RAILWAY PASSENGERS.
ONE is inclined to wonder whether railway directors, traffic ma- nagers, and other personages useful to locomotion, ever read their own statistics. It seems inconceivable, if they do, that they should not see the expediency of arranging a truce with the enemies, whom they call third-class passengers, and politicians the people of England. The return just published by Parliament, dis- creditably late as it is, shows conclusively that it is to reducedlares alone that they can look for a great increase of their passenger traffic, an increase indispensable to the sound financial position which they have never yet attained, and which it is most im- portant for the national welfare they should attain. We regard it as a principle that until the railways return five per cent. on their original outlay, the railway system will never receive the extension our internal trade even now demands ; that the interior of the country, the great districts which lie aside from the large towns, will never be adequately penetrated; ad that no reasonably earnest effort will be made towards the greatest object of all, the convey- ance of goods in slow trains by night, in. enormous masses, and at rates which, time and exposure being reckoned, shall fairly com- pete with water carriage. The present dogma that goods must be carried at a penny a ton a mile is not a divine law, and is excessively mischievous in prohibiting or retarding improvement. The compa- nies, however, will never try experiments till they are richer, and they can only get quickly rich through the passenger traffic. In 1859, a fair year, 277,665,0001., or a third of the national debt, had been spent on the railways of England and Wales, which in the same year yielded receipts 21,723,000/., and a net revenue, after paying expenses of or about—for the returns are defective-13,500,000/. That leaves seven and a quarter millions as dividend on two hundred and eighty millions, or an average profit in round figures of 2/. 12s. per cent.—just one-half of what it ought to be. This per-centage has scarcely varied in three years, for though the gross receipts have risen in 1857-58-59 some five or six per cent., the gross mileage increased on the other hand more than ten per cent. The railways, if the present system be continued, have obviously reached the end of their tether. They may be injured by bad years, or benefited by unusual commercial activity, but of sound commercial improvement, a gradual and steady expansion in the sources of income, there is not a trace. To obtain more business they must reach new classes, both of passengers and goods, and the only effectual expe- dient to this end is a reduction of rates.
The third-class passengers will, we are .convinced, yield the quickest and, perhaps, the largest returns, and they are at present deliberately discouraged. Everything is done for the first and second classes only, yet in 1859 the passengers were—
First ckss 15,737,252 Second class 38,751,789 Third class 70,356,889
—the third class being more than seven-twelfths of the whole. They, moreover, are the only class who greatly increase. In the three years ending 1st July, 1861, the rate of increase was—
First class . . . . per cent.
Second class . . . . . „
Third class -----11 „
—the third class having increased at twice the ratio of the second, and twenty-seven times that of the first. The return of receipts makes this fact even more clearly apparent. In the three years the receipts were varied as follows :
First class decreased . . . 60,000 Second class increased . . . 200,000 Third class increased . . . . 240,000
The loss in the first class, doubtless, has been gained by the second, and the third has therefore gained really 100,000/. a year over even its cheapest rival. It is, moreover, the bulk, not the proportion, of re- ceipts which affect the dividend, and it is from numbers alone that a great increase in the mass can be reasonably looked for. At present the whole measure of increase on all classes is less than two shillings per cent, upon the total capital invested, while the mileage during the same period of three years has increased ten per cent. The pas- senger receipts per mile are, therefore, over all England, slowly de- creasing—a discreditable result, which indicates better than any arguments that the railway system has reached a point at which it
can hope for nothing from its existing management. It can only gain new sap by throwing out new roots into a deeper and richer subsoil.
We have taken the whole returns for the satisfaction of those who only believe in general figures ; but we will now take an individual railway, and that the one which already deals most fairly with third-class passengers. The London and Brighton Company, in summer, carries third-class excursionists to Brighton and back, a hundred miles, for half-a-crown, a fair approximation to a just third- class rate. The result of this conduct has been an increase of five per cent. in the receipts from the first-class, and of thirty per cent. on those of the third. That, however, it may be said, is no argu- ment. What is the gain over increased expenditure ? Just 40,0001., the increase of traffic charges, not by any means wholly attributable to this cause, having been only 10,000/. in all. Even this, however, does not represent the truth. The five per cent. increase in the first- class receipts looks well, but is only one-seventh per cent. on capital, while the increase on the third-class is direct addition to net profits of nearly a half percent. Supposing these directors by fair reductions, lights, and decent conduct towards its third-class travellers, to raise the numbers in the same proportion during the next three years, they will have added one per cent. to their dividend, that is, have increased their shareholders' wealth by a million and a half at the very least. As a matter of fact, we believe the adoption of the half-crown fare as their permanent third-class fare, and the addition of third-class car- riages to every train, would multiply the gross receipts from this class threefold, while, as their own receipts show, every 40,0001. made only costs them 10,000/. in traffic outlay. In other words, the third. class traffic alone would yield an additional profit of 300,000/. a year, or three and a half per cent. upon their gross capital. They have, we imagine from their last report, some dim sense of this fact themselves, but like all other railway companies they cannot realize the locomotive tendencies of the population, and have fancies about limits to locomotion which deprive them of half the advantage of their experience. The mass of our working population, sixty per cent, of the people, cannot be said to travel at all, and the number of passehgers must be multiplied by six, and then remultiplied by the number of times in the year each person will travel, before the limit of traffic need even be apprehended. If they doubt, let them start a fourth class for six months, making it as un- comfortable as they like, but charging only a penny for every three miles, and they will gain, for the first time, some idea of what a third- class traffic, properly cultivated, might become. Only in that case they must turn their clerks out of the third-class ticket-rooms, place decent porters in their stead, who will not consider it to be part of their duty to be insolent to their paymasters, and sell tickets all day long at a long counter, like other tradesmen, instead of authorizing sales only for periods of five minutes, during which a frantic crowd struggles up to a pigeon-hole, which only admits one. If proof were wanted that the railways prefer select customers to the more profit- able mass, it would be found in the preposterous arrangements now made for ticket distribution.
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