Competition having already raged around the question of speed, and having introduced unwonted luxuries in travelling, turned next to the more deadly form of rate-cutting. In 1834 the coach-proprietors on three great routes were engaged in this game of Beggar-my-neighbour. In that year the fares to Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester fell to less than half their former price, and it was possible to travel to Birmingham for 20s. inside and 10s. out, or to Liverpool or Manchester for 40s. inside or 20s. out. They had little chance of being raised again, for, by the time the weaker men had been crushed out of existence, the railways were threatening the whole industry of coaching. But reducing the fares by one-half was not always the last word in these bitter contests. There was a period on the Brighton Road when one might have been carried those 52 miles in 6 hours for 5s., with a free lunch and wine at the end of the journey and your money returned if the coach did not keep its time. The “Golden Age,” indeed! At this period, when the long-distance coaching business was so severely cut up, those proprietors who served the districts surrounding London did exceedingly well. Coaching annals are almost silent on the subject of these suburban coaches, for, being drawn by only two horses, they were regarded by the four-in-hand artists with contempt. It has thus, in the absence of available information, often puzzled inquiring minds in the present generation to understand how the heavy passenger traffic was conducted between London and the outlying towns and villages within a radius of twenty miles. Those districts were served by these “short stages,” as they were called--coaches drawn by two horses, and making two or more journeys each way daily. There was an incredibly large number of these useful vehicles, which were in relation to the mails and fast long-distance coaches what the suburban trains are to the expresses in our own day. The ordinary coach-proprietors had rarely anything to do with these conveyances, which came to and set out from a number of obscure inns and coach-offices in all parts of the City and the West End.