TRANSPORTATION AND WASTE.
THE compelling argument for the Ministry of Ways and Communications Bill, which was explained by Sir Eric Geddes in a remarkable speech on Monday, Is that no one can suggest a practicable alternative. We are all for private enterprise where it is manifestly efficient and successfuL Experience has taught us, as we have said elsewhere in regard to the proposed nationalization of the coal-mines, to distrust State management. We have seen during the war how extra vagant and wrong- headed Government officials can be when they meddle with industries which they do not understand. Neverthe- less, if we put aside these general considerations, and ask ourselves bluntly whether the railways can revert to their former condition as private undertakings, we are bound to answer that they cannot. The railways, as Sir Eric Geddes told the House, are being ran at a loss of nearly £100,000,000 a year. The taxpayer is meeting that enor- mous deficit. The shareholders receive the average dividends of about 4 per cent, which they had before the war, while the railwaymen have had an increase of wages far exceeding the total revenue of the railways in 1914, and are still unsatisfied. The outlook for the companies as private undertakings is therefore absolutely hopeless. If they doubled their rates, they could not make ends meet ; but any increase of railway rates, which are already too high, is virtually impossible. Wages cannot be reduced ; coal and all materials are dear, and will not be cheaper for a long time to come. The only prospect of reducing the deficit lies in drastic reorganization. This implies unified control, and as it is unthinkable that the control of a Railway Trust could be left in the hands of a few private persons, there is nothing f or it but unified control in the hands of the Government. The task is too big for a mere branch of the Board of Trade, which has never shown much interest in railway questions. A separate Ministry to deal with the railways is clearly desirable. But, having reached this point, we may go a step farther and consider whether the new Minister should not also control the roads and the canals, which supplement the railways, and the docks, which feed and are fed by the railways, the roads, and the canals—whether, in fact, he should not take all transport- ation for his province. On the whole, we think he should.
Transportation in the sense of "means of conveyance" is, 88 Sir Eric Geddes said, a term which we have borrowed from America. But, like America, we have failed so far to grasp its full significance. We have no transportation policy ; we have no one who is responsible for framing such a policy. We have emerged from the war with bankrupt railways, bankrupt canals, docks and harbours which can only continue to pay a modest interest on capital by increasing their dues, and roads which have deteriorated greatly and require costly repairs and im- provements. It is not the business of any Department to grapple with this problem, although the welfare of the nation depends to a large extent upon its communications. In such circumstances the creation of a new Ministry which will deal with transportation as a whole must be productive of benefit. We are particularly impressed with the possibilities of the railways under unified control. It is admitted that the system existing before the war was .wasteful to a degree. It has been said, perhaps with some amount of exaggeration, that every truck was standing idle for ninety-eight days out of every hundred. At any rate the seven hundred thousand trucks belonging to private traders, and forming half of the total number in the country, spent much of their time on the sidings, where they were used as storehouses, or were hauled empty for long journeys because they might not be used for ordinary merchandise. This is one example of the kind of waste which went on. Again, the competition between the railways for traffic, and especially for long- distance traffic, led to such abuses as that mentioned by Sir Eric Geddes, under which "goods for Northern markets were deliberately influenced to a Southern port la order to get the haul over the railway," though the goods might have been landed close to their destination. The railways, that is to say, were doing much unnecessary work in order to earn revenue, but the tinder and the consumer were suffering. Different companies, again, used different types of brake, so that trucks passing from one line to another had to be fitted with dual brakes A standard pattern of brake for the whole country would have saved this additional expenditure, but it was no one's duty to impose it on the rival companies. At the terminals owned by Dock and Harbour Boards the railway companies might complain of insufficient accommodation for their traffic, but they could not insist on improvements. Sir Eric Geddes suggested that this was one reason why the larger wagon used in America had not been adopted in Great Britain. We need not labour the point. It is evident that, given an efficient and experienced staff, the railways might be managed more economically under unified control than they are at present. If electric traction, operated from central supply stations, were introduced on the main lines, it is conceivable that the working expenses might be reduced. Sir Eric Geddes, who himself adopted electric traction with much success on the North-Eastern Railway's Tyneside branches and sold the surplus power to the local works, suggested that the plan might be tried in other districts. It is certainly a reason for placing electric-power stations under the control of the Ministry, and it oilers a prospect of reducing the consumption of coal. "We are not rich now," said the Minister, "we are poor." That is a fact which many people have yet to realize. We can no longer afford to be wasteful in our railway management or elsewhere.
For our part, we think that the future lies even more with the road than with the railway. The tremendous potentiality of the motor-lorry has been revealed to those who served in France, but is still imperfectly appreciated in this country. Most people have read of the reinforce- ments which reached General Maunoury in taxicabs during the critical early days of September, 1914. But it was the motor-lorry that saved Verdun in the spring of 1916. When the Paris-Verdun railway was interrupted by the enemy's fire, the French organized an endless chain of motor-lorries taking reinforcements, munitions, and stores to the hard-pressed defenders of the ridges. One lorry followed another at an interval of a few yards, and the procession was maintained day and night till the engineers had had time to build new railways. It was a striking revelation of what the motor-lorry could do on a tolerably good road. We need hardly add that the motor- lorry has been an invaluable adjunct to our Army Service Corps, and that without it the war could scarcely have been carried on by either side, as the troops would have starved and the guns would have stood idle for lack of shells. The tank of the immediate future is to adapt the motor- lorry to the needs of peace. We are glad to see that Sir Eric Geddes, dismissing with contempt the light railways of the old type and the little Decauville railways which have been much used in the fighting zone, declared that we must look to the development of motor traction for our agricultural areas. The War Office owns vast numbers of motor-lorries which might be employed to good purpose in the country districts. If the farmer could send his produce to market by a regular motor- lorry service, he could afford to sell it more cheaply and the townsfolk would benefit. But the widespread use of motor-lorries would necessitate a reconstruction and widening of many main roads and the improvement of many secondary roads. It is difficult to see how the Local Authorities could meet the cost without receiving larger State grants, and this must mean an increased measure of State control. Still, Sir Eric Geddes, if he is prudent, will endeavour to find a middle way between undue centralization and the very large measure of freedom which the county Highway Authorities enjoy. It is well to encourage those County Councils which take a pride in their good roads. Local management under central supervision is the principle to aim at, if we are in the near future to have, as we ought to have, a really good system of roads comparable with those of France.
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