HKB
cars increased from year to year. Dispatch won its way to popularity in Ireland as elsewhere, and Bianconi lived to see all the cross-posts in Ireland arranged on his system.
The postage authorities frequently used the cars of Bianconi as a means of competing with the few existing mail-coaches. For instance, they asked him to compete for carrying the post between Limerick and Tralee, then carried by a mail-coach. Before tendering, Bianconi called on the contractor, to induce him to give in to the requirements of the Post Office, because he knew that the postal authorities only desired to make use of him to fight the coach proprietors. But having been informed that it was the intention of the Post Office to discontinue the mail-coach whether Bianconi took the contract or not, he at length sent in his tender, and obtained the contract.
He succeeded in performing the service, and delivered the mail much earlier than it had been done before. But the former contractor, finding that he had made a mistake, got up a movement in favour of re-establishing the mail-coach upon that line of road; and he eventually induced the postage authorities to take the mail contract out of the hands of Bianconi, and give it back to himself, as formerly. Bianconi, however, continued to keep his cars upon the road. He had before stated to the contractor, that if he once started his cars, he would not leave it, even though the contract were taken from him. Both coach and car therefore ran for years upon the road, each losing thousands of pounds. "But," said Bianconi, when asked about the matter by the Committee on Postage in 1838, "I kept my word: I must either lose character by breaking my word, or lose money. I prefer losing money to giving up the line of road."
Bianconi had also other competitors to contend with, especially from coach and car proprietors. No sooner had he shown to others the way to fortune, than he had plenty of imitators. But they did not possess his rare genius for organisation, nor perhaps his still rarer principles. They had not his tact, his foresight, his knowledge, nor his perseverance. When Bianconi was asked by the Select Committee on Postage, "Do the opposition cars started against you induce you to reduce your fares?" his answer was, "No; I seldom do. Our fares are so close to the first cost, that if any man runs cheaper than I do, he must starve off, as few can serve the public lower and better than I do."[3]
Bianconi was once present at a meeting of car proprietors, called for the purpose of uniting to put down a new opposition coach. Bianconi would not concur, but protested against it, saying, "If car proprietors had united against me when I started, I should have been crushed. But is not the country big enough for us all?" The coach proprietors, after many angry words, threatened to unite in running down Bianconi himself. "Very well," he said, "you may run me off the road--that is possible; but while there is this" (pulling a flower out of his coat) "you will not put me down." The threat merely ended in smoke, the courage and perseverance of Bianconi having long since become generally recognised.