THE NEW RAILWAY COMMISSION.
THE chief of the new Railway Commission has produced a mea- sure to shape the powers and functions of his own Board ; and the scheme is at once so extensive and so complicated, embracing everything great and small, from the whole iron network of the country to the painting of letters on railway carriages, that it challenges notice. The composition of the scheme is marked by diligence and ingenuity ; Mr. Strutt is resolved that the Com- mission shall have no sinecure ; and in some respects its activity is likely to be useful to the public. But, like many other mea- sures of the Government, it is open to the objection that it is en- tirely.empirical. Mr. Strutt enunciated no broad and general principles as the basis of his plan ;. and on a careful examination of it, we are not able to deduce any principles from the internal evidence. It appears to be a bundle of details arbitrarily com- piled into a measure ; not a plan originating in determinate prin- ciples and developed in legitimate details. We discern no security that the well-meant intention to be busy will not result in mis- chief almost proportionate to the diligence of the meddling.
The measure is divisible into two principal parts,—the rules for railway legislation ; and the laws for regulating the working of railways.
As to the former class, we are not sure how far the measure is the best that could have been devised for the interest of projec- tors. We incline to think that it will be a considerable improve- ment on the existing practices ; though not so great an improve- ment as a more thorough change would have been. This part of the subject must be regarded not solely from the point of view which would be taken by the railway companies, or by "the public," but also from the Parliamentary side. The most arduous difficulties of railway legislation consist in the nature of the le- gislating body. This remains substantially unaltered. Hereto- fore, the legislative function has virtually been exercised by the Select Committee of either House in turn, subject to the appellate power of the whole House, and aided by the consulting voice of the Railway Board. The same description will still apply. More duties will be thrown on the consulting board, while its powers and its responsibilities will be increased : it has a more substantive and effectual organization ; its paid servants are placed on a more sure footing of remuneration ; its proceedings, as we understand the statement, are no longer to be secret; it will have ample power to collect information of all sorts ; its reports are to be re- ceived primd facie as conclusive on certain classes of subjects ; and those who oppose the reports on matters of fact will do so under pain of loss, to the extent of the expenses for the further inquiry, if they fail to make out their case. There is a good deal of arbi- trary power " granted to the Board ; but much complaint on that score, we think, is ill supported by the show of substantial reasons. On the whole, this portion of the plan seems likely to expedite the passage of bills, tends to uniformity of legislation, and to the check- ing of corrupt abuses. It will not be so effectual to those ends as a thorough remodelling of the legislative tribunal would be—no tinkering can make the Railway Committees suitable or conveni- ent tribunals for superintending the development of the railway system ; but the strengthening of the consulting board with ini- tiatory powers tends pro tanto°to mitigate the bad effects. That the other portion of the scheme will be attended by useful results is much more doubtful. It goes upon the plan of a very extensive and minute official interference with the ordinary work- ing of railways. Now we make no sweeping objection to " inter- ference with private enterprise" ; for many reasons. In the first place, railway companies are institutions which, from their mag- nitude and the extent of their relations, possess only in a very partial degree the character of private enterprise. Next, they cannot exist without interference. As the whole face of the land is in possession of private persons, actuated by every conceivable motive, direct or merely perverse, the simple permission for a railway company to exist would not suffice for the existence of the railway ; because without receiving certain centralized powers delegated by the Government, the company could have no se- curity for obtaining possession of the requisite land—its very locus in quo—to say nothing of other powers that may be consi- dered essential. If the Government interferes for the railway company, it has the clearer right to interfere with the company. But the Government acts by a machinery so cumbersome, so coarse in its operation, so ill-adapted to vary its action with vary- ing circumstances, so feeble in its remote branches, that it always
i does best when it interferes as little as possible, and in as concen- trated a mode as possible ; acting only on principals, and through them on minors. In order, therefore, to secure no waste of action, no incidental mischief, it is desirable, before interfering, to settle what shall be the nature, scope, and limitation of the interference. Mr. Strutt does not say that any such preliminary work has been attempted ; and we discern no traces of it in the scheme.. In one part he may, at first sight, appear to discuss such a limitation ; but it will be seen that he assigns no reasons, and perhaps had none. In speaking of certain financial parts of railway affairs, he says that Ministers will not interfere to limit the amount of interest receivable by shareholders—their profits ; which is very reasonable. But he avows that, " in his opinion, the point for interference is the public tolls and fares." Why ? Why inter- fere to regulate receipts at all; why select that particular point as the one for interference ! Following the advice of the old judge to the junior, Mr. Strutt has guarded his judgment from criticism by omitting his reasons. It is evident that the Railway Commissioners have set about the task of interfering without having established any strictly logical reasons for the necessity, still less having determined what is true object of interference, what its province, or what its best mode.
