PUBLIC OWNERSHIP AND THE MEANS OF LOCOMOTION.
ANY one who takes the trouble to look through the files of the Spectator would find that a few years back we congratulated the London County Council on their enterprise in starting a steamboat service on the Thames. It may seem inconsistent, therefore, that we should now congratulate the same authority on the abandonment of the scheme which we then welcomed. It may, indeed, be argued that public bodies should never try experiments, and in that case our original advice was plainly wrong. Whether the Thames steamers would pay was all along an open question, and if the fact that it was so put it outside the province of the County Council, the barges and their tugs should have been left in undisputed possession of the river., It seemed to us, however, that there were possi- bilities of public service, if not of public profit, in the proposal to provide Londoners with an alternative mode of locomotion. Private enterprise had sought more than once to do the same thing, but never on a scale large enough to make the experiment decisive, and when the County Council came forward to renew it, it was possible to think that the success which one company after another had failed to obtain might be secured by a public authority. As it proved, the calculation left two elements out of account. The competition with the various land services was severe already, and was on the eve of becoming more so. The one element of superiority in the steamer over the tram and the motor-'bus was that it was pleasanter,— pleasanter because the air the passenger breathed was fresher, and because the prospect that met his eye was more agreeable. But this superiority only exists in fine weather. It is not realised when rain drives the traveller into a close and crowded cabin, or when an impenetrable fog shuts out the banks on either side. The public soon discovered that the Thames was only fitted to be a high- way when the sun shone and the wind was warm, and during the winter the County Council boats sometimes made their journeys without a single passenger. Nor was the obvious way of meeting this difficulty as easy as might have been supposed. Even the management of a river steamer requires some experience, and if the captains and crews had to be sent about their business in the autumn, there was no certainty of recovering them in the spring. What happened in these conditions we know. The service was carried on at a very heavy sacrifice, and as soon as this was discovered the reason for persevering with it disappeared. What might fairly have been done out of the rates if the ratepayers could have been completely protected against loss ceased to be permissible when Londoners generally were forced to contribute to what at best was the luxury of a few. The limitations of municipal enterprise seem to be that the service rendered should be substantial, that it is shared by every one, that it is not likely to be rendered by private enterprise, and that it will not be a burden on the com- munity. Those of us who thought that the Thames steamers would satisfy these conditions were quickly un- deceived, though, as public bodies are hard to move,-the County Council have been longer in coming to the same conclusion.
A somewhat similar experiment, though of far larger proportions, seems now to be in the air. Mr. Hardy's Resolution had, it is true, its sting drawn by the mover's acceptance of Mr. Lloyd-George's amendment at the close of Tuesday's debate in the House of Commons. From being a proposal to consider how far the complaints
of traders and others can be remedied by the State purchase of the railways, it has become a proposal to consider how far they can be remedied by any change in the existing relations between the railways and the State. An inquiry of this kind may, of course, lead up to a scheme of State purchase. But that the result may conceivably be one which we should regard as mischievous is not a conclusive reason against making a thorough examination of the state and prospects of railway enterprise. Inquiries by Royal Commissions seldom take a revolutionary course, and the refusal to enter upon one is only reasonable when there is no cause to be dissatisfied with the present order of things. It will hardly be contended that we are now in this happy position. The complaints of traders at home against the preference alleged to be given to traders abroad in the matter of rates are loud and continuous, and they have at least a prima-facie justification. It may be true, as Mr. Bonar Law said on Tuesday, that rates levied are not really preferential, and that the reason why the foreign producer gets his goods carried to their English destination for less than the home producer has to pay is not that he is a foreigner, but that he sends them in larger quantities, and at a consequent reduction in the necessary cost of transport. But this explanation is denied by equally competent authorities, and certainly it is not accepted by those who feel the pinch of the shoe. Where large interests are involved a point of this kind should not be left in obscurity, and an inquiry by a Royal Commission is the natural and ordinary way of making matters clearer. There is another aspect of the question to which Mr. Lloyd- George justly attaches great importance. We are coming, he thinks, to the end of that epoch of competition from which the public has often been the gainer, and railway shareholders have invariably been the losers. There is something rather ominous in the various agree- ments and concentrations of which we read. from time to time. No one can deny that the present railway arrange- ments are often needlessly costly, and that the passengers and goods which two companies now carry in competition might be carried very much more cheaply if the companies worked in combination. But it is plain that this is only one side of the story, and that a mutual arrange- ment greatly to the advantage of the shareholders might be effected at great cost and inconvenience to travellers and traders. If combination is about to take the place of competition as the principle of railway enterprise, the public will want to discover whether the State can give them any adequate protection, and in what direction this protection may most naturally be looked for. Undoubtedly State protection may take a form which we should regard as mischievous ; but the fact that the result of an inquiry is uncertain is not an adequate reason for declining to enter upon it. However advantageous a system of com- petition may have been to the public, it has been disastrous to railway shareholders, and it is useless to expect them to go on with it when once they have discovered this for themselves. The wonder really is that they have been so long in finding it out. On the other hand, it is equally useless to expect the community to allow the railways to retain the exceptional position they hold without taking some precautions against its abuse. In such a conflict of interests as this there is ample material for investigation, and even those who have the most opposite ideas as to what the result of the inquiry will be may be of one mind as to the propriety of holding it.
