
literary students—men of moderate fixed incomes, in
short—all find their position sadly changed for the
worse. England is a paradise for the men with
£5,000 a year and upwards, but scarcely so for them
of £5OO a year and under. England is. a country in
which it is easier to make much than to live upon little,
and in which, therefore, the moderate, the contented,

a• Va. •

unstrivirg natures, those who desire to pass their
life neither in making money nor in spending it, who
wish to use existence wisely and enjoy it worthily, are
in danger of being crushed out of being between the
upper and nether millstones of a prosperous and well-
paid labouring class, and the lavish expenditure of the
noble or ignoble opulent. This seems to me a matter
for regret, inasmuch as these people are, or at least
used to be, a valuable and estimable element in the
national life. I should grieve to see England consist
only of the toiling, grinding labourer, however highly
paid—of the striving, pushing, racing man of enter-
prise, however successful, and of the plutocrat or the
aristocrat, however munificent or stately in his affluence.
It may be useless to repine at the menaced operation,
and I see but one mode by which it can be effectually
counteracted. As wealth increases, and as fortunes grow
more and more colossal, as year by yearsuccessful enter-
prise places riches within the reach of many, and as
the disposition of every class to imitate and emulate
the style of living of the classes above it in the social
scale remains about the most inveterate of our
national characteristics, there would seem to be small
hope of attaining a standard of life truly dignified and.
worthy, except through such a regeneration in the
tastes and sentiments of the opulent and noble, the
leaders of fashion, the acknowledged chiefs and stars
of society, as should cause simplicity to become "good
style," and luxury beyond a certain point, and osten-
tation at any point, to be voted vulgar. We need not
ask the affluent and the high in rank to forego any
one of the advantages _or enjoyments which their
vast possessions place within their reach ; all that is
re,aired is that they make the most of those advan-
tages, and make those possessions yield them the
maximum of real pleasure. That this is rarely done
we all know; the complaints we hear in every circle
testify only too loudly to the truth. People with all
the resources of society at their command constantly
avow that if society is not actually more of a burden
and a fatigue than of a pleasure, it yet has grown so
irrationally unwieldy and laborious as to give them
little of the true enjoyment which ought to be got out
of it, for surely of all the privileges and luxuries of
civilised existence, intercourse with our fellows—
selected intercourse especially—should he the most re-
paying ; yet is not this very faculty of selection one of
those most commonly foregone? Might no cur e: t're
system of social intercourse be so remodelled as to be
at once twice as remunerative and only half as costly?
And, again, does not the magnificent scale on which the
establishments of "our governing families" are kept
up admittedly involve a trouble, as well as an
expenditure, which is an enormous drawback
from the comforts and luxuries they yield? How
much—rather, how little—of their outlay really
contributes to oil the wheels and smooth away
the cares of life for them? What proportion of their
income is spent as they themselves would wish, and
what proportion in obedience to some fancied neces-
titles of their position bringing them no appreciable ,
return whatever? If all the spending classes kept
only as many servants and horses as would suffice
really to serve and carry them as perfectly as they
could wish, what thousands of both would be thrown
upon the market to the great relief of more limited
incomes. The resigned superfluities of one class
would furnish forth the real wants of others, and the
, equilibrium between supply and demand be once again
restored. And if the more influential families—i.e.,
the most admired and imitated—were thus to reduce
their expenditure (still, not depriving themselves of one
needed or conscious luxury), how suddenly would the
exanaple spread downward and around, till extravagant
and ostentatious expenditure would be so notoriously
niauvais ton as to be left to men whose riches were their
sole distinction. But to arrive at this end, when sim-
plicity of living rather than princely expenditure shall
be the stamp and insignia of rank and taste, not only
must the example be set by those whose character and
position must mark them out for social influence, but
must be set with a sober sagacity and correct tact.
which will be in themselves attractive. The spasmodic
and injudicious attempts of eccentric individuals,
neither sound judging enough to retrench well and
gracefully, nor eminent enough to entitle them long
to influence others, provoke rather ridicule than imita-
tion, and have more than once done injustice to the
cause. The lecturer, who was listened to with
marked attention, concluded by a protest against
asceticism.

AGRELL v. THE LONDON AND NORTH-
WESTERN RAILWAY COMPANY."

