The Railway System To-day 375 



reductions in, for example, that especially large item of working 

 expenses represented by the wages of railway servants. 



What I have said in regard to rates and taxes in general 

 applies no less to the increased financial burdens that would 

 fall on railway companies in respect to the National 

 Insurance Bill. With the main issues presented by that 

 measure I have here no concern ; but the difference between 

 railway companies which cannot " pass on " the heavier 

 taxation that all measures of this type involve and the ordinary 

 industrial companies which can should be sufficiently obvious. l 



Clear, at least, it is that if both the Government and the 

 local authorities continue to pile up these burdens of taxation 

 on transport companies, themselves subject to the restrictions 

 mentioned, the traders of the country cannot expect much 

 relief in the railway rates of which many of them complain. 

 It may be that the primary effect of the financial conditions 

 thus brought about falls on the railway shareholders. It is, 

 also, the case that the traders are well assured against any 

 increase in rates. But the traders suffer a disadvantage as well 

 as the shareholders because, though the railway companies 

 may be prevented from raising their rates, they may, also, 

 find it practically impossible to reduce rates which they would 

 otherwise be willing to put on a lower scale. On the one hand 

 the traders are protected from being charged more. On the 

 other hand they are prevented from being charged less. They 

 may not lose, but they may not gain ; and inability to secure a 

 benefit that might otherwise be secured amounts, after all, 

 to the equivalent of a loss. In regard, also, to the wages of 

 the staff, these may not be reduced yet the power of com- 

 panies to advance them may be curtailed by any undue 

 swelling of working expenses in other directions. 



1 In " Insurance Legislation in Germany ; Copy of Memorandum con- 

 taining the Opinions of various Authorities in Germany" [Cd. 5679], 

 Herr E. Schmidt, Member of the Imperial Diet, and President of the 

 German Tobacco Manufacturers' Association, is quoted as saying : " I am 

 convinced that when the social legislation was introduced, and for the first 

 time the large contributions for sickness insurance and later for old age 

 and infirmity insurance had to be paid, many of us groaned. To-day, 

 however, these contributions, which occur every year, are lxx>ked either to 

 the general expenses account or the wages account for they are, in fact, a 

 part of wages and they are naturally calculated as part of the cost of pro- 

 duction, and eventually appear in the price of the goods, though perhaps 

 not to the full extent in times of bad trade." 



