MR. LLOYD GEORGE'S ANTI-FREE-TRADE RAILWAY POLICY.
[To THE EDITOR or THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—It will be within the recollection of your readers that after the railway strike troubles some two years ago Mr. Lloyd George suggested that the Free-trade or competitive policy in English railways, which bad lasted from the time of Sir Robert Peel, was out of date, and the time bad come for union and co-operation prior to the State acquisition of the whole. Some of the companies naturally seized eagerly on this dictum of the Minister of a so-called Free-trade Govern- ment, and proceeded to accept with joy the new idea that the trouble of competition was to cease, and that they were to be in a firmer position vis-a-vis the consumer than ever. Great railway combines were formed in Scotland and England, and the Press carefully worked so as to pretend that the public were to benefit enormously. The South. Eastern and Chatham Railway was apparently to be the guiding beacon for this amazing lapse into Protection.
It naturally suited the railways to Bay that competition was "excessive." Competition always is " excessive " from the producer's point of view. The consumer or public, on the other hand, as Bastiat points out, ought to be represented by a State Minister. We are now at the end of the first six months of the new policy. The accounts show, it is true, that savings have been made in most companies. But at whose expense? All the reports tell the same 'story : the amino aro in (I) wages and stores, which means less labour employed ; and (2) train mileage, which means less facilities to the public. You cannot eat your cake and have it. Meanwhile, since a Free-trade Government have discouraged competition, which, in other words, means fresh enterprise,
there are practically no new railway schemes before Parlia- ment. Surely all this is an inevitable result of the new Socialism which has taken the place of the old much- abused Free-trade Liberalism, and may be a warning to working men not to rush too hastily into the theory that State interference is certain to be to their ultimate advantage.-1 am, Sir, &c., A FOSSIL.
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