Railway Benevolent Institution Anniversary Festival

Speech at the Railway Benevolent Institution Anniversary Festival (5 June 1867).

Dickens, Charles

Dickens, Charles. 'Speech at the Railway Benevolent Institution Anniversary Festival' (5 June 1867). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Bell and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. https://dickenssearch.com/speeches/1867-06-05_Speech_Railway-Benevolent-Institution-Anniversary-Festival.

Gentlemen, Although we have not yet left behind us by the distance of nearly fifty years the time when one of the first literary authorities of this country insisted upon the speed of the fastest railway train that the legislature might disastrously sanction being expressly limited by Act of Parliament to ten miles an hour, yet it does somehow happen that this evening, and every evening, there are railway trains running pretty smoothly to Ireland and to Scotland at the rate of fifty miles an hour. Much as it was objected in its time, to vaccination, that it must have a tendency to impart to human children something of the nature of the cow, whereas I believe to this very time vaccinated children are found to be as easily defined from calves as they ever were, and certainly they have no cheapening influence on the price of veal; much as it was objected that chloroform was a contravention of the will of Providence, because it lessened providentially inflicted pain – which would be a reason for not rubbing your face if you had the toothache, or not rubbing your nose if it itched: so it was confidently predicted that the railway system, if anything so absurd could be productive of any result, would infallibly throw half the nation out of employment; whereas, you observe that the very cause and occasion of our coming here together tonight is, apart from the various tributary channels of occupation which it has opened out, that it has called into existence a specially and directly employed population of upwards of 200,000 persons.

Now, gentlemen, it is pretty clear and obvious that upwards of 200,000 people engaged upon the various railways of the United Kingdom cannot be rich. Although their duties require great care and great exactness, and although our lives are every day, humanly speaking, in the hands of many of them, still for the mass of those places there will always be great competition, because they are not posts which require skilled workmen to hold. Wages, as you know very well, cannot be high where competition is great, and you also know very well that railway directors, in the bargains they make, and the salaries they pay, have to deal with the money of shareholders, to whom they are accountable. Thus it necessarily happens, that railway officers and servants are not remunerated, on the whole, by any means splendidly, and that they cannot hope in the ordinary course of things to do more than meet the ordinary wants and hazards of life. But it is to be observed that the hazards of life are in their case, by reason of the dangerous nature of their avocations, exceptionally great; so very great, I find, as to be stateable, on the authority of a Parliamentary paper, in the very startling round figures, that, whereas one railway traveller is killed in 8,000,000 of passengers, one railway servant is killed in in every 2,000 employed.

Hence, from general, special, as well no doubt from prudential and benevolent considerations, there came to be established among railway officers and servants, nine years ago, this Railway Benevolent Association. I may suppose, therefore, as it was established nine years ago, that this is the ninth occasion of publishing from this chair the banns between this institution and the public. Nevertheless, I feel bound individually to do my duty the same as if it had never been done before, in stating to you briefly what the institution is, before asking you whether there is any just cause or impediment why these two parties – the institution and the public – should not be joined together in holy charity. As I understand the society, after having read its papers, its objects are fivefold. Firstly, to grant annuities, which, it is always to be observed, are paid out of the interest of invested capital, so that they may be always secure and safe – annual pensions of from £10 to £25, to distressed railway officers and servants incapacitated through age, sickness, or accident; secondly, to grant similar pensions to distressed widows; thirdly, to educate and maintain orphan children; fourthly to provide temporary relief for all classes until lasting relief can be guaranteed out of funds sufficiently large for the purpose; and lastly, to induce railway officers and servants to insure their lives in some well-established office, by subdividing the payments of the premiums into small periodical sums, and also by granting a reversionary bonus of ten per cent. on the amount insured, from the funds of the institution.

Now this is the society we are met to assist – simple, sympathetic, practical, easy, sensible, unpretending. The number of its members, as I believe, largely and rapidly on the increase, is 12,000; the amount of its invested capital very nearly £15,000. It has done a world of good and a world of work in these first nine years of its life, and yet I am proud to say that the annual cost of its management to the institution less than ten per cent. And now, if you do not know all about it in a small compass, either I don’t know all about it myself, or the fault must be in my ‘packing’.

