Railway Rates and Charges 347 



have to be made good by the fixing of higher rates on goods 

 in other classes. Traders dealing in commodities of the latter 

 type do not themselves lose by the fact that minerals, raw 

 materials, or other things are carried at rates which, although 

 exceptionally low, are the most they can be expected to pay. 

 No injustice is done to them because the other classes of traders 

 concerned get lower rates than they do themselves. They 

 may even gain directly, because they are saved from having 

 to cover a larger proportion of the total railway expenditure ; 

 and indirectly, because the help given to those other lines of 

 business may either bring trade to them or else keep down the 

 cost of production in regard to manufactured articles they 

 deal in or which they themselves require. 



The principle of charging " what the traffic will bear " does 

 more than govern the rates as applying to visible traffic. It 

 embraces the further principle of what Hadley, in his " Rail- 

 road Transportation," calls " the system of making rates to 

 develop business." 



An immediate result of its application, not alone in England 

 but in various Continental countries, was to bring about a 

 substantial reduction in rates, so that, as Hadley further says, 

 between 1850 and 1880 railway rates were reduced, on an 

 average, to about one-half of their former figures. It may be 

 assumed, also, that these former figures were themselves a 

 substantial reduction on the rates once charged under the toll 

 system in force among the " get-rich-quick " canal companies. 



There was thus a gain to the traders as regards both an 

 increase in facilities and a reduction in the cost at which 

 those facilities could be obtained, as compared with previous 

 conditions. The principle in question necessarily involved 

 discrimination between trades ; but it became one of the 

 objects of the Legislature to prevent discrimination between 

 individual traders in the same line of business as carried 

 on in the same town or centre. 



The general position has been further influenced by the 

 existence of an ever-active sea competition, which is said to 

 affect probably three-fifths of the railway stations in the 

 United Kingdom. The rates for traffic between Newcastle 

 and London, or any other two ports, will necessarily be in- 

 fluenced, if not controlled, by the possibility of the com- 

 modities going by a coasting vessel if the railway company 



