any means remarkable for mechanical progress, was one of the pioneers, if not absolutely the pioneer in electrical transport, and its first electric railway was to a distillery. The current was generated at the Bushmills Falls by means of a turbine, I think of Swiss manufacture, and was conveyed to the car by an iron brush in contact with a side rail. This rail was an ordinary T-iron with the flat side uppermost; it was raised about two and a half feet from the ground on wooden posts erected close to the ditch on one side of the public road. The spaces for cross-roads were simply left vacant, the impetus of the car being sufficient to carry it over the short distance. The overhead trolley had not then been invented. The farmers in the neighbourhood objected to the line on the ground that the raised side rail was dangerous for their horses. A farmer's horse had, indeed, been so unfortunate as to come into contact with the rail and had, according to the farmer, been killed by the current. The first section of the line, between Portrush and Bushmills, having been successfully constructed by the small company promoted by Dr. Traill, and having secured sufficient traffic to demonstrate its utility, the company decided to apply to Parliament for powers to continue the line from Bushmills to the Giant's Causeway. The farmers opposed this extension and, if I am not mistaken in my recollection, employed Mr. Bidder, who was at that time a celebrated parliamentary counsel, to appear for them. Dr. Traill had as witnesses Sir William Thomson (afterwards Lord Kelvin) and Sir Frederick Bramwell. Dr. Traill gave me an amusing account of his cross-examination before the Parliamentary Committee. Mr. Bidder began by demonstrating the position of the line upon a plan which was hung on a wall of the committee-room. After he had gone on for some time, he turned to put a question to Dr. Traill, who said: "If, sir, you will be good enough to have the plan of the Wexford waterworks, upon which you have been demonstrating, taken down and the plan of the Bushmills Railway hung up in its place, I will be glad to show you how it runs.” This was point number one against Mr. Bidder. The cross-examination proceeded, and as it drew to a conclusion Mr. Bidder said, "Now, Dr. Traill, you have said that the raised side rail of your line is so placed that it is not dangerous; how do you account for the fact that a horse was recently killed through coming into contact with it?" Dr. Traill. "My information is that what you have stated is not a fact. The facts are, as I understand, that a very old horse did come into contact with the rail and that the invigorating current he received kept him alive for an hour or more after he otherwise would have been dead." This was rather audacious; but on general grounds the utility of the line was recognised by the Committee, the Bill was eventually passed, and the extension was constructed. When I was there it had been opened but a short time. I can testify to a certain amount of probable danger from the side rail, for while Dr. Traill was standing by I carelessly put my umbrella upon it and received a slight though distinct electric shock. I do not now recall the voltage of the current, but it must have been pretty low. We spent the night at the Causeway, and the morning among the fine columns of basalt of which it is composed. I ran across a local landlord who inveighed against the Home Rulers with much bitterness, spoke of Ulster volunteers, arming, civil war and the like. I thought at the time that he was talking wildly, and that civil war was unlikely to happen even in Ireland. We have seen in this very neighbourhood, thirty-five years later, a condition fairly to be described as one of civil war. CHAPTER XXI 66 SETTING THE POOR ON WORK' GERMANY IN 1892 AND 1893: FRANCE, BELGIUM AND HOLLAND IN 1893 Foil'd by our fellow-men, depress'd, outworn, We would leave the brutal world to take its way, And, Patience! in another life, we say, The world shall be thrust down, and we up-borne. And will not, then, the immortal armies scorn No, no! the energy of life may be From strength to strength advancing-only he, MATTHEW ARNOLD, Immortality (1868). IMMEDIATELY after the close of the meeting of the British Association in Edinburgh in August 1892 I sailed from Harwich to Hamburg. I had three companions, Professor Wright, who occupied the Chair of Agriculture in the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College, Mr. John Speir, farmer at Neilston, near Glasgow, and Mr. James R. Motion, Inspector of Poor at Glasgow. We were asked to go to Germany for the purpose of visiting and reporting upon the German labour colonies as a means of providing work and subsistence for the unemployed. The report was to be made to the Glasgow Social Union. The idea of such a commission originated with Mr. D. M. Stevenson,1 who had visited the labour colony at Bielefeld, and had been much impressed by the idea it embodied. The years from 1878 until 1886 had been years of trade depression and of consequent unemployment. Although by 1892 the acute stage of the depression had passed, there was still unemployment, and there 1 Afterwards Lord Provost of Glasgow and now Sir Daniel M. Stevenson, Bart. 1 was prevalent a desire to find, not a temporary remedy, but some self-acting means of providing employment in