The Outlook 5 1 1 



and, in the result, the travelling public, as is the case already 

 with the traders, would stand to lose through a policy 

 nominally designed to protect their interests. 



Whatever course may be actually taken in regard to these 

 particular aspects of the question, the trend of events in the 

 railway world will probably be more and more in the direction 

 of continuing the policy of agreements and amalgamations 

 on lines which, while giving the fullest transport facilities to the 

 public, should check wasteful competition and ensure all 

 practicable economy in the matter of working expenses. 



That the trade of the country would suffer, in consequence, 

 is hardly to be anticipated. Assuming that three railway 

 companies, who had already agreed as to the rates they would 

 charge, had each been conveying goods between A and B, 

 and that they arranged for the consignments entrusted to all 

 three to be taken in one train by one route, instead of in three 

 trains by separate routes, a clear economy would be effected 

 without any detriment to the traders, since the goods would 

 reach B all the same, while savings in the working expenses 

 should render the companies better able to meet the wishes 

 of traders in other directions. 



In regard to the possibility (as already told on page 448) 

 of an increase in railway rates to enable the companies to 

 meet increases of wages or other betterment of the positions 

 of their staffs, any general increase might well occasion 

 uneasiness, and even alarm, to traders who already find it 

 difficult enough to meet foreign competition, and to whom 

 greater cost of transport might be a matter of no little concern. 

 On the other hand there is an undoubted anomaly in the fact 

 that whilst the burdens on railway companies have greatly, 

 if not enormously, increased of late years, and whilst other 

 commercial companies are free to pass on to the consumer 

 increased costs of production or heavier working expenses, 

 including, especially, a much heavier taxation, the statutory 

 standard for railway companies' rates and charges should 

 still be that of the last day of December, 1892. 



A further result of the railway strikes in the autumn of 

 1911 was to revive the agitation in favour of railway nation- 

 alisation. In some quarters it was argued that an effective 

 guarantee against the recurrence of railway strikes would be 

 found in State ownership ; but this theory is certainly not 



