RAILWAYS.*
MOST of us take for granted the vast services rendered every day by the railways which carry us or our food and goods so regularly. But strikes and a Railway Commission have lately aroused a special interest in problems of policy, and perhaps stimulated the output of books on railway matters. Mr. Steel's History of the London and North-Western Railway' is, however, mainly a record of facts. It is an illustrated story of magnificent enterprise, traced from the days of the Staphensons' experiments to the enormous system of to-day. In spite of prejudice and Government interference, the com- pany or companies steadily advanced to prosperity, and probably did more by act and example for their country's general progress in Victorian times than any other com- mercial body in the world_ Another matter-of-fact illustrated book is Lord Monkswell's The Railways of Great Britain.' The author was plainly one of those who are fascinated in boy- hood by the manner and means by which they travel, and he has intelligently developed his inquiries after knowledge. The mechanical development of locomotive power and the technical side of signalling, for example, evidently interest him most, but he finds romance in the power and speed displayed. He thinks our railway managers rather poor-spirited in the timing of their expresses, since he prefers a speed up to eighty miles an hour on a clear line. His arguments against nationalization are moderate and sound. The only fault we have to find with this interesting and comprehensive survey is in the arrangement. The book is divided geographically, but in each portion there are large general digressions which do not apply especially to east or west or north, and Lord Monkswell jumps disconcertingly to and from details of a particular line and principles of universal application. The • (I) The Ilietory of the London and North-Western Railway. By W. L. Steel. London: The Raihray and Travel Monthly. [7s. Ild.]— (2) The Railways of Great Britain. By Lord MookswelL London Smith, Elder, and Co. [ea. British Railmays. By W. R. Lamm= London: Constable and Co [ie. net.]—(4) Mm and Rails. By B. Kenney. London: T. Fisher Gamin. 16.. net.]—(5) Outlines of Railway Economics. By D. Snoop. London: Macmillan and Co. [5s. net.]—(5) The Case for Railway Nationalisation. By E. Davis.. Loudon : Collins's Clear Type Press. [le. net.1—(7) n. Cass against Railway Rationalisation. By E. A. Pratt. Same publiehers and prim. —(8) The Autobiography of an Indiridualist, By JO. Fag= London: Con. Stable and Co. [ts. net.]
hasty reader might sometimes wonder whether, for example, " pressure " is that of a Trade Union or of super-heated steam, or whether a " temper " is that of any goods manager or of a bull-headed steel rail.
Mr. Lawson calls his British Railways' a "financial and commercial study." He presents a review of statistics and principles from early days until now, when he thinks a general survey desirable because steam is giving way to electricity. Here he is hastier than Lord Monkswell, who believes that for long-distance traction steam will hold the field for many years. Mr. Lawson has a vigorous and effective style, though it sometimes takes a carping tone. But his temper is mild compared with that of Mr Kenney in his Men and Rails,' which is written solely from the point of view of the lower ranks of railwaymen. Only when he restrains his violence can we admit that behind a good deal of ignorance some of his arguments have a certain force. He was employed for four years on three lines before moving on to journalism. He has nothing good to say for the companies who created the employment, nor for the public, nor for auch farces as impartial Conciliation Boards which do not inevitably act in the men's favour. Mr. Knoop has published some lectures as Outlines of Railway Economies? This is a somewhat dry book which explains elementary economics and passes on to details of railway rates and expenditure. It has interest for the public, and should help railwaymen towards clear thinking, for it connects the maze of details, with which they deal, with various guiding principles and economic laws. His analytical comparison of British and Prussian rates and methods is favourable to us, and his final conclusion is dead against nationalization. Two well-known literary protagonists for and against nationalization, Mr. Davies and Mr. Pratt, have condensed their cases in handy volumes of a shilling series." To our mind, Mr. Pratt deserves the verdict. He certainly deals convincingly with the points which are cleverly mar- shalled by Mr. Davies, and he gives the impression of having a surer case. In face, Mr. Davics's manner makes it difficult not to be prejudiced against his theories. For instance, in his first sentence he writes of the "amateur" conduct of our railways This sounds like a plausible sneer, but it means nothing. Convert railwaymen into politicians or