142 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
the case with road transport charges. That the traders realise the conse- 
quences of this is clearly seen in the evidence given by them and various 
trade organisations in the course of the hearing of the Robinson and 
Woolworth applications for agreed charges. 
The traders are, in reality, on the horns of a dilemma. They cannot 
ask that the railways should be tied to their former methods of charging 
while they themselves are free to choose road transport when it suits 
them to do so, and at the same time to fall back on rail transport when it does 
not suit them, or when it is more expensive to use the roads. In the past 
the traders have had the best of two worlds by utilising road transport for 
the delivery of their high-valued manufactured products and rail trans- 
port for their coal, raw materials, and even returned empties. 
What then is the solution of the problem? How can the trader’s 
position be best safeguarded and at the same time wasteful competition 
between road and rail be minimised—a competition which will become 
more intense with the extended use of agreed charges ? How can the real 
needs of the country in the way of transport be best and most economically 
met ? 
It would be a foolish and retrograde solution to suggest—though this 
has secured approval in certain countries where state railways have been 
protected by the governments—that the great advantages accruing from 
the development of road transport should be forfeited in the interests of 
the railways. ‘These advantages should be secured to the community 
except where they are clearly uneconomic in character. The railway 
companies in effect admit this, as is shown by their own increasing use 
of road transport either alone or in conjunction with the rail, not only in 
those cases where they have to meet road competition, but in cases where 
this method gives a better or more economic service. 
The best solution that I can see is that the railways should cease to be 
regarded as merely railway companies—which as a matter of fact they 
have long ceased to be, as witness their numerous and well-developed 
ancillary undertakings such as hotels, docks, canals, housing estates, 
associated air and road transport services, and numerous other under- 
takings. They should come to be regarded as transport companies, 
undertaking a given piece of transport by that means or combination of 
means which appears to them (however impossible it is to ascertain real 
relative costs) to be the most economic and, at the same time, most suited 
to meet the real demand of the traveller or trader. 
But this solution would mean the absorption of road passenger and 
goods services—where undertaken for hire or as public services and not 
performed by a firm for the transport of its own commodities—by the 
new ‘ transport companies.’ There would naturally be much opposition 
to this solution, and public opinion would have to be educated. 
This, however, is the solution of the problem which has been adopted 
by the Irish Free State. The Transport Act, 1933, of the Irish Free 
State provides, subject to the approval of the Minister of Transport, for 
the compulsory acquisition of all road transport agencies by railway or 
shipping companies. 
It is significant, too, that a similar solution has been recommended by 
