Decline of Canals 299 



no less than 874,652. The payments for the years 1906-10 

 were as follows : 1906, 37,017 143. 96!. ; 1907, 22,262 2S. 7d. ; 

 1908, 44,690 33. nd. ; 1909, 45,697 IDS. 3d.; 1910, 



39,7 20 33. 9d. 



There has been much talk in the past of railway companies 

 having obtained possession of canals in order to " strangle " 

 the traffic on them. It is difficult to see why, except under 

 pressure, railway directors, who count among the shrewdest 

 of business men, should have incurred such substantial 

 obligations towards canals which, at the time, everyone re- 

 garded as doomed to extinction before a superior means of 

 transport. It is equally difficult to believe that, having in- 

 curred these costly obligations, the companies deliberately 

 " strangled " the traffic on the canals, instead of allowing 

 them to earn if they could at least sufficient to cover the 

 cost of their upkeep. 



Whatever the precise conditions under which they acquired 

 control, the railway companies were compelled by Parliament 

 to incur obligations in regard to maintenance which have had 

 the effect of continuing the existence of many a little-used 

 waterway that would long ago have become hopelessly derelict 

 if it had remained under the control of an independent canal 

 company, instead of being kept going out of the purse of a 

 powerful railway company in accordance with the statutory 

 obligations imposed by Parliament. 



These obligations were, of course, based on the principle 

 of ensuring competition even though canals and railways 

 passed under the same control, the former being supported 

 and kept more or less efficient out of the revenues of the latter. 

 This policy, however, was regarded as only an alternative 

 to another, to which Parliament gave the preference that, 

 namely, of maintaining, if possible, a still more effective 

 competition by strengthening the position of the canals, now 

 the weaker of the combatants in the economic struggle, and 

 enabling them to continue their independent existence, in 

 preference to seeking absorption by the railways. 



In 1845 an Act (8 & 9 Vic. c. 28) was passed, the preamble 

 of which, after alluding to the provision in the Railway Clauses 

 Consolidation Act, 1845, giving power to railway companies 

 to vary their rates, declared that " greater competition, for 

 the public advantage, would be obtained " if canal com- 



