144 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
applied to other public utility undertakings. Provision would have to be 
made so that the companies would share in increased profits or reduced 
costs due to greater efficiency of operation. 
The main difficulty would, of course, be to ensure that the monopoly 
companies should be kept to a high degree of efficiency, and that they 
should continue to meet in a satisfactory way the real and ever-changing 
transport requirements of the community. ‘This might be effected by a 
transformation of the Railway Rates Tribunal, which no longer performs 
any vital function, into a statutory body charged with the express duty of 
seeing that the transport companies are working with due economy and 
efficiency and at the same time meeting the reasonable and legitimate 
demands of the travelling public and those engaged in industry and trade. 
Such a body should have power, with certain safeguards, to compel a 
reluctant company to institute a change in its services or methods of 
operation. There would remain, too, a certain check on efficiency, 
since it is not proposed to restrict the use of private motor-cars or traders 
in the use of their own road vehicles for the purposes of their own 
business. 
Despite the development of the new forms of transport, railways still 
remain the backbone of the transport services of the country. They are 
likely to remain so for many years to come. ‘They are still the most 
economic mode of transport for many purposes. But to meet modern 
requirements, they need to besupplemented by other modes of transport. 
This, I venture to think, can be done most effectively and economically 
when the different modes of transport are under one management. 
