138 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
In the somewhat analogous case of electricity supply, it is of interest 
to note that charges are more and more being based on considerations 
relating to the load factor. Electricity cannot be stored economically. 
Hence any demand that comes on at a peak hour has, so to speak, to have 
part of the capital of the generating machinery allocated to it. But if a 
new demand came on only between peak hours, this allocation would not 
be necessary. 
It is conceivable that the system of railway charging according to the 
load factor may be taken more into account in the future ; but it is diffi- 
cult to see how it could be applied as a universal method. It is still more 
difficult to see how it could prove a solution of the problems to-day 
confronting the railways. Road competition alone, and perhaps that of 
air transport in the future, not to mention the increasingly retail character 
of trade, would wreck any attempt to enforce a rigid adherence to this 
principle. 
I see, therefore, no real solution of the problem along either of these lines. 
Meanwhile, there is considerable diversion of traffic from a more economic 
to a less economic mode of transport. How is this to be prevented ? 
In a noteworthy article in the Economic Fournal, June, 1922, on “ Com- 
munication Costs and their Inter-dependence,’ the late Sir William 
Acworth drew attention to the uneconomic diversion of traffic which may 
occur when one form of traffic is subsidised by the State. ‘ There is,’ 
he said, ‘a real distinction between the cost of providing a means of 
communication which is of general—or at least of wide—public benefit, 
and the cost of its use, which normally benefits only the particular user.’ 
‘If, however, in one case the user, whether passenger or trader, has to pay 
the whole cost of his use, including the cost of providing and maintaining 
the specialised road as well as the actual conveyance cost, whilst in another 
use he is called upon to pay either a conveyance cost only, or the cost of 
conveyance plus some of the cost of maintenance of the roadway, un- 
economic diversion of traffic from one mode of transport to another is 
likely to occur. He quotes numerous instances of such diversions of 
traffic, not merely from railways to roads, but also from railways to canals 
or coastwise shipping. 
‘ If it be reasonable to charge upon the user of a macadam road the cost 
of use only, there seems no a priori reason why a similar policy should 
not be adopted in the case of a rail-road.’ He foresaw, however, the very 
great difficulty there would be in apportioning the cost of construction 
and maintenance to the users of the roads or other mode of transport. 
In the case of the roads, even if the capital cost incurred up to a given 
point were ignored—as in fact the Salter Committee later proposed that 
it should be—it would be a task of well-nigh insuperable difficulty to work 
out a new scheme of tolls or licences which would apportion the remaining 
costs even approximately and with only rough justice as between the 
many different classes of users. 
His plea, therefore, is that the cost of construction of communications— 
using the term in a broad sense—together with the annual cost of their 
maintenance should be a State charge, undertaken in the economic interests 
of the whole community. 
