bounden duty of Sir Charles Owens to point out to the Royal Commission where they are wrong; but if they are correct it is his bounden duty to point out to the Commission that he has been in error.

The lash of these figures falls so heavily that, were the issues not so grave, commiseration would be felt for those on whom it falls.

It is idle, therefore, to pretend that the colossal increase in expenditure has anything to do with coal. The relative smallness of this item to gross railway expenditure will perhaps surprise the reader. The latest figure published by the Board of Trade is for 1912, and is £6,201,000.

If the statistics of coal prices are carefully examined it will be found that the variations are but ripples on the surface, and that they cannot seriously affect the great sums at issue; but, such as they are, they only serve to make the case worse for the railway companies.

The railway purchases of copper cannot be comparable to the purchases of steel, but even on this subject Sir Charles Owens is as inexplicably inaccurate as in the case of steel and coal. Sir Charles gives two figures to prove that the price of copper has risen, and that the incidence of its rise is a factor in the increased expenditure of the last forty years.

Here are Sir Charles Owens' figures on copper :

Here are the copper prices for the last forty-four

years:

1 Statistical Abstract, No. 43, p. 160; and No. 38, p. 262.

It will be seen that, over the period of forty-four years, copper prices have practically remained steady. Comparing the last twenty-two years with the previous twenty-two years, there has been a drop of 3'9 per cent.

We have the fact before us, therefore, that the spokesman of the Railway Association of the United Kingdom makes the completely inaccurate statement that a rise in the price of copper has something to do with a phenomenal increase in expenditure which extends over a period of forty years. Either Sir Charles Owens knew what he was doing when he put

forward this misleading comparison, or he is not competent to deal with figures at all.

The ugly truth cannot be veiled by such methods. The annual disappearance of millions of railway money cannot be explained away in this irresponsible manner, and one is at a loss to understand the meaning of these methods, or the strange nature of the facts which the Railway Association appear to be so anxious to conceal.

It is quite clear that Mr. Runciman, in accepting an arbitrary division of these figures from his bureaucratic taskmasters (i.e., the permanent officials at the Board of Trade), was not sufficiently careful to prevent the public from being misled.

The country is entitled to know the whole truth of these nefarious transactions.

We will now deal with taxation. Rates and taxes have risen about 2 per cent. on the gross receipts in the past forty-four years. The gross receipts for 1913, in respect of all railway working, were 123,618,000. The increase in taxation, therefore, would be £2,260,000.

This increase is nearly all attributable to rates, and is due to a great extent to the abnormal space acquired to allow of shunting operations, of which later; but excluding the vast economies on steel, this increase of £2,260,000 is compensated for by the £1,000,000 saved on coal consumption and the saving on copper and paper, which fully covers the remainder, and the railways are thus left with the vast saving on steel.

To conclude this second part of the argument, the following is from a speech delivered by Mr. A. W. Gattie, the Chairman of the New Transport Company, Ltd., at Cannon Street Hotel, to the South Eastern and Chatham Railway Research Society. Mr. Gattie said:

"You will perhaps realise the vastness of the quantity of steel used by railway companies when I tell you

that about 9,000,000 tons of rails are laid in the United Kingdom. In the old days the price of inferior steel rails was £15 to £18 per ton, and at that price 9,000,000 tons would have cost the railway companies about £140,000,000; but at the present price they would pay about £6 a ton, and get better rails for £60,000,000. In this one item of rails there is a decrease in expenditure of £80,000,000 over a short period of years."

We have now dealt with labour, taxation, and the cost of the following materials: steel, coal, timber, paper, and copper. It is difficult to see what material could be quoted which would affect the argument.

Food has risen in price, but the wage of labour has remained the same. In the face of this brutal fact a railway manager has complained of the too sentimental treatment of railway employés.

It is sad when the till of a mighty industry is short, but it is sadder still when the chosen representative of the authorities gives an explanation before a Royal Commission, which is strangely unsatisfactory, and which will not, as the reader has no doubt perceived, survive criticism. But it becomes a tragedy when such an explanation is received without question by the Commissioners of the King of England, to whom the consideration of this terribly urgent and important matter has been entrusted.

But of this later.

It is now proposed to tell the public the truth.

A shortage has been discovered, an explanation attempted, and the leakage has not been explained. The explanation is waste, and folly, if it is nothing

worse.

Before the details of these are gone into it is again necessary to point out to the reader that, though railway dividends may suffer from defective methods, it is the general public which pays for railway maladministration. Enquiry immediately confronts us

with the astounding fact that the mobility of a railway wagon on the track is 3 per cent. of its entire existence, and of this 3 per cent. mobility per cent. is laden mobility, and 2 per cent. is unladen mobility.

This simple statement, as illustrated by plate opposite, is so startling that one hesitates to believe it. A careful examination of the figures on which it is based must convince the reader that it is appallingly truein fact, that it is less than the actual truth.1 The figures are:

Divide the total tons conveyed by the total number of wagons, thus:

375,037,000 tons 1,410,746 wagons

=

267 tons per wagon per annum.

Now divide 267 tons by the number of working days in the year, and we have:

267 tons 311 days

= 17 cwt. per wagon per day.

We now divide our 1,410,746 wagons into average train lengths, say thirty-five wagons to a train; this is a generous allowance-a smaller allowance will make the story worse.

1,410,746 wagonstrain lengths of 35 wagons
40,307 train lengths.

=

1 The figures used are for 1913 "Board of Trade Railway Returns," and the evidence of Mr. T. B. Loxley, of The Railway Carriage and Wagon Builders' Association-Blue Book [Cd. 5927], 1911.

Sir George Paish, no mean authority, has estimated the average length of a goods train at twenty-five wagons.