SEASON TICKET RATES.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—It is not without trepidation that I venture to question the judgment of "Railwayman "—who knows but what I may be challenging the authority of Sir Herbert Walker himself—but I think your readers should be warned against accepting too readily the not unnatural inference that his message in the Spectator of the 15th inst. was ex cathedra when it contains internal evidence to show that it was in reality ex park. Like all good railwaymen he, no doubt, abhors any disturbance of existing relations with the public. The action of the Government in making working economies compulsory must have been regarded as positively Bolshevik, and the stipulation that dividends in future must depend upon efficiency an intolerable slight on the time-honoured institution he comes forward to champion.
But as one of those representatives of the public who were instrumental in removing the Season Ticket community from the solicitous guardianship of railway philanthropists, I really must protest against the suggestion that we did not know what we were asking for, and the very serious implication that the eminent legal advisers of the London County Council -were lacking both in foresight and intelligence. What leads him to this 'unfortunate aspersion is a misunderstanding of our motives. We did not seek uniformity on Season Ticket rates. We asked that the railways should be directed to observe a provision of the Railways Act which the Railway Rates Tribunal had the effrontery to tell the Groups it was they who had misunderstood, and to furnish at least a statutory maximum for a maximum which they had hitherto decided without external assistance. We were told that the existence of so many variations made such a Standard Rate impracticable, and it was therefore with feelings of unusual gratification that we heard the Companies' representative assure the Railway Rates Tribunal, after the impracticable had been decreed, that it would be their general policy, to continue any. Season Tickets issued for special reasons at exceptionally low rates. And for my part I have much less hesitancy in accepting the undertaking given In 'open Court by 'the gentleman who represented the Companies than some of our esteemed sup- porters in the Press, and accept" Railwayman's" assurance of the commercial astuteness of his colleagues without reserve.
Your correspondent's statethent that ordinary passengers' and Season Ticket rates were not increased "until some time after the War ended" is as reliable as his other assertions. Most of the readers he sets out to enlighten would remember that ordinary fares were increased 50 per cent. in January, 1917, and Season Ticket rates in May, 1918.-1 am, Sir, &c.,
"FIAT JUSTITIA RUAT COELUM."
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