20) Morris on transport

Posted in PaulHampton's blog on ,

On transport, Morris was even more a prisoner of his time. Despite his conversion to socialism he remained hostile to rail transport, describing “the beastly sewers through which run stink-traps under the name of carriages – the whole of which arrangement is dignified by the name of the Metropolitan and District Railways”. (Commonweal, May 1886 in Salmon 1996 p.71)

Perhaps we should put this down to the fact that trains in his day were privately run steam engines powered by coal. Morris continued to oppose the extension of the railways into the countryside, though in his socialist years by emphasising the unscrupulous profiteers behind the expansion plans. When some capitalists sought to run a line through the Lake District in 1887, he wrote in Commonweal: “Of course, as things go now, the Lake railway is not a question of convenience of the Amblesiders, or the pleasure of the world in general, but profit of a knot of persons leagued together against the public in general under the name of a railway company.”

He picked up the argument again two weeks later. “It seems to me that our friend in his enthusiasm for railways in unconsciously playing into the hands of the capitalist robbers, who are the only persons who will be really benefited by it as all things go. In the first place this railway is meant to be the first step in the invasion of the Lake Country and will certainly not stop at Ambleside if the projectors can help it. The question is nothing less than this, is the beauty of the Lake country, and the natural wish people have to see it and enjoy it, to be handed over to be exploited without limitation by a company who looks upon the public as so much material for exploitation?” (Salmon 1996 p.200, p.206)

The only hint of something different came somewhat surprisingly in News from Nowhere, where after several journeys on in a horse drawn carriage the visitor to the communist future came upon mysteriously powered river barges.

He wrote: “Every now and then we came on barges, laden with hay or other country produce, or carrying bricks, lime, timber, and the like, and these were going on their way without any means of propulsion visible to me - just a man at the tiller, with often a friend or two laughing and talking with him. Dick, seeing on one occasion this day that I was looking rather hard on one of these, said "That is one of our force-barges; it is quite as easy to work vehicles by water as by land."
I understood pretty well that these "force-vehicles" had taken the place of our old steam-power carrying; but I took good care not to ask any questions about them, as I knew well enough both that I should never be able to understand how they were worked, and that in attempting to do so I should betray myself, or get into some complication impossible to explain; so I merely said, "Yes, of course, I understand." (Morton 1968 p.349-350)

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