Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

BRITAIN AT WORK. owned by the bargee himself. The legal regulations, passed in 1877 and amended in 1884, only permit a man and his wife and two children to inhabit a cabin of a certain size; but some barges are fitted with two cabins, one fore and aft. Further, the sani- tary inspector and the “ School Board man,” as the bargees call him, are abroad, and the boat children have to attend school like their fellows on shore. Some difference has thus been caused in the use of canal boats as dwellings and fewer women and children are to be found aboard than a comparatively few years ago. It is difficult to give an accurate idea of the average earnings of canal-boatmen, because they are paid so differently. Some, no doubt, receive a weekly wage but others are remunerated by a fee for the trip, and others at a rate per ton according to the merchandise they carry. Bad weather involving a stop- page of their craft would inflict serious loss on these latter, should the masters not make them some allowance. Perhaps an estimate of from eighteen to twenty-five shillings weekly would not be far wrong as an aver- age. Living is cheap for the bargee, especially if he uses the boat as a dwelling. A man owning his own barge and horse might do fairly well if he were thrifty and business-like, and it would appear that there are worse callings, and certainly more unhealthy trades, than that of an inland boatman. But, perhaps, many persons may be sur- prised to learn that the conveyance of freight by barges, on inland waterways, still forms a somewhat large industry in the United Kingdom ; they may have thought that the railways had killed the traffic. Such is not quite the case. For a time, undoubtedly, the prosperity of canals was greatly checked by railways, but about 1878-80 it began to revive, and. in the opinion of some among us, the barge industry is likely to increase rather than diminish. Quite an army of men are employed, estimated to be about a hundred thousand in number ; nearly four thousand miles of canals and inland navigations are open for trade, while about forty million tons of freight are conveyed in the course of the year. In fact, so complete is the system that you could float from London to Li verpool on inland water- ways, and as far back as 1836, there was, it is said no place in England south of Durham that could be found fifteen miles from a canal or navigable river. This statement may possibly have been an exaggeration, but the system was, and still is, very extensive. Some of those old canals have, no doubt, been allowed to run dry ; others, again, have been converted into rail- ways—about 120 miles, it is said, altogether ; but there still exists a great network of inland navigation in the country, an important centre