PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 783 



TliOre aro in Prussia a number (about ten, I think) of District Railway Councils, 

 and there is also one National Council ; they consist of a certain number of repre- 

 sentative traders, manufacturers, agriculturists, and the like, together with a 

 certain number of Government nominees ; and the railway officials concerned take 

 part in their proceedings, but without votes. Tiie Councils meet three or four 

 times a year, their agenda paper is prepared and circulated in advance, and all 

 proposed changes of general interest, whether in rates or in service, are brought 

 before them, from the railway side or the public side, as the case may be. The 

 decision of the Council is then available for information of the Minister and his 

 subordinates, but, as has been said, it binds nobody. 



The Massachusetts Railroad Commission is a body of three persons, usually 

 one lawyer, one engineer, and one man of business, appointed for a term of years 

 by the Governor of the State. Originally the powers of this Commission were 

 confined to the expression of opinion. If a trade, or a locality, or indeed a single 

 individual, thought he was being treated badly by the Massachusetts Railroad, 

 he could complain to the Commission ; his complaint was heard in public ; the 

 answer of the railway company was made there and then ; and thereupon the 

 Commissioners expressed their reasoned opinion. The system has existed now 

 for more than thirty years, and it is safe to say that, with negligible exceptions, if 

 the Commission expresses the opinion that the railroad is in the right, the applicant 

 accepts it ; if the Commission says that the applicant has a real grievance, the 

 railroad promptly redresses it on the lines which the Commissioners' opinion has 

 indicated. The success of the Commission in gaining the confidence of both sides 

 has been so great that of late years its powers have been extended, and it has 

 been given, for example, authority to control the issue of new capital and the 

 construction of new lines. But on the question with which we are specially con- 

 cerned here, the conduct of existing railway companies as public servants, it can 

 still do nothing but express an opinion ; and it may be added that the Commission 

 itself has more than once objected to any extension of that power. 



Mr. Adams, from whom I have already quoted, was the first Chairman of the 

 Commission. He has described their position as resting ' on the one great social 

 feature which distinguishes modern civilisation from any other of which we have 

 a record, the eventual supremacy of an enlightened public opinion.' That public 

 opinion is supreme in this country, few would be found to deny; that public 

 opinion in railway matters is enlightened, few would care to assert. But given 

 the enlightened public opinion, one can hardly doubt that it will secure not 

 merely eventual but immediate supremacy. In truth, as Bagehot once pointed 

 out, a great company is of necessity timorous in confronting public opinion. It is 

 80 large that it must have many enemies, and its business is so extended that it 

 oflfers innumerable marks to shoot at. It is much more likely to make, for 

 the sake of peace, concessions that ought not to be made than it is to resist a 

 demand that reasonable men with no personal interest in the matter publicly 

 declare to be such as ought rightly to be conceded. 



To sum up in a sentence the lesson which I think the history we have been con- 

 sidering conveys, it is this : Closer connection than has hitherto existed between 

 the State and its railways has got to come, both in this country and in the United 

 States. Hitherto in Anglo-Saxon democracies neither State ownership nor 

 State control has been over-successful. The best success has been obtained by 

 relying for control, not on the constable, but on the eventual supieraacy of an 

 enlightened public opinion. Nearly twenty years ago, in the pages of the ' Economic 

 Journal,' I appealed to English economists to give us a serious study of what the 

 Americans call the transportation problem in its broad economic and political 

 aspects. Since then half-a-dozen partisan works have appeared on the subject, 

 not one of them, in ray judgment, worth the paper on which it is printed; but 

 not a single serious work by a trained economist. And yet such a work is to- 

 day needed more than ever. Let me once more appeal to some of our youno-er 

 men to come forward, stop the gap, and enlighten public opinion. 



