Railways and the State 291 



tern at Alne, but still maintains an independent existence. 

 According to the Board of Trade Returns for 1910 the Easing- 

 wold Railway consists of two miles of line, or three miles if we 

 include sidings, and it owns one locomotive, two carriages for 

 the conveyance of passengers and one goods waggon. It 

 carried in 1910 a total of 33,888 passengers, 5547 tons of 

 minerals and 11,214 tons of general merchandise. Its total 

 gross receipts from all sources of traffic for the year amounted 

 to ^2358, and the net receipts, after allowing for working 

 expenses, were 936. The authorised capital of the company 

 is 1 8,000, of which ^16,000 has been paid up. 



Small as this line is, it serves a useful purpose ; but the 

 policy of amalgamation, followed up by leading companies 

 with such pertinacity, and in spite of so much distrust and 

 opposition, has, happily, saved the railway system of the 

 country from remaining split up among an endless number of 

 companies of the Easingwold type even though they might 

 have had more than three miles of railway and a single 

 locomotive each. 



Other developments of State policy towards the railways 

 have applied to ensuring both perfection of construction and 

 safety in operation. 



In the former respect the English lines have been built with 

 a solidity and a completeness not to be surpassed by the 

 railways of any other country in the world. Even in sparsely 

 populated districts where, under similar circumstances, the 

 American or the Prussian railway engineer would lay down 

 only such a line as would be adequate to the actual or pros- 

 pective traffic, would give the passengers no platform, would 

 provide little more than a shed for a railway station, and would 

 expect the public to be content with a level crossing and look 

 out for the trains, a British railway company is obliged to 

 respect State requirements by laying down a line equal to the 

 traffic of a busy urban centre, give the passengers such plat- 

 forms as will enable them to enter or leave the trains without 

 the slightest inconvenience, erect well-built and more or less 

 commodious station buildings, and, it may be, arrange for 

 bridges, viaducts or underground passages such as in other 

 countries would be found only in centres having a substantial 

 amount of traffic. 



Apart, in fact, from any question as to expenditure on 



