The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-08-27 00:00:00

ItZt STOURBRIDGE OBSERVER

ENGLAND'S GROWTH IN A CENTURY.

We take the following interesting article from the St.

James's Gazette:—

The commercial and industrial history of Great
Britain is as yet unwritten. For the last twenty-six
years ample statistics are accessible • but they become
more and more rare as we travel backward from 1854.
Some facts, however, of primary importance may be
grasped, and these serve as milestones in the history of
the past. We can trace the increase of our pupulation
with precision from 1801 ; we can trace the history of our
commerce, as measured by imports and exports, back
to 1696; and if the question be approached in the
temper of the impartial historian—taking no account
of party movement or political theory, but strictly
confining ourselves to the course of industrial activity
and progress—we shall see how rarely the politician
has the influence that he imagines himself to exert on
the public welfare.
At the time when France was convulsed by the
terrible uprising which destroyed the relics of her
feudal system, a revolution of a very different nature
was being prepared and wrought out in England.
The troubles of 1745 called the attention of those
responsible for the military defence of the country
to the infamous state of the roads. In North Britsin,
roads properly so called were almost non-existent before
the good work of road making carried out by General
Wade. In England, in 1758, Brindley, by the con-
struction of the Bridgewater Canal, commenced a
system of inland water communication which first
awoke the spirit of industrial activity. In 1769 Ark-
wright, by his inventions for preparing, carding,
and spinning cotton by machinery driven by water-
power, laid the foundation of the factory system. In
1781 Watt succeeded in producing rotary motion by
steam. In 1787 Cartwright invented cloth-weaving
by steam-power. Telford, meantime, was linking
London with Liverpool, Dublin, and Edinburgh
by excellent roads; which Macadam in 1815 made
as available in winter as in summer. By 1821, 24,581
i
miles of turnpike road had been constructed n Eng-
land and Scotland, and 8,000 miles in Ireland. In
1829 the great discovery of the blast, the very life of
the locomotive, was made. In 1830 the Liverpool
and Manchester Railway was opened; and by 1854,
the first year for which clear parliamentary returns
exist, 8,053 miles of railway had been laid in
the United Kingdom at the cost of £268,000,000.
The names and dates above given are but
as single seeds of future harvests—samples of
those mighty handfuls which were thrown
broadcast by the sturdy genius of English invention.
The harvest, thickening year by year, was the main
source of the wealth and power of the English nation-
and the application of science to industry was aided
and enforced by the rapid growth of the population.
Everything was growing in England for more than a
century and a half, except the size of the island ; and
even as to this, engineering skill added, between 1867
and 1880, two millions of acres to the cultivated area
of the British Islands. A whole county was reclaimed
from sea and morass in the Fen districts.
Of the growth of the population of England we have
no trustworty account before the commencement of
the present century. In 1801 the inhabitants of
England and Wales, in round numbers, were 8,890,000.
In 1700, if the same rate of increase prevailed in the
eighteenth as that noted in the nineteenth century,
the number could not much have exceeded 3,000,000
It is, however, more probable that the rate of increase
was then lower. In the first part of the present
century, from 1801 to 1841, the increase has been at
the rate of 188 per cent., from 8,890,000 to 15,900,000.
From 1841 to 1881 it has been somewhat less rapid, or
at the rate of 163 per cent., with a result of 26,000,000
souls—very nearly trebling in eighty years.

The patient toil of Cesar Moreau has furnished us
with a statement of the commerce of Great Britain,
as measured by its imports and exports, and by the
tonnage of its vessels, from the year 1697 to the year
1823. Taking round figures, we find that the total
tonnage of both entering and clearing vessels in 1700
was about 30,000 tons. In 1720 it had risen to 42,000 •
in 1760 it was about 60,000 tons; in 1800 about 175,004
tons. In 1840 the aggregate tonnage of British and
foreign vessels, sailing and steam, entering and clear-
ing ports in the United Kingdom, with cargo or in
ballast, was 9,500,000 tons. In 1880 the figures for
the same trade amounted to 58,736,000 tons, showing
a fraction more than sextupling in forty years.

If we endeavour to form some estimate of that in-
crease in the mechanical motor power to which so
much of this increased activity of commerce is due,
we must look at our collieries. The number of tons
of coal raised in 1800 is difficult now to ascertain ; but
it is known how much was raised in that year in the
South \Vales district; and if we suppose this quantity
to bear the same proportion to the total output that
it did in 1847 (as stated when the subject was
brought before the Institution of Civil Engineers,
in 1849), we arrive at the total of 16,666,660 tons
for 1800. In 1854 the output was 64,660,000 tons; in
1880, 133,808,000 tons, having increased above eight-
fold in eighty years. In 1869 it was estimated that
out of the 107 million tons of coal won in that year
twenty-five millions were consumed in producing
steam-power for manufactures, and five millions more
for locomotion by land and by sea. A similar pro-
portion for 1880 would raise the thirty million
tons of 1869 to thirty-seven millions. In 1854
the proportion would have been a little over
nineteen millions of tons. But the work done by
a million of tons of coal used in raising steam
for mechanical work is under-estimated if set
down as equal to that of 200,000 horses. A consump-
tion of nineteen millions of tons of coal, costing under
£6,000,000 at the pit's mouth, must have effected
the work of 3,800,000 horses, which is worth more than
£266,000,000. The consumption of thirty-seven mil-
lions of tons of coal represents the work of 7,400,000
horses. Thus the gain of £260,000,000 in 1854, rising
to above £5C0,000,000 in 1880, is an under-estimate
of the net profit earned by that portion of our coal
supply which is devoted to feeding the fires of steam-
engines. And that source of profit, be it more or less than
the above estimate, is all clear addition to the earning
power of the country since the year 1781. The num-
ber and power of the steam-engines at work in the
United Kingdom are unknown. But as to the
application of steam to transport, the earnings of
our railways have risen from 173 millions sterling
in 1854 to hard upon sixty-two millions in 1881;
and the tonnage of registered steam-vessels, ex-
clusive of river steamers employed in the foreign
and home trade, has risen from 61,000 tons in 1854 to
2,594,000 tons in 1880. The men employed, exclusive of
masters, were 4,330 in the former year and 84,304 in
the latter. The increase in the twenty-six years has
been three-and-a-half fold for the land transport, and
four-and-one-third fold for the sea transport. The in-
crease of the population of the period has been at the
rate of 133 per cent.

In this glance at the past century of our national
life, the milestones although only here and there
visiL le, are yet sufficient to mete out distinct points
in the path of progress. It is now just a hundred
years since the steam-engine was born, being called
into active life by the gift of the crank. Since
that time the population of Great Britain has been
multiplied fivefold. And to that teeming and energetic
race has been given, year after year, the ever-growing
service of a power which at the present moment is
more than that of seven and a half millions of horses
—of horses with which the noblest of quadrupeds
cannot compare in either regularity, durability, or
speed; horses which, if we only credit with the
nominal value of their work, cost less than a shilling
for every pound that they earn. How petty is the
value of fiscal regulations or financial theory when
compared to the action of such a mainspring of
national wealth!