The opponents of the nationalisation of railways have, no doubt, to contend against the general adoption of the system on the Continent of Europe. Mr. Lloyd-George ran through a list of countries in which railways are wholly or in part owned by the State, and he drew an attractive picture of the effect of this system on their Exchequers. Russia draws forty per cent, of her revenue from the State railways, and the main part of the revenue of Saxony comes from the same source. In Germany the railways "have been used as an instru- ment for the development of German industry," and it has proved, in Mr. Lloyd-George's judgment, "a much more formidable weapon than tariffs." But this last argument may have a double application. To the Tariff Reformer it may seem to make conclusively in favour of the nationalisation of railways. The Free-trader will rather be inclined to distrust the miring up of politics and trade which may easily result from making railway management a part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's financial proposals. If railways belong to the State, the State will have to weigh the relative claims of the public and the Exchequer. Cheap fares and cheap rates for goods will have their non-official advocates, while the Treasury will naturally regard the receipts from the railways as an indis- pensable contribution to the public expenditure. In this way the House of Commons will from time to time be trans- formed into a meeting of shareholders, with the additional excitement of being also a deputation of traders. This is on the assumption that the State railways will always be worked at a profit. But the State will have no greater interest in compassing this end than private shareholders have already ; and we know that, keen as this interest is, it has not always brought about the desired result. Mr. Perks, who argued the whole question with great force on Tuesday, reminded the House that during the last thirty years one of the underground railways in London has "carried more than the entire population of the globe without the proprietors receiving one single sixpence in return." If the railway had been worked by the Board of Trade instead of by a Board of Directors, a good deal of Parliamentary time would have been wasted in debating how this deficit was to be met, and to some of us it seems that of Parliamentary time we have none to spare. Foreign Parliaments are not quite in the same position. In them there is less demand for legislation, and less opportunity for the airing of public grievances. To saddle the House of Commons with all the burdens associated with the ownership of railways would be a singular way of meeting that need for further devolution of work of which we hear so often. Nor does the recent controversy between the railways and their employes create any great desire to see the conduct of similar negotiations transferred to the Government in the character, not of a deusex machind, but of an interested party. While Mr. Bell was fighting the companies we could at least find consolation in the knowledge that the Government and Parliament were behind both. When the Government and Parliament take the place of the companies the Amalgamated Society may develop fresh powers of getting its own way. Nor should it be forgotten that the increase in the revenue which Mr. Lloyd-George holds out as following upon the purchase of the railways by the State will be accompanied by two inconvenient consequences. One is an enormous increase in the National Debt. Whatever interest the railways may pay in the course of working, the share- holders will have to be bought out by a capital sum. Another is the probable lowering of the standard of railway service. It is matter of common knowledge that the Continental railways give their passengers, especially their third-class passengers, very much less for their money than English railways give theirs, while the delivery of goods is subject to many more delays. Is it not possible that the explanation of this difference is in part to be found in the fact that the Continental railways are controlled by the State, while the English railways are controlled by private companies ? Let us inquire into the present condition of our railways by all means, but do not let us approach the question with any predisposition in favour of a conclusion to which to all appearance the whole weight of argument is opposed.
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