After the early companies had got their Acts and obtained their land they still, as railway pioneers, had to bear the expense of some very costly experiments, of which railways constructed at a later date had the advantage. The idea that the locomotive would be able to haul trains only on the level involved much unnecessary expenditure on engineering works, while the battle of the gauges led to a prodigious waste of money alike in Parliamentary proceedings and in the provision of lines, embankments, cuttings, bridges and viaducts adapted to a broad gauge eventually abandoned in favour of the narrower gauges now in general use. The facts here mentioned will have given the reader some idea of the conditions under which the railways so greatly needed in the interests of our national industries were handicapped from the very outset by an unduly heavy expenditure; but there were still other influences and considerations which materially affected the general position, more especially as regards questions and consequences of State policy towards the railway system in general. {258}CHAPTER XXI RAILWAYS AND THE STATE From the earliest moment of there being any prospect of railways, operated by locomotives in place of animal power, coming into general use, the attitude of the State towards their promoters was one less of sympathy than of distrust; and this distrust was directly due to the experience the country had already had of the waterway interests, whose merciless exactions and huge dividends had led to the fear that if the railway companies, in turn, were to get a monopoly of the transport facilities of the country, they might follow in the footsteps of the inland navigation companies unless they were restrained either by law or by the enforcement of the principle of competition. Public sentiment, which Parliament is assumed to represent, and of which our legislation is supposed to be the outcome, was divided between, on the one hand, the landed gentry, the canal proprietors (each alike hostile to the railways until they found they had more to hope for from exploiting them), and the inevitable opponents of innovations of any kind; and, on the other hand, the traders, by whom the railways were being cordially welcomed, not only because of the greater and better transport facilities they offered, but also because they presented an alternative to the canals, the earlier enthusiasm for which had been greatly moderated by the prospect of an improved means of transport.