IRISH RAILWAYS AND THE STATE. 



By LYNDENM.\CASSEY, C.E., B.A., LL.B., EX., 



Lecturer Railway Department, London School of Economics. 



[Abstract.) 



The relations that should exist between railways and the 

 State possess great commercial and political importance. Rail- 

 ways may be privately or State owned, and four relations are 

 found — railways privately owned and subject to or free from 

 the control of the State, as in England and America, and rail- 

 ways State owned and worked by the State or by private in- 

 dividuals, as in Prussia and France respectively. For the 

 distinction, the Continental disposition to leave everything to 

 the State, as compared with the Anglo Saxon inclination to 

 give private enterprise full sway, really is the explanation. 



In Ireland railways are privately owned, but State con- 

 trolled. That control is directed to construction, public safety, 

 public convenience, and rates. As regards the first three sub- 

 jects mentioned, the control is perhaps too effective ; the real 

 question is that of rates. There exists a maximum schedule 

 of goods rates in excess of which Irish railways may not charge. 

 But the limits are rightly high, and the companies do not now 

 charge anything like full rates. Railways do not try to in- 

 crease profits by raising rates, but by lowering them and so 

 swelling their traffic. Nor can you limit dividends. If you do 

 you make it to the advantage of a company to do a small 

 business at a high rather than a large business at low rates. 

 All proposals for nationalisation are grounded on the in- 

 efficiency of the present system of control, and on the defects 

 in management of Irish railways. As the latters' profits are 

 not excessive, their charges are not either. The average divi- 

 dend paid in 1900 on the capital invested was only 3.9 per 

 cent. Rates certainly are not unreasonable. Eggs are carried 

 from Galway to London for |d per dozen, fish from ^d and 



