The superintendent of the Great. North of Scotland Railway, which
servea a, sparsely populated district, told the Board that the company had to engage 554 additional men under the eight-
hour day scheme. At certain stations the wages had bees quadrupled. Three signal-boxes, which used to coat £188 year, now cost £873. There were so few trains that the signal. men had to spend part of their eight hours in cultivating their cabbages. But signalmen who had not to deal with a train an hour were put on the same footing as signalmen who had twenty times as much work to do. Everyone who knows the Highlands can see the absurdity of applying to their railways the same hard and fast rules about wages and hours of labout as are fitting on a busy London or Lancashire railway. But the railwaymen's leaders seem to be afraid of admitting any excep- tions to rules which must inevitably make the Scottish railways bankrupt and which, by preventing any reduction of rates, are already hampering the coal and steel industries in Scotland.
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