such a way as to avoid the necessity of temporary remedies. The idea of a colony in which beggars and other poor persons should be welcomed, or to which such persons might be sent by public authorities, is not new. The plan was fully set forth in an Act of the reign of Elizabeth, and was actually in operation in England for three hundred years. I have given an account of the history of the plan elsewhere.1 Apparently without knowledge of the previous existence of labour colonies in England, the adoption of them was urged by the Rev. Herbert Mills in a remarkable little book called Poverty and the State. Mr. Mills carried on an active propaganda, and in consequence public attention was directed to the experiments in labour colonies which for some years had been going on in Germany, and to the much older institutions of a similar character in Holland. Some brief reports had been made upon these continental colonies, but it was thought advisable that some of those persons who had been interested in the relief of the unemployed in Glasgow should have a personal opportunity of investigating the working of the system. The commission therefore went to Germany. On our arrival at Berlin, we met, through the British Ambassador, the then Minister of the Interior, Count von Ehrenberg. The Count had evidently taken an interest in the subject, for he told us much about it and advised us to go to Rickling in Holstein, and offered to instruct the governor of the district to meet us there and facilitate our inquiries. He also arranged for us to see the town labour colony in Berlin. Our stay in Germany could not be a long one, and we therefore confined ourselves to the adoption of these suggestions, going in addition only to Reppen, in the province of Posen. On our arrival at Oldesloë in Holstein, we met the Governor of Kiel, Herr von Heinze, who accompanied us to the colony of Rickling. He was most kind and helpful. The colony was established at Rickling for two purposes: one was to reclaim a morass, and the other was to reclaim the men who had for one reason or another failed to secure or to retain employment. The colony was open to all comers, but it was remote from a town and once in it was difficult for a colonist to get out, unless he was prepared to tramp for some miles, with the risk of being arrested as a vagrant. Since, however, the German law of settlement rendered a parish liable for the maintenance of poor persons who had resided in it for two years, any colonist whose domicile was 1 See article "Setting the Poor on Work," Nineteenth Century, 1892. outside the parish in which Rickling was situated was obliged to leave the colony before the expiry of that period. This ejection did not, however, prevent him from immediately obtaining entrance to another colony in another parish. Since there were twenty-four colonies throughout Germany, it was quite possible for a man to be a permanent colonist, provided he changed his colony once every two years. This colony, like the other German colonies, was supported by public subscription. There was an offset to the expenditure in the increased value of the land, for the labour of the colonists was redeeming the marsh. Redemption was effected by drainage, and by bringing sand from a neighbouring elevation by means of a light railway. There was no pretence that the labour of the colonists was efficient. The process of land redemption could have been accomplished by ordinary hired labour at less cost. Yet, if their labour were not organised in this or in some other manner, the men who were colonists would have had to be supported at the public charge. The results of their labour in land redemption recouped the administration of the colony for a portion at least of their maintenance. In so far as the unemployment experienced by them had been due to depression of vitality from dissipation, illness or other causes, the fresh air of the country and strictly enforced sobriety, with regular and ample food, might be expected to render at least a certain proportion of the colonists capable of entering once more the ranks of regularly employed labour, assuming that at the time there was demand for their services. Under certain conditions, therefore, and with due regard to the limitations of the scheme, we came to the conclusion that there was a place for colonies of the Rickling type in any comprehensive plan for dealing with unemployment. The Rickling experiment clearly did not interfere with local employment, for apparently the land which was being redeemed by the colonists would not have been redeemed at all unless it had been redeemed by them, and since the product of their labour, so far as it had gone, consisted entirely in preparation for future yield from the improved land, and not at once in produce competing in the market with other produce yielded by labour under ordinary conditions, competition with labour external to the colony did not for the time enter into the question. When the land was redeemed and the cultivation of it began, then of course the subsidised product of the colony must enter into competition with the unsubsidised product of external labour. The town colony of Berlin presented a different problem. There we found the colony in the throes of a dispute with external labour. The colonists had been set to various industries. Some of them made |