bureaucrats, or convert politicians into railwaymen, and how in the world do you diminish amateurishness ? Again, a casual reader might gather from the same page that most of our Colonies have "taken over" private systems, a very different thing from building them, because capital could not be found unless interest was secured upon the taxes. With Mr. Kenney, Mr. Davies revels in abuse of the companies for their mistakes. The fact that ten per cent. was the rate of dividend expected of the early railways from the precedents they established proves that in the most difficult sphere of all they were successfully managed. It is plain that the ablest men of the day worked at the problems, and they made remarkably few mistakes. These pioneers were accustomed to carriage by road and canal, and such novelties as the Surrey Iron Railway, a toll-taking company which laid lines from Wandsworth to Croydon on which people might place their horse-drawnvehieles (one of the iron rails has lately been acquired for the Surrey Archaeological Society's Museum at Guildford, as of antiquarian interest). They naturally adopted the methods and rates of roads and canals, and the astonishing thing is the amount of confident originality they showed rather than the lack of pre- vision as to the future of railway and steam development. But, in any case, what weight have the mistakes of the past in favour of nationalization ? Conceive its opponents writing books of detailed enumeration of the errors of State and municipal trading as arguments against nationalization; imagine the bulk and apparent strength of the case ! All such writing may be entirely disregarded, as adding nothing at all to the argument. We are content to remember that, as a general rule, where public authorities have taken over private enterprises, the result has been extravagance, inefficiency, and stagnation, with an accumulation of ill-effects upon the enter- prise, the authorities, and their employees. We need not here go into the details of the political corruption directly due to the nationalization of railways elsewhere. And as for the efficiency of governing bodies, we need not go further than to the opinions of a nationalizer, Mr. Kenney, upon the "purblind" and "ridiculous" Board of Trade, a "department of traitors to labour and the nation."
Ignorance and restlessness are undoubtedly allowing or leading people to think more of nationalization. We trust that the Royal Commission will not feel that it need make no pronouncement on the subject, but will speak out plainly. Prussia and Australia are usually the examples cited for us to follow. Their cases are entirely different from ours. Prussia looks to her railways for military and trade purposes. She constructed some for these purposes, and took over others to complete the system. They were much more cheaply built for reasons of physical geography. The myth that they contribute 00,000,000 a year in relief of taxation is based on the mere difference between receipts and working expenses. The real sum is proved by Mr. Pratt to be between seven and eight millions on the average. On the other hand, British railways contribute nearly eight millions, according to Mr. Lawson—i.e., over five millions in local rates and taxes, with the Passenger Duty (by another pleasant "injustice" this is not levied in Ireland) and the Income Tax on dividends; a portion of these last is again paid in rates by individual share- holders. Yet the nationalizees expect more for social reform. Like the Tariff Reformers, who used to expect a large revenue from duties on the goods which were to be kept out of the country by the tariffs, the nationalizers expect a vast increase of expenditure in wages, a great reduction of rates and fares, and a huge surplus for the Government to spend beyond interest on national railway stock. To deny that en nilo nil fit is sanity compared with this ! Then it is pointed out that some third-class fares in Prussia are cheaper than the British penny a mile. Mr. Pratt believes that, with return fares, excursion fares, and workmen's trains, the English average is nearer a halfpenny a mile. Apart from that, there is no com- parison with the service given. The Prussian fares mean hard wooden seats on trains that stop at every station and luggage extra. These fares were revised in 1904, again in 1909, and also increased by a Ticket Tax imposed in 1906. There is no such combination of speed, comfort, and cheapness as the Parlia- mentary fare gives on a British express. As for goods, the comparisons with Prussia are falsified by the fact that the English charges often include such things as collection and prompt delivery, which the companies have, wisely or unwisely, undertaken. The German system is entirely determined by its State" mercantilist "policy of fostering traffic that might go to other countries or by foreign ports. The German home trader suffers. It is doubtful whether an