Railways a National Industry 433 



subject to the ability and good conduct of the individual, 

 employment once obtained with a railway company offers a 

 tolerable assurance of permanent and regular work. Railway 

 companies do not run the same risk of becoming bankrupt, 

 and of having to wind up their business, that ordinary com- 

 mercial companies do, and though slackness of work may, in- 

 deed, lead to unavoidable reductions of staff, or to reduced 

 time, in the locomotive and carriage works, the full staff will 

 be required on the railway itself to keep it going, whatever 

 the amount of traffic. Should the traffic fall off, and become 

 non-remunerative, it is the shareholders who will suffer rather 

 than the railway servants engaged in the running of trains. 



This fact is of the greater importance because there may 

 be in the railway service certain actual disadvantages, thus 

 referred to in the ' ' Report of the Departmental Committee on 

 Railway Agreements and Amalgamations," issued in May, 

 1911 : 



" The contention of the railway servants as to the specialisa- 

 tion of their industry and the peculiar difficulty they find 

 in changing their employment has a substantial foundation 

 as regards many classes of railway servants. Men leaving 

 one railway can seldom rely upon obtaining employment on 

 another, except in the lower grades, as the companies usually 

 have their own men waiting promotion. The value of a 

 railway servant often consists largely in a special skill which 

 is of no worth in other employments." 



On the other hand, the Departmental Committee recognise 

 that " one of the main inducements to compete for admission 

 to the railway services is the strong presumption of the 

 permanence of employment during good behaviour " ; and 

 they further say that " while it would seem that the rates 

 of pay to all ranks in the railway service do not compare 

 unfavourably with those given in other commercial and 

 industrial occupations, the railway companies undoubtedly 

 profit in the quality of their services by the large range of 

 selection they enjoy owing to the competition for situations 

 under them." 



On the subject of railwaymen's wages, various considera- 

 tions arise which tend to make any general assertions, or 

 even carefully prepared " averages " in respect thereto, of 

 little real value. 

 2 F 



