27 APRIL 1907, Page 40

Twenty Years' Railway Statistics. (F. C. Mathieson and Sons. Is.)

—This is a 'useful little volume, containing information which the investor would do well to study. On the whole, the outlook is not encouraging. The set of the tide is against capital, and the railways are hit harder than anything else, except, perhaps, the, land. It is interesting to compare highest prices in 1899 with those of 1906 ; £1,000 (nominal) ordinary stock in the ten most important English railways (.8100 in each) was worth in the former year .91,627 2s. 6d, in the latter £1,190 12e. 6d. With local authorities screwing up the rates, the Unions raising the wages, and the working man demanding to be carried about at less than cost price, the decline must go on with accelerated speed. It cannot, for the time at any rate, be helped. Labour, long tyrannised over, is now the "upper dog," and imagines that it may do what it pleases.