Government, through the Ministry of Reconstruction, all favour such a colossal merging of what may be termed the vital industries and utility services of the country. The iron and steel magnates and the engineering interests foresee a tremendous effort of renewal, reconstruction and extension of railways, canals, etc., in the pursuit of national efficiency.
The costliness of the effort and the length of time required for the execution of the original railways and canals can best be appreciated by comparing the tools and blasting materials available in the "forties" and to-day. Long and ill-ventilated tunnels, deep cuttings, high embankments and viaducts were then the result of prodigious toil and patience, which it is all too easy to under-rate. Our existing canal system was the last great achievement of an industrial technique devoid of the machine and relying solely upon the wood and iron tool. The railways stand between the period of manufacture and that of machino-facture. The displacement of hand drill, crowbar, pick and shovel by the rock-boring machine-drill operated by compressed air or electricity, the steam navvy and the high-force water blast; the supersession of gunpowder by dynamite, blastite, guncotton, cordite, and other powerful charges have made gigantic schemes for docks, railway lines and canals very much easier to take in hand. The colossal quantities of explosives required by public contractors and engineers laid the foundation of a technical and financial community of interest between these and the powder and chemical manufacturers. These latter, as we have already shown, are now associated with the metal refineries, blast furnace owners and coke-oven operators, whilst the former have inter-locking connections of a similar nature with structural steel makers, crane, caisson, pumping machine builders and heavy engineers.
In the near future we are likely to see the commencement of huge canal schemes, of harbour works, and of vast schemes of railway and tramway reconstruction and re-organisation. These projects will find a use for the huge quantities of high explosives which the war developments will have made it possible and desirable to produce, and will afford employment for tens of thousands of men who have lost their old occupations, have been ousted by the machine, and are accustomed to the rough and tumble of navvy life in the trenches.
Not only will the military explosives and armament contractors thus find another opportunity of serving their grate-
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