The above cause was heard last week in the Court of Error,
before Mr. Justice Blackburn, Mr. Justice Mellor, Mr.
Justice Lush, Mr. Justice Brett, Mr. Justice Grove, Mr.
Justice Denman, and Mr. Justice Archibald, which case
raised a question of some interest to railway passengers,
with reference to the liability of railway companies for
losses of passengers' luggage. It w,as an action to recover
the value of a portmanteau lost at the Victoria Sf
Manchester. —The case is thus reported in The 177114$ :
The plaintiff, intending to travel from Marichester
to Hull by a London and North-Western Railway
train advertised to start from the Victoria Station at
12.43 p.m., arrived at the London and North-Western
entrance to the station at 12.20 on the 6th of February,
in a cab,. with the portmanteau in question. He was
then met by a London and North-Western porter,
who took possession of the portmanteau, and car-
ried. it to a place on the platform not very far
from the rack where labels for passengers' lug-
gage are kept, and which may be assumed to be the
place where the portmanteau would, in the ordinary
course of things, have been labelled for Hull. The
porter then went away, leaving the portmanteau on
the platform, and without saying anything to the
plaintiff, who with a friend, had accompanied him
from a cab. No official of the company was at that
time employed in labelling passengers' luggage, which
may probably be accounted for by the circumstance
that it still wanted from 20 to 25 minutes of tie time
for the train to start. The plaintiff, finding his port-
manteau thus left, called to another porter, who was
near, to look after it, but he said he was busy and did
not come. The plaintiff then himself took a Hull
label from the rack, and, having affixed it to the port-
manteau, called to another porter, who was standing
with a truckload of luggage a few yards off, and
told him to look after the portmanteau ; and, ac-
cording to the plaintiff's statement in re-examina-
tion, that porter replied "Well," or "All
right; but the plaintiff did not speak positively
to that, and was not confirmed by his friend, who
stood by, and the Court therefore did not pay any re-
gard to it. The plaintiff then went with his friend to
the refreshment room, and while there his friend pro-
cured him a ticket for Hull. They were absent 10 or 15
minutes, and on returning to the place where they
had left the portmanteau it was gone, and has never
since been heard of. It was admitted at the trial that
the station is in the joint occupation of the London
and North-Western Railway Company, and of the
Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company, but
that one end, that at which the portmanteau was
placed, is in the sole use of the London and
North-Western_ Railway Company, and that the
porters of the London and North-Western Railway
Company only stood at the London and North-
Western Railway doors outside, but that inside the
porters of both companies take luggage ; and it was
taken as admitted that the case was to be considered as
if the station was in the sole occupation of the London
and North-Western Railway Company and that all
the porters had been in their service. At the trial in
the Salford Hundred Court no evidence was given for
the company, and there was a verdict for the plaintiff
for £6O, with leave to move to enter a verdict on the
question whether the company's porter received charge
of the portmanteau, with power to the Court to draw
inferences of fact as a jury. The Court of Exchequer
thought there was no evidence of negligence in the
company's porters, so that the question was whether
the company ever received the portmanteau as common
carriers, in which case they would be liable apart from
actual negligence; and they thought the question came
to this—whether the company's porters received the
portmanteau as passengers luggage, for if so, then it
was admitted that the company received it as
carriers, and the plaintiff would be entitled to retain
his verdict. On that question, however, the Court were
divided.
The Lord Chief Baron and Baron Amphlett were
for the plaintiff, and Baron Pollock for the company.
The majority, therefore, gave judgment for the plain-
tiff. The company appealed.
Mr. Graham argued for the company; Mr. Ambrose,
Q.C., for the plaintiff.
After full argument, which took up nearly half the
day, the Judges retired to consider the judgment, and
the Court were divided in opinion. The majority of
them, however, weie in favour of the company.
Mr. Justice Blackburn, in pronouncing his judg-
ment, said there was a great difficulty arising from the
case having been reserved for the Court, without taking
the opinion of the jury on any question of fact.
This was a very inconvenient course; but under the
Common Law Procedure Act, the Court was bound
to draw inferences of fact as a jury might have done.
That being so, the Court came to a nearly unanimous
conclusion in favour of the company. The law had been
accurately stated by the Court of Exchequer. The
only question was, as the Court had said, whether the
company had ever received the portmanteau as pas-
senger's luggage; for, if so, they had received it as carriers.
The porter who received the passengers' luggage at a
station would in general receive for the company in
that way. But it sometimes happened that a pas-
senger arrived at a station hours before the train
started, and then the usual course was to take the
luggage to the cloak-room. Here the plaintiff came to
the station half an hour before the train started. Did
he give his luggage to the porter to take charge of it?
If so, then that would be a receiving for the company
as carriers. But he drew a different inference upon
the facts in evidence, that the porter took it merely to
the platform for the plaintiff, to await his further
orders; and if that was the right conclusion, then the
company did not receive it as carriers. No doubt the
plaintiff stated that he spoke to other porters, but
there was no clear evidence that any porter actually
took charge of it. He did not say there was no evi-
dence of it; but he could not draw the inference, and
therefore, he thought the verdict must be entered for
the company.
Mr. Justice Mellor concurred. The case, he said,
had been reserved for the Court to draw inferences of
fact. No doubt it was a case eminently fit for decision
by a jury ; as they, perhaps, from their experience,
might have drawn more correct inferences. But he
himself had some experience in such matters, and must
draw the best inference he could by the light of that
experience. He drew the inference that the port-
manteau was never given in charge to the company's
porters. That being so, the loss of it could not be
ascribed to the company, who were not liable for it
until it was delivered into their hands to be carried.
Mr. Justice Lush was of the same opinion. The
case was, he said, reserved for the Court to give their
opinion upon the evidence as a jury would haVe done.
It was for the plaintiff tcrmake out his case, and upon
the evidence he failed to do so. It was for him to
show that he had given the portmanteau in charge to
one of the porters, and it did not appear that he had
ever done so. He therefore concurred, without hesi-
tation, in the opinion of the majority of his brothers.
Mr. Jtsstice Brett, however, differed, and was of
opinion that neither the Court below nor this Court
had any right to set aside the verdict on the ques-
tion of fact, but that the case was reserved for the
Court on the only question of law in the case, whether
there was evidence that the porters received charge of
the portmanteau; for if they did, then it was admitted
that the London and North-Western Railway Com-
pany were liable for its loss. He did not believe
the plaintiff's counsel ever intended to give up the

,tation,el