It is constantly urged that it is better for cities and great towns to create tramway lines of their own, and work them within their own boundaries, and that the task of dealing with the rural interspaces should be left to the small towns and areas, and not to private enterprise. The opponents of this principle argue that one great objection to municipal trams is that they are compelled to work within artificial local boundaries, and that there are grave drawbacks to municipal trading in any form. As to the interspaces, to work them by themselves would never pay, and any interspaced tramway system would be almost useless without intimate connection with urban centres as feeders, which is only obtainable by the uniform control afforded under joint stock enterprise. Besides--say the objectors to municipal or rural council control--if private working is the most economical way of running tramways in interspaces, it should be still more economical in towns. Surely, therefore, there would be no hardship in restricting the development of urban and rural tramways to local authorities wielding power over areas of a certain size and importance, and the loss to small communities of the power of objection or veto to large schemes ought not to be felt by them. They and the landowners should take warning from the history of railways, and encourage in every way the introduction and extension of tramways, which in remote districts would vastly relieve the tedium of existence, enabling labourers and others to temporarily exchange some dull little village for the comparatively lively market town at a nominal cost. Whereas, in many instances, instead of welcoming this herald of a brighter and less monotonous life, too often is repeated the scene immortalised in _Punch_ some years ago. A brickfield: “Bill, who’s that chap?” “Do’ant know. A stranger, I should think.” “Then heave ’arf a brick at his ’ed.” Capitalists should be encouraged to embark in tramway enterprises that are bound to be beneficial to everybody, and in which they would be entitled to a fair return of interest; for truly the labourer is worthy of his reward. CHAPTER XIV _THE SHALLOW UNDERGROUND SYSTEM_ “Through the faithless excavated soil See the unweary’d Briton delves his way.” BLACKMORE. IN LONDON Hitherto we have been considering Metropolitan Electric Railways constructed at considerable depths below the surface, or lifted up on high, as at the Liverpool Docks. There is another system, however, and one that is strongly advocated by the London County Council, at present chiefly as a means of linking together existing tram lines by taking the cars underground through congested areas and bringing them to the surface again where the traffic is less dense.