Читать книгу Highways and Highway Transportation - George R. Chatburn - Страница 16

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—The numerous guilds reached their zenith during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and then gradually diminished in importance. Some of them, however, still remain active in London. During the recent World War several were engaged in welfare work. Guilds in France were destroyed or lapsed into desuetude during the revolution, 1791-1815. Those of Spain and Portugal likewise during the revolutionary years of 1833-40; of Austria and Germany in 1859-60 and of Italy in 1864. Guilds, as known in Europe, never found a substantial lodging in the United States.

The functions of the guilds were gradually taken over by the government, which seemed later to be a better and more satisfactory medium to control labor, trade, and commerce. Laws were enacted in England to regulate the entering of apprentices, to force able bodied men to serve as agricultural laborers in case of need, and to work the roads annually. Justices of the Peace were given authority to settle disputes and regulate wages. Foreign trade was by laws and Royal Grants encouraged; likewise immigration of artisans to introduce new industries, the establishment of foreign colonies and the development of banking and insurance. Almshouses were built and poor laws enacted to care for the old and indigent. The public roads were still very poor but a beginning was made for their betterment. Macaulay, in writing of the State of England in 1685,[6] has considerable to say regarding the condition of the highways. Speaking of the lack of homogeneity among the people he says:

There was not then the intercourse which now exists between the two classes. [The Londoner and the rustic Englishman.] Only very great men were in the habit of dividing the year between town and country. Few esquires came to the capital thrice in their lives. [And again], The chief cause which made the fusion of the different elements of society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty found in passing from place to place. Of all inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civilization of our species. Every improvement of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the branches of the great human family.

[Further on], It was by the highways that both travellers and goods generally passed from place to place; and those highways appear to have been far worse than might have been expected from the degree of wealth and civilization which the nation had even then attained.

The degree of civilization attained was no doubt due to other things than the public roads. Sea transportation brought to England the products of the world. Coast transportation was well developed and river and canal transportation had well begun. Macaulay states that

One chief cause of the badness of the roads seems to have been the defective state of the law. Every parish was bound to repair the highways which passed through it. The peasantry were forced to give their gratuitous labor six days in the year.... That a route connecting two great towns, which have a large and thriving trade with each other, should be maintained at the cost of the rural population scattered between them, is obviously unjust.

This sounds like modern arguments against paving rural roads and charging the cost to the abutting property, and is evidently one good reason for state and national aid.

However, transportation and travel continued to improve. On the main roads “waggons” were employed to transport goods and stage coaches for people, while pack animals and riding horses were used on less frequented trails and roads. Four and six horses were necessary to pull a carriage or a coach “because with a smaller number there was great danger of sticking fast in the mire.” A diligence ran between London and Oxford in two days, but in 1669 it was announced that the “Flying Coach would perform the whole journey between sunrise and sunset.” The heads of the university after solemn deliberation gave consent and the experiment proved successful. The rival university at Cambridge, not to be outdone, set up a diligence to run from Cambridge to London in one day. Soon flying coaches were carrying passengers to other points. Posts were established for the change of horses and longer distances essayed. This mode of traveling was extolled by contemporaneous writers “as far superior to any similar vehicles ever known in the world.” It is not to be thought that these advances in rapid transportation were without objectors. According to Macaulay,

It was vehemently argued that this mode of conveyance would be fatal to the breed of horses and to the noble art of horsemanship; that the Thames, which had long been an important nursery of seamen, would cease to be the chief thoroughfare from London up to Windsor and down to Gravesend; that saddlers and spurriers would be ruined by hundreds; that numerous inns, at which mounted travelers had been in the habit of stopping, would be deserted, and would no longer pay any rent; that the new carriages were too hot in summer and too cold in winter; that the passengers were grievously annoyed by invalids and crying children; that the coach sometimes reached the inn so late that it was impossible to get supper, and sometimes started so early that it was impossible to get breakfast.

Objections of this character have been made against every innovation and advancement in travel and transportation to the present day when the air-plane is beginning to attract notice as an economic vehicle. Laws were then demanded and passed, as they are now, to regulate power and speed, accommodations and rates, and multifarious other things which might affect the privileges or profits of those interested in older methods, as well as laws for the protection and safety of the general public.