Our Railways and the New Outlook
The Economics of Rail Transport in Great Britain. Vol. I. History and Development. Vol. II. Rates and Service. By C. E. R. Sherrington, with a Foreword by Sir Guy Granet. (Arnold. 12s. Cd. each volume.) Tins is easily the most important work upon railway econ- omics in this country that has appeared for a generation. It would have done credit to Sir William Acworth, but it is doubtful whether even he, with all his ripe experience, could have given such a skilful blend of practical sagacity and patient and accurate research. As the first important work of so young an author, it should delight the heart of his father, our great physiologist, Sir Charles Sherrington, whose fame is world wide, and who would probably get greater pride and satisfaction from it than from any of his innumerable and cosmopolitan honours.
As Sir Guy Granet points out in a brief preface, Mr. Sherrington has had an unusual equipment for the task. On the theoretical and academic side, his work at Cambridge Cornell, and London has given him an adequate setting. In the practical field, during the war, he had first-hand experience of freight transport, and as Secretary to the Railway Research Service, working on behalf of the British Railways, he is in constant touch with realities at home and abroad, making reports on shunting yards, car retarders, and operating results, which are of immediate service to practical railway officials.
The two volumes are so arranged that they can be treated as separate and independent works. In the first, he deals with early history and development, as an essential pre- liminary to the comprehension of modern problems. Two brief introductory chapters are sufficient to bring us to an important new treatment of the subject, where in four chapters the history of the evolution of each of the great British systems may be studied. With the facts about the smaller antecedent companies thus grouped under their present form, the story, even to any who might have known of it in detail before, takes on a new interest and significance, and this piece of work is carefully and conscientiously done, with balance and due regard to the general proportions of the work. Chapters follow on the development of the permanent way, of the locomotive, of carriage design, and of wagon design, which cull the salient details from the latest technical papers and proceedings, and present the most up-to-date facts and tendencies in a readable and non-technical manner. Comment and criticism is restrained, but adequate for an appreciation of the trend of facts. Occasionally he permits himself an expression of personal opinion on a point of dispute, such as the undue tardiness with which in the past railways have utilized steel on a large scale. Final chapters treat of Government regulation from 1830 to the Railways Act of 1921. The author places due, but not undue, em- phasis upon the 1900 Taff Vale case as a source from which great streams took their rise. It was critical in the history of the Labour Party, but also gave rise to the demand for nationalization, which became " sublimated " in the Railways Act of 1921 after a long period of Government control. He does the Railways bare justice when he says that the effects of the Act would have been " far less strongly criticized if a period of trade prosperity had coincided with its advent rather than four years of trade depression," and he refrains from analysis of the economic situation created by a financial structure of fixed monetary values and rewards, in the centre of an economic society with fluctuating and altogether un- certain levels of monetary estimations.
So far, with ample bibliographies and practical appendices, Mr. Sherrington has been a competent researcher and narrator, giving us a valuable new compilation of value for reference and general information. (The effects of the Act of 1913 in altering the previous rating law, are not perhaps stated in a way to satisfy a legal mind or a rates expert, nor is the treat- ment under the 1921 Act of nominal capital not fully paid up, adequate for full understanding from an accounting point of view.)
But it is in the second volume that he really comes into his own with a full opportunity to use his distinctive experience and to show his peculiar quality. The treatment of the economic function of rail transport strikes only the broad lines ; the account of internal organization, with its foreign parallels, is interesting to the British reader who cannot find the facts, let alone the whys and wherefores, elsewhere. lie seizes the problem fully so far as it relates to internal depart- mental organization and control, but he does not realize the questions of degree involved, dependent on relative size, or even absolute magnitude, at the point of junction between the departments and the Board of Directors. Is the kind of link necessarily the same for two concerns, one of which is three times the size of the other ?
" Railway Finance " deals broadly with the capital figures set up upon the amalgamation and subsequent gross and net earnings, with occasional personal expressions of opinion, e.g., " The speculative element is not socially desirable in public utility finance, and the Boards (of the L.M.S. and G.W.R.), are highly to be commended for taking a strong stand against the splitting of shares." On p. 33, however, the average rates of interest or dividend paid per cent. of receipts from capital issued, 1913 and 1925, are given, and shown not to be mater- ially different, with the comment that " much capital which had little earning power in 1918 has since been eliminated," but as a matter of fact the capital eliminated for dividend purposes, does not affect the " capital receipts " which were left untouched.
The " Railways and the Trader " chapter gives a new and encouraging account of the results of Shippers (or Traders) Advisory Boards in the United States, and a strong hint that imitation of them here might well be carried further. Later sections deal with electric traction, railway statistics, road competition, and state ownership, but it is no disparagement to them to say that the chapters on the theory of Rates and Fares and upon Passenger train and Freight train operation are the greatest features of Mr. Sherrington's work. Space forbids a mention of more than a fraction of the new and important considerations which he has made available for the ordinary reader and student, and one must admire the skill he shows in presenting the counter-weighing factors in policy, so as to make the subject luminous to the newcomer and refreshing even to the practised operator. In his conclusion he strikes the true note that emphasis has now passed from public regulation, amalgamation and control of finance, to the study of operating efficiency and internal economy. The whole work is a clever and conscientious contribution to this new outlook and must take rank at the outset as standard in its own field.
J. C. STAMP.
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