284 History of Inland Transport 



traffic was sufficient to allow of the financial obligations of 

 only a single company being efficiently met, any success 

 achieved by the new company depending (until the available 

 traffic increased) on its power to divert business and profits 

 from the other company. 



Hence it might well occur that " the best laid schemes " of 

 Parliament and Parliamentary Committees, in approving 

 competitive lines, resulted only in the companies concerned 

 coming to, at least, a friendly understanding ; and it might 

 even be that the public did not eventually benefit at all, 

 because, as the Joint Committee of 1872 say, " The necessity 

 of carrying interest on the additional capital required for the 

 new line tends sometimes, in the end, to raise rather than to 

 reduce the rates." 



Economic considerations, again, apart altogether from those 

 monopolistic tendencies on the fear of which the policy of the 

 State had been founded, were quite sufficient to account for the 

 absorption of one company by another, and especially of small 

 companies by larger ones, not so much to avoid competition 

 as to ensure the provision of through routes operated under 

 one and the same management, involving less outlay on 

 working expenses, and providing greater advantages to the 

 public than if the same length of line belonged to a number 

 of different companies. 



The lines between London and Liverpool, for example, 

 were originally divided between three companies, and the same 

 was the case with the lines between Bristol and Leeds. In 

 some instances the companies were not on good terms with one 

 another, and they ran their trains to suit their own convenience. 

 Even when they were on good terms, they might not have 

 any interests in common, apart from (at one time) offering as 

 few comforts and conveniences as possible to the third-class 

 traveller, and compelling him at least to complete his journey 

 by going first class, if he wished to get to his destination the 

 same night. 



As early as 1847 attempts had been made by some of the 

 companies to overcome the glaring defects of the original 

 system of railway construction by establishing the Railway 

 Clearing House, with a view to facilitating through traffic 

 and allowing of a better adjustment of accounts when pas- 

 sengers or goods were carried over various lines in return for a 



