344 History of Inland Transport 



prevent many reductions of rates that would have been 

 tried experimentally." 



When we pass on to consider the principles on which railway 

 rates and charges are based we are met with so many com- 

 plexities in the solution of transport problems, and with such 

 direct conflict of interests on the part of different groups of 

 traders, that we can in no way be surprised at the controversies 

 and the grievances, real or imaginary, to which the subject 

 has given rise from time to time. 



The original idea that railway rates and charges should be 

 fixed on a mileage basis, on the same principle as tolls on turn- 

 pike roads and canals, was soon found to be impracticable, 

 and successive Parliamentary Committees have demonstrated 

 its futility ; though its advocacy, in one form or another, has 

 not even yet been discarded by those who think that railway 

 rates for any given commodity should be so much per ton 

 per mile for all traders alike, irrespective of distance and all 

 other considerations. 



One effect of such a principle of rate-fixing as this would 

 have been to exclude the long-distance trader from any 

 particular market, and to confer an undue advantage on the 

 trader in the immediate neighbourhood, or at a short distance 

 therefrom, who would thus have gained a monopoly of the 

 market, to the disadvantage of other traders and of the local 

 community. Nor would such a system of rate-making have 

 answered for the railway companies themselves, since the 

 discouragement of long-distance traffic would have restricted 

 the area of business, and limited their sources of revenue. 



Another once much-favoured theory is that the railways 

 should charge so much for cost of service, plus a reasonable 

 profit for themselves. 



Here, in the first place, there is the impossibility of deciding 

 what is the cost of the service rendered in regard to each com- 

 modity and each consignment thereof that is carried. No basis 

 exists on which the most expert of railway men could decide 

 the respective costs of transport for each and every article 

 in a train-load of miscellaneous goods, nor could any one 

 apportion the exact amount that each should bear in regard 

 to interest on capital outlay and other standing charges which 

 must needs be covered as well as the proportionate cost of 

 actual operation. 



