LORD ASHFIELD ON LONDON TRAFFIC.
At Tuesday's meeting of the Underground Electrical Railways Company of London, Lord Aslifield again demon- strated very strikingly the small financial return which has been obtained by shareholders for the pluck and enterprise displayed in providing London with its great system of transit. The company at which Lord Ashfield was speaking is ,of course, the parent concern and is the holding company of the four Underground Railway companies and the London General Omnibus Company, in addition to which-there is the Associated- Equipment Company and the North Metropolitan Electric Power Supply. Thanks largely to activities in these directions and also to prosperity on some of the 'bus routes, the com- pany's financial position is steadily improving, but the ilia remains that the modest dividend of 14 per cent. recently declared on the Ordinary shares represents the first dividend ever paid on the Ordinary share capital. In other words, as Lord Ashfield said, " for about a quarter of a century an investment of £5,000,000 has been used in the service of the travelling public of Greater London, while the owners of these share's (averaging some 3,850 investors) have not received a single penny in return." And yet it is shown that whereas in 1908 the companies in which the Underground Electric Railways are interested carried 206 million passengers, the total had expanded last year to 1,842 million, an increase of 794 per cent.
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