island system could benefit at all by these means, but until we have a far higher protective policy than is advocated by the Tariff Reform League, the Prussian syatem is unthinkable for us. Nor would our traders tolerate the slowness of transit, the cash payments, and the strictness of demurrage charges enforced by a power from which there is no appeal. Nationalizers point to the saving to be effected where competing lines despatch half-empty trucks ; they do not invite us to contemplate the trader whose goods are kept waiting for six days (as the Prussian authorities reserve the light to do) until a full waggon-load is made up from starting-point to destination. The British rates are a fair working compromise bused by experience on weight, distance, packing, and "what the traffic will bear." The Australiau analogy is equally false. Apart from the dog-in- the-manger policy of the separate States, which for a long time hampered rational development, the inception was entirely different. Railways were recognized to be an economic advantage, as proved in the Old Country by private enterprise. The new country needed development: railways were not to meet a demand but to create one. They could not pay at once. Therefore, as in several European countries too, the Governments borrowed the capital and provided the interest out of taxation. This is an entirely different state of things from ours, for which we may be thankful; and it affords no argument for nationalizing our system. There is enough "taint of monopoly" in many directions to justify strict Parliamentary control, but this has been increasing without commensurate advantage. The burdens, risks, responsibilities, and expenses of the companies have grown rapidly. From the first the money spent in Parliamentary expenses increased the capitalization beyond that of any foreign system. Mr. Lawson cites Mr. Acworth as putting this charge at ninety millions. Nor has Parliamentary control always been con- sistently on the side of competition. Mr. Lloyd George when at the Board of Trade in 1907 did the worst overt turn of all to the principle of competition by encouraging the practice of pooling agreements: we do not on that account charge him with desiring nationalization, since his habit is to act with eager ignorance rather than upon knowledge and forethought. The financial aspect of piecemeal or wholesale nationalization is not seriously dealt with by its advocates, nor such questions as what will become of the trade upon which the companies have embarked outside their permanent ways—e.g., the street carrying, docks, steam- ships, Sze., to say nothing of hotels. If the process once began, all competition would have to be bought up or taxed out of existence in order to show better results ; and, finally, only the rich man, with investments in anything but home rails, would, with his motor-car, be free from an oppressive monopoly of the whole carrying trade.
Another pressing question of polities is that of" recognition" of the Unions,- There is no logic in the admission, now con- ceded, of a Trade Unign official from outside as the men's secretary in local disputes ; but we do not mind that for the success or failure of Conciliation Boards lies with the spirit in which they meet. But the Unions' interpretation of recog- nition implies dual control now and worse to follow. It is not, We believe, mere pride or stubbornness that pre- vents the companies from yielding. Recognition has been of no use on the North-Eastern, and it would inevitably tend to such interference with management, sometimes by persons quite ignorant of the points in question, as would produce chaos. A Trade Union autocracy would be as bad for the public as a State bureaucracy. For the men a bureaucracy would be worst of all, for it would have to treat its employees in the Prussian manner. The conditions of the South African strike, even more than the strike on the Chemin de Per de l'Ouest, have taught a sharp lesson to railway-owning Governments.
With these books may be mentioned Mr. Pagan's Auto. biography of an Individualist.° He is a Scotsman whose wanderings have no very distinguishing interest, but he was for some years in a subordinate position on an American railway, and he gives the opinion he has formed on nationali- zation. He believes that if it comes it will be by the companies' desire, because they are harried beyond endur- ance by Legislatures and Trade Unions ; and "Government ownership of railways is to be opposed, not so much for the effect it would have on the railroads, but on account of the results to the Government and the nation."
There is one point, not touched upon in these volumes, that we would commend to the companies, though we cannot enlarge upon it here. It is that they should build a cottage or two for their men near every country station where housing accommodation is lacking.
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