■TRAiVSAOTIONS OF SECTION F.— PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 773 



Section F.— ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 

 President of the Section. — W. M. Acworth, M.A. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3. 



The President delivered the following Address : — 



The Relation of Railways to the State, 



No one can be more conscious than your President of to-day of the unfitness 

 of one who has no claim to he called an economist at all to occupy the Chair of 

 this Section in succession to a long line of the most distinguished economists of 

 the country. But it would be affectation on my part to ignore that I owe the 

 distinction, however little personally I may deserve it, to the fact that what our 

 American friends call transportation problems are much to the fore at present, and 

 that to those problems the professed economists of this country have unfortunately 

 — for reasons that there is no need to discuss here — hitherto devoted but scant 

 attention. And parini les aveugles le horgne est roi. You will therefore not be 

 surprised if your one-eyed king for the day directs your attention this morning to 

 railways, and especially to the question which is in the forefront of politics at 

 this moment in almost every part of the world — the relation of railways to the 

 State. 



One word more by way of preface. I have said that these relations are being 

 discussed at present all over the world. Ireland is no exception. There is at 

 this moment sitting in Dublin a Viceregal Commission to inquire into the manage- 

 ment of the Irish railways, and the question of State versus private ownership 

 has been constantly brought up before it. As I am a member of that Commission, 

 I evidently could not, even if I desired to do so, express here any personal views 

 on a matter which is directly referred to me in an official capacity. But it seems 

 to me that while it is necessary for me to refrain from discussing the particular 

 question of the detailed remedies which the special historical and economic position 

 of Ireland may be thought to require, it is possible to discuss the whole question in 

 an abstract manner. I propose, therefore, to treat the subject in the main in two 

 aspects : the first, the history in outline of the relations between railways and the 

 State in different countries ; and the second, the question of the factors which 

 are of primary importance in any consideration of the matter. 



Ever since the year 1830, when the dramatic success of the Liverpool and 

 Manchester Railway first revealed to a generation less accustomed than our own 

 to revolutionary advances in material efficiency the startling improvements in 

 transport that railways were about to effect, theorists have discussed the question 

 whether State or private ownership of railways be in the abstract the more 

 desirable. But it is safe to say that in no country has the practical question, 

 ' Shall the State own or not own the railways ? ' been decided on abstract considera- 

 tions. The dominant considerations have always been the historical, political, and 

 economic position of the particular country at the time when the question came 

 up in concrete shape for decision. 



