The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-19 00:00:00

, RAILWAY INTELLIGENCE,

GREAT WESTERN.

rho half-yearly meeting of the amalgamated
co. aipanies was held yesterday at the Paddington
51,ation ; Mr. R. Potter, the chairman, presided.
Mr. C. A. Saunders, the Secretary, having read
the notice convening the meeting, the report was
taken as read.
The CHAIRMAN, in moving the adoption of the
report, said he was happy on that occasion to meet
so full an assembly of shareholders. This was the
first meeting of the company since the passing of
the Amalgamation Act of last session, an act which
had absorbed the two separate companies— the West
Midland and the South Wales. 'The ordinary capi-
tal of the Great Western Railway Company now
exceeded £41,000,000, and the amount of line in
operation was 1,100 miles. The first act was passed
for making a railway from Bristol to join the Lon-
don and Birmingham Railway near London in the
year 1835, with a share capital of £2,500,000, and
e, debenture capital of £835,000, making a total
capital of £3,300,000. The line was opened in the
year 1840, and in the course of two or three years
became, like all the other great railway trunk con-
cerns in this country, a decided success. Dividends
were paid in this company of 8 per cent., and in
other companies of 10, 12, and even 14 per cent.
The consequence of that was a great rush of capital
into the construction of new railways. In the ses-
sions of 1845 and 1846 there was a general attempt
all over England enormously to extend the railway
communication of the country. It would have been
quite impossible for the directors of any of the large
undertakings at that time to act upon the policy
which they were now prepared to act—a policy of
rest, because, if they had so acted, he had no doubt
that in the case of the Great Western system of rail-
ways there would have been two or three distinct
trunk lines promoted between the West of England
and London, and in all probability they would have
been made. At that time he was a shareholder in
this company, and if they referred to a railway
map of the autumn of 1846 they would find that
the Great Western Railway Company as it came
out of Parliament in that year was very much the
same concern as it was that day. The Oxford,
Worcester, and Wolverhamton Railway Act had
been passed in the previous session. The South
Wales Railway Act had been passed in the pre-
"flans session in a more extended form even than it
now assumed, because there was a large branch of
that railway from Newport to Hereford which very
much corresponded with the present Newport sec-
tion of the West Midland Railway. And, with the
exception of the Shrewsbury lines and one or two
small branches, the Great Western of 1846 was, to
all intents and purposes, the identical concern that
it now was in September, 1863. During the period
that had elapsed from 1846 to 1863, a period of 17
years, the growth of the Great Western Railway
had been solid, but somewhat over rapid; and it
was, in point of fact, the rapidity with which these
extensions had been made which was at the bot-
tom of the depreciation of their ordinary stock. The
present year was a period of consolidation and rest.
He believed the word " rest" originated with his
friend Mr. Brown, but it would have been impos-
sible to act upon it had it not been for the amalga-
mation which had been consummated in this ses-
sion. It was the amalgamation especially with
the West Midland Railway Company, which
enabled them to form agreements with the London
s.nd North Western and the Midland, which made
the policy of rest safe and solid for the future. They
did not mean by "rest" stagnation, but they meant

that the great railway companies of this country

would no longer allow themselves to be played one
against the other, in making lines which in them-
selves were not remunerative, and floating those
lines on the railway companies whose district they
intersected. There was ample room for legitimate
railway construction in this country, but they wore
all agreed upon this, that the ordinary shareholders
in such railway must be paid at the risk of those
capitalists who associated themselves together,
and not at the cost of established companies. (Hear,
hear.) The policy of rest upon which they were act-
ing was a policy eminently beneficial to the public,
because those agreements would give to the public a
complete interchange ofpassengers an d goods through
traffic over all these lines which they utilised for the
public benefit, and when they brought into full ope-
ration the agreements which they had formed with
their neighbours the public would admit that great
convenience had resulted from that policy. The
board of the Great Western Railway was a recon-
structed board, and consisted of 28 members, to be
reduced ultimately to 24. Of the present directors
of the Great Western Railway there was only one
gentleman who was a director in the session of 1845
and 1846 ; there were only two gentlemen who were
directors in 1849, the period at which the first mis-
fortunes fell upon the ordinary shareholders of the
company, and when they first began to realise the
resulta of the over-excitement of 1845 and 1846 ; and
there were out of the 28 present directors, including
many recent additions to the board, only 12 of those
'who had sat even for two or three years. The re-
mainder of the directors had either been recently sent
to the board by the shareholders, or been added to
the board by the amalgamation. There was an ab-
solute identity of interest between the ordinary share-
holders of the Great Western Railway and the ordi-
nary shareholders of the South Wales and the West
Midland. The proprietor of £5,000 or £lO,OOO of the
ordinary stock of the West Midland was to all intents
and purposes as much interested in the traffic of the
whole concern as the ordinary proprietor of Great
Western stock. It was very important that they
should all feel that they had an absolute identity of
interest ; the result of the amalgamation being that
out of the £41,000,000 of the capital of the Great
Western Company the proprietors held upwards of
£12,500,000 of ordinary stock, the rest being,
in some form or other, preferential and debenture
stock. With a newly-constructed board, consisting
of so large a number as 28, they all felt that they
must to some extent divide the labour among them-
selves 'without dividing the responsibility; and
therefore they had already divided the board into
committees so as to supervise and superintend the
departments of the company, so as to bring the per-
sonal supervision of each individual director on the
whole of the concern. They were enabled to make
these arrangements owing to the intended resigna-
tion of Mr. Saunders, their secretary and general
superintendent of the concern from the first forma-
tion and opening or the railway. When the Great
Western Railway consisted of one main trunk line
running from Bristol to London, without compli-
cated arrangements with other companies, it was not
an unreasonable thing that Mr. Saunders should
have been appointed by the directors of those days
secretary and general superintendent as well. But
as Mr. Saunders was now about to retire, they did
not intend again to fill np the pleme
of general su-
perintendent. (Hear.) They intended
to keep the
offices of secretary and general superintendent of
traffic distinct, as they ought to be in all large com-
panies. The board had come to the unanimous re-
solution that it was for the interests of the et:oman...,
and that it would promote the economy and
tiL
ciency of the administration if they would gramme
retiring pension of £1,250 a-year. (Hear, and No.)
In doing this they did not commit themselves, or
commit the proprietors, to the prinoiple of any re-
tiring pensions to their servants. They wished it
to be understood by all the officers and servants of
this company that they did not consider there was
any legal or moral obligation on their part to make
them a retiring allowance or pension. In 1856.
be retired from the direction of the Great
Western Railway Company,
and published an
address which might be read in the public
journals of the time; and he retired because be
thought the position of one officer occupying the
offices of general superintendent and secretary was
anomaloua. The question was formally brought
before the shareholders, and they formally, and by
an overwhelming majority, decided that Mr. Saun-
ders should continue in that position. Now that
was a position of great authority, giving Mr. Saun-
ders, or giving any man who occupied it—even a
man whose intellectual power was less than that of
Mr. Saunders—a thorough and complete insight
into all the transactions of the company, and it was
of the greatest importance to their interests that
they should for the next two or three . years have