It would not be at all difficult to establish distinct, clear, and intelligible grounds of interposition. As between the railway and the public at large—we mean the public not considered as railway passengers—it is the duty of the Government to inter- fere for purposes of police, to ascertain that no detriment is done by the railway to property, life, health, or comfort, in its neighbourhood. As between several railway companies, with joining lines and severed interests, whose perversities may be detrimental to each other and to public interests, the Govern- ment may interpose, because it is the legitimate holder of the ap- pellate jurisdiction—and a tribunal for arbitration is much wanted. As between the company and the railway-travelling public, the Government may enforce fulfilment of contract ex- press or implied, or the result of competition where competition itself is not enforced. Competition of railways in detail has proved, by experience, to be impractible :* with such vast re- sources, interests so clearly defined and so concentrated, railway companies always supersede competition by combination or amal- gamation. A well-conducted railway finds its true incentive to consult the interests of the public in the fact that " in the long run" the interests of the public and of railways are identical : the permanent interests of any railway must consist in that which gives the largest amount of profitable traffic ; and so do the permanent interests of the public, because anything short of profitable traffic is not conducive to permanency or efficiency of railways. But there may be ill-conducted railways : such rail- ways exist by the active help of the Government ; and if they forget their own duties and interests—become bad vassals—the Legislature has the right to confiscate their grant—to expose to competition by evoking rival lines into existence. That power intelligent statesmen would use sparingly, because it implies vast losses and waste—it is a kind of commercial war ; but it is an ultima ratio not to be forgotten, and most legitimately to be used on fit occasion. Besides such potent interference by a broad and general mode of action, the Government can also throw upon the working of railways the light of authentic information, by its reports, and by compelling full periodical returns—the log-books ofrailway companies. Mr. Strutt's measure is by no means confined to general modes of action, but on the contrary it commits Government to take an active share in the conduct of a railway in the minutest matters, down to the fixing of lights, the letter-painting on carriages, the regulation of speed, &c. Of course, Government must share the responsibility. Of course, if any mischief arise, Government and the railway company—the Commissioners and the railway understrappers—the policemen, stokers, and pointsmen—will be squabbling to shift the blame upon each other. We have already had experience on this matter. Let us take the instance of cheap trains. Government began by compelling railway companies to establish cheap trains— trains with fares below the market-rate. They were established ; but, in order that the cheap trains might not draw passengers from the trains whose fares were regulated by the market-value of travelling-accommodation, the cheap trains went very slowly. Government again interfered, to enforce a certain average rate.
it was also found by railway companies that the cheap trains going slowly were in the way of the fast trains. On some rail- mays—the London and Birmingham for instance—it requires the atm:lost attention, contrivance, and exactness, to arrange that the :trains shall get out of each other's way, such is the pressure of the traffic. It therefore became necessary to make the cheap trains go at the same rate as the others : but that was done at a considerable increase of expense, and also at the risk of a very illegitimate competition between carriages of the same company- aamely, those going at prices fixed by Government and those at .the market-price; and so, it appears, the expedient was adopted of reducing the speed of the cheap trains to the legal level by an alternation of stoppages with the rapid rushes. The traveller by the cheap train still enjoyed what the Legislature intended— the arrival at a certain distance by a certain time ; but he was exposed to irksome waitings. By the new measure there is to be a further interference : the cheap trains are to go at a uniform average rate. What are to be the further consequences of that compulsion, we will not conjecture. Whether the cheap trains will be suffered so to travel in spite of the pressure of baffle, with greatly increased chances of collision—whether „companies will consent to make room for them by abandoning ,.part of their market-value trains and their sources of revenue- -or whether they will at once make the cheap trains fast trains ,throughout—we do not know. We may observe, in passing, that • the object of this particular interference would be attained by a plan which has been suggested, of laying down double railways on each line, to separate the slow and the fast traffic; a result likely to be attained at no distant date, to the immense profit of all parties, if the resources, facilities, and direct inducements of the railway system were developed by intelligent encouragement. Such large and happy results are not promised by such retail in- terference as we have just been describing. Indeed, one does not see any end to it, or anything beyond a further entanglement in blunders. Nor is that a solitary instance, though it is one pecu- liarly distinct and intelligible to popular understanding. In fact, official machinery is not only cumbersome and ill adapted to the purpose, but the officials are ignorant of railway management in . detail, and when they step in to take it, in detail, out of the hands of the proper officers, their meddling can scarcely be other than mischievous. Nor, whether in retail or wholesale, can the inter- ference-be advantageous unless tits objects and its mode of work- ing be definitely settled at the commencement. On these grounds, we are forced to the conclusion, that the present measure, imposing. as it looks from its very complexity and aspect of ingenious painstaking, will prove neither final nor satisfactory ; that its changes will be but a step to further changes ; and that not long hence we shall have Mr. Strutt or somebody else coming forward with a new crop of grievances cla- mouring for remedy.
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