One naturally passes from what the institution is and has done, to what it wants. Well, gentlemen, it wants to do more good, and it cannot possibly do more good until it has more money. It cannot safely, and therefore it cannot honourably, grant more pensions to deserving applicants until it grows richer, and it cannot grow rich enough for its laudable purpose of its own unaided self. The thing is absolutely impossible. The means of these railway officers and servants are far too limited. Even if they were helped to the utmost by the great railway companies, their means would still be too limited. Even if they were helped – as I hope they shortly will be – by some of the great corporations of this country, whom railways have done so much to enrich, their means would still be too limited. In a word, these railway officers and servants, on their road to a very humble and modest superannuation, can no more do without the help of the great public, than the great public, on their road from Torquay to Aberdeen, can do without them. Therefore, I desire to ask the public whether the servants of the great railways are not in fact their servants; whether they have not established, whether they do not every day establish, a reasonable claim upon the public’s liberal remembrance.

Now, gentlemen, upon this point of the case there is a story once told me by a friend of mine, which seems to my mind to have a certain application. My friend was an American Sea Captain, and therefore it is quite unnecessary to say his story was a true one. He was Captain and part owner of a large American merchant liner. On a certain voyage out, in exquisite summer weather, he had for cabin passengers one beautiful young lady, and ten more or less beautiful young gentlemen. Light winds or dead calms prevailing, the voyage was slow, and before they had made half their distance, the ten young gentlemen were all madly in love with the beautiful young lady. They had all proposed to her, and bloodshed among the rivals seemed imminent, pending the young lady’s decision. In this extremity the beautiful young lady confided in my friend the Captain, who gave her this very discreet advice: ‘If your affections are disengaged, take the one whom you like the best, and settle the question.’ To which the beautiful young lady replied, ‘I cannot do that, because I like them all equally well.’ My friend the Captain, who was a man of resource, hit upon this ingenious expedient. Said he, ‘Tomorrow morning, at mid-day, when lunch is announced and they are all on deck, do you plunge bodily overboard, head foremost. I will be alongside in a boat to pick you up, and take the one of the ten who dashes to the rescue.’ The young lady highly approved of this, and did accordingly. But after she plunged in, nine of the ten more or less beautiful young gentlemen immediately plunged in after her. The tenth shed tears, and looked over the side, but remained on deck. They were all picked up together. When they musted dripping, on the deck, and stood there in a limp row, the beautiful young lady said to the Captain: ‘What am I to do now? See what a state they are in. How can I possibly choose one of the nine, when they are all equally wet?’ Then, with sudden inspiration, my friend the Captain said, ‘My dear, take the dry one!’ I am sorry to say she did so, and they lived happy ever after.

Now gentlemen, in my application of this story, I exactly reverse my friend the Captain’s anecdote, and entreat the public in looking about to consider who are fit subjects for their bounty, to give their hands, with something in them, not to the dry but the wet ones, to the ready and dextrous servants constantly at their beck and call. And I would ask anyone with a doubt upon this subject, to consider what his experience of the railway servant is, from the time of his driving up to the departure platform, to the end of his journey. I know what mine is. Here he is, in velveteen or in a policeman’s dress, scaling cabs, storming carriages, finding lost articles by a kind of instinct, binding up lost umbrellas and walking sticks, wheeling trucks, counselling old ladies, with a wonderful interest in their affairs – mostly very complicated – and sticking labels upon all sorts of articles. I look around me. There he is again, in a station-master’s uniform, directing and overseeing, with the head of a general, and with the manners of a courteous host. There he is again in a guard’s belt and buckle, with a handsome figure, inspiring confidence in timid passengers. He is as gentle to the weak people as he is bold to the strong, and he has not a single hair in his beard that is not up to its work.

I glide out of the station, there he is again with his flags in his hand. There he is again, in the open country, at a level crossing. There he is again at the entrance to the tunnel. At every station that I stop at, he is again as alert as usual. There he is again at the arrival platform, getting me out of the carriage as if I was his only charge upon earth. Now, is there not something in the alacrity, in the ready zeal, in the interest of these men that is not acknowledged, that is not expressed in their mere wages? May it not be agreeable to the public to consider that this institution gives them the means of enjoying that something not only without compromise of their independence, but greatly to their permanent advantage? And if your experience coincides with mine, and enables you to have this good feeling for, and to say a good word in regard of, railway servants with whom we do come into contact, surely it may induce us to have some little sympathy with those whom we do not – those signalmen for instance whom we rush past and do not distinctly see? And there are two sides to these points. If we take a human interest in them, will they not take a human interest in us? We shall not be merely the 9.30 or the 10.30 rushing by, but we shall be an instalment of the considerate public that is ready to lend a hand to the poor fellows in their risk of their lives; and we cannot fail to derive a benefit from the interest they will consequently take in us.

I have, unconsciously, given you rather a long run, but I assure you that if you had done less on your part to get my steam up, I should have shut it off much sooner. Gentlemen, with a very hearty and real interest in the cause, and in the men, I beg you to drink ‘Prosperity to the Railway Benevolent Institution’.