The House of Commons on Monday gave a second reading,
by 146 votes to 141, to a Bill empowering the London and North-Western Railway Company to establish motor-services for the transport of goods by road, whether the 'goods had or had not been sent part of the way by rail. The Bill has excited much criticism, because it was said to foreshadow the intention of the railway companies, by unfair tactics, to crush the compe- tition of the road transport companies just as they crashed the competition of the canals. The action of Mr. J. H. Thomas in supporting the Bill caused suspicious people to foresee. a Labour plot to control all traffic, whether by road or by rail, so that in the next railwaymen's strike we should all be starved. Such forebodings are scarcely justified. Them is no real parallel between the case of the canals, which are necessarily monopolies, and the case of the roads, which are free to all. As firm believers in the virtue of open competition we should be inclined to say that the 'more road transport • we 'have the better.
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