The Railway Mania of 1824/5: a re-examination

摘要

The Railway Mania of 1824/5 has sometimes been characterised as the promotion of bubble companies by unscrupulous financiers, their main interest being a short-term profit to be achieved by the purchase and rapid re-sale of shares to gullible investors. This is a view which needs to be re-examined. It is almost certainly true that the motives of some of those who promoted railway companies during this short-lived period are questionable; it is also true that there was frantic speculation in the shares of these companies. However, if the Railway Mania is placed within its historical context it becomes rather more clear that it represented no more than a stage in an ongoing process, albeit in a highly excited state. By the early 1820s the advantages of railways over canals and roads and the potential of the steam locomotive were coming to be recognised. The railway was seen not simply as an adjunct to industrial activities, or as a short-distance feeder to a canal, but rather as an alternative to the canal for the long-distance transport of goods of every description and even of passengers. The commercial and industrial interests of the country were already interested in railway promotion as a means of improving the country's transport infrastructure before the Mania.