ESTIMATED ECONOMIES TO BE MADE IN TRANSPORT EXPENDITURE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

UNDER GOODS CLEARING HOUSE CONDITIONS.

Brought forward 47,686,000

=

Estimated economies by railway capital re-
demption. Say 6,000 acres of land in
London at £10,000 per acre (now covered
by Goods Stations) :
= £60,000,000 × 7 for
the United Kingdom = £420,000,000.
Say of this 75% may be redeemed
£300,000,000 @ 5%
Redemption of about 100,000 carts and vans
in London. 100,000 X 7 for United King-
dom = 700,000 carts at £40 £28,000,000.
Say sum realised £20,000,000 at 5%
Redemption of land-carriers' depots, 22
acres inside the City of London
1,000,000 square feet at £2 per square
foot = £2,000,000. Say £10,000,000 for
London. £10,000,000 in London x 7 for
United Kingdom = £70,000,000 for re-
deemed land at 5%

=

Loss involved by ship detention due to
railway congestion, as estimated by Mr.
A. W. Gattie. Per annum
Saving on cartage throughout the United
Kingdom

Food which is now imported and which could
be grown in this country, owing to im-
proved facilities, excluding articles not
suitable for production in this country

It will thus be seen that there is a margin of over £100,000,000 above the sum of £1,000,000 a day which it has been estimated could be saved to the country.

CHAPTER VI

THE BOARD OF TRADE

To begin with, there is no such thing as a Board of Trade. It is a sham and, it is to be feared, a fraud.

The Encyclopædia tells us that the Board of Trade is more correctly designated "The Lords of the Committee of His Majesty's Privy Council, appointed for the consideration of all matters relating to Trade and Foreign Plantations." In 1660 Charles II created two separate councils for Trade and Foreign Plantations. In 1672 they were consolidated into one.

This consolidation permitted of a unity of purpose highly profitable to the officials themselves, whose positions no doubt afforded them ample opportunities for self-enrichment.

One hundred and fourteen years later the existence of this body had become a scandal, which was intolerable even in that notoriously venal epoch.

It was abolished in 1782, for the second time.

In 1786, the presently existing department was established by Order in Council, being a permanent committee of the Privy Council for the consideration of all matters relating to trade and the colonies. This phantom Board consists of a President, together with the Lord Chancellor, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the First Lord of the Treasury, the Principal Secretaries of State, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Speakers of the English and the Irish Houses of Commons, and others. It is doubtful

whether the Archbishop of Canterbury has ever attended a meeting of the Board of Trade, and it is quite certain that the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons has not, although with regard to the latter there is room for optimism.

The Board of Trade has, in process of time, come under the nominal control of one individual, and is no longer a Board. The real control is vested in the hands of the Permanent Secretaries, whose obedient servant the President is. It is impossible to move the President without the permission of these gentlemen, who are autocratic, but who are able through the theory of ministerial responsibility to conceal their doings and their identities from the public.

All that is known of them is their names and the amount of the published salaries they draw from the Government.

The Board of Trade, which should be the most modern, the most energetic, and the most progressive of our public Departments, is the most old-fashioned, the least energetic, the least progressive, and a positive hindrance to trade. It consists of a large number of officials functioning in a number of separate buildings. These gentlemen are, as a matter of practice, whatever they may be in theory, responsible

to no one.

As a Cabinet Minister has truly said: "If the permanent officials of the Board of Trade advise reform of railways, railways will be reformed, but until they do so there will be no reform." This is not an extreme view, although on the rarest occasions the Board of Trade has had its hands forced by Act of Parliament. Parliamentary action, however, involves years of delay, and an expense only to be borne by the extremely wealthy and influential.

The President of the Board of Trade is seldom a political Dreadnought. He may be a first, second, or third-class cruiser, but he is seldom a Dreadnought;

and yet the Board of Trade is the most important of all our Departments. Truly we are a strange people. The Board of Trade is divided into five departments, and one of these departments is concerned with railways. The railway department of the Board of Trade is entrusted with the supervision and control of railways, and can call for any figures which are concerned with traffic, which means that it can call for any railway figures it may require.

This has to be so, because railways cannot in the nature of things be regarded as private enterprises, and for this reason, that they possess a monopoly which prevents other people from competing with them. Like all other bodies exercising statutory privileges, they are subject to statutory obligations.

The Board of Trade thus has a very real responsibility towards railways, and very large powers in dealing with them. The Board of Trade, moreover, has immediate facilities for extending those powers, by introducing, through its President, a Government Bill into Parliament.

The main point to be established in indicting the Board of Trade is that it has permitted a totally false impression of the financial conditions of railways to obtain, and has conveyed this false impression to the public through the medium of the Railway Returns, issued by the Department. It has, therefore, lent the great weight of its name to what is, in effect, a false balance-sheet.

The Board has always schemed to hide from the public the actual work done by the railways.

This has been clearly proved in the case of its returns of "tons conveyed." For forty years, overstatement by the Board of Trade as to the work done by the railways in this direction reached in 1912 a figure of 42 per cent. in excess of the truth.

No one in the least acquainted with accounting could suppose that this misstatement could stand