Alluding to this, Mr. C. T. Yerkes, at the inauguration, significantly remarked that it was a strange fact that London was particularly behind in transportation, being the most backward of all cities. Though during the last twenty years in London, 900 miles of streets had been made, and 340,000 houses had been built, it was only within the past few years that intramural transportation had been even spoken of. The London United Tramway Company, he said, expected to join very intimately with the Metropolitan District, forming a continuous line to Hampton Court from the City; and they anticipated connecting with the Great Northern, Brompton, and Piccadilly Circus Railway. People would be carried very cheaply, and when the District was electrified the mileage rates would be abolished in favour of uniform fares, which were far the best. Poor people who were living in an unenviable condition should have the chance of getting into the country. On the much-debated question of American capital and American enterprise in Great Britain,[6] Mr. Speyer spoke no less to the point. He said that those who undertook to provide the metropolis with an up-to-date system of locomotion should be encouraged, for they performed a task that should have been done twenty years ago. English capital had had every opportunity of investment in underground lines, and if only half of the five millions had been subscribed in this country it was not the fault of the promoters. They would have preferred that the Underground Company should have English shareholders only, but unfortunately they had had to allot half of the shares of the Company to Americans and foreigners. One would have thought, he said, that there would have been more keenness in London to build its own underground railways, which would so materially add to the well-being of the masses. If either of the proposed lines were situated in South Africa, Australia, or Klondyke, London investors would have been tumbling over each other to subscribe. But the fault of these lines was that they were at our own doors. It was a fact, incredible though it might seem, that the richest city in the world did not appear able or willing to provide the funds for what was really a public necessity--_quicker transit_. So let them hear nothing more of American invasion, if people here stood with folded arms and allowed others to do the work which they ought to have done themselves; for while they persisted in this _non possumus_ attitude, no one could blame the Company if they went elsewhere. CHAPTER XIII _PROVINCIAL TRAMWAYS_ “They shall measure to their cities round about.”--DEUTERONOMY xxi. 2. THE LIGHT RAILWAYS ACT OF 1896 In the year 1896 an Act of Parliament was passed which, it is no exaggeration to say, revolutionised tramway locomotion, and was destined to produce consequences undreamt of by the promoters of the measure.