premise: Waterways. At the height of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-19th century, huge quantities of coal had to be transported from the pithead for iron smelting, manufacturing and domestic use. Coastal shipping, navigable rivers and horse-drawn carts were either slow or restrictive in comparison to the new purpose-built canals. A horse could pull a narrowboat weighing 50 times as much as a cart. The UK soon developed a national network of canals and by the middle of the 19th century almost all major towns and cities had a canal. At the same time, there was controversy as to the rival merits of transporting coal by canal or by railway. Stephensons locomotive could transport vast quantities of coal and other goods more quickly than by canal and also offered a new means of passenger transport. The canal network was doomed, and investment was redirected into railways, with local lines laid down in the coal districts developed into a national system for the whole of the country. Road haulage in the 20th century brought more competition for canals, and only a few remained open until the Second World War. Further declines were inevitable, and the use of canals for industrial purposes was minimal in the 1960s. However, interest in canals for leisure purposes had begun to grow, and some were restored and reopened by volun- teers in the 1970s. This trend has continued, with canals attracting government funding for restoration projects. Canals are now a major tourist industry, with more than 10 million visitors per year and 30,000 craft. Today there are more boats on the canals than at the height of the Industrial Revolution.
hypothesis: A network of canals was in place before a national system of railways.