expenses averaged £5,000 a mile, an expenditure which secured for them the privilege of purchasing land at far more than its market value. £5,000 is the average paid per mile for legal and parliamentary expenses, but in some cases the amount has been in excess of even this abnormal sum.

The Blackwall Railway legal and parliamentary expenses, for instance, were £14,000 a mile-a truly colossal figure.

This, with other facts, in a measure accounts for the over-capitalisation of our railways. Indeed, from the very beginning it would seem that our railways have been financed with that national tendency to prodigal waste which, sooner or later, both in private and public affairs, leads to its inevitable consequence. The reckless finance of the war, for instance, must bring its nemesis, and it can only be described as part of the almost uncanny luck of this country that a scheme of railway reform should be at hand to fight this nemesis, and to save the country from the consequence of the fatuous war finance practised by its politicians.

The disadvantages under which British railways labour render reform of primary importance. On the conclusion of peace we should be fully determined that English trade shall lack no aid or benefit with which foresight and organisation can endow it.

Transport reform is an essential to the revival and prosperity of English agriculture. The mere fact that many commodities which are quite capable of being produced in this country are brought from overseas, because it is cheaper so to bring them, is evidence of this need of reform.

So long as British railway rates are the highest in the world, and nearly three times as high as are those in Germany, no other explanation can be accepted. If this matter be set right, no other explanation will

be necessary. British railway rates, if the proper means be taken, may be among the lowest in the world.

As regards this question of rates, it would take a much longer book than this to give a full description of the absurdities, which at times amount to confiscation and robbery by the railways, in carrying out their impossible and complicated system of freight charges.

Those who are interested should read the minutes of evidence taken before the Departmental Committee appointed by the Board of Trade to consider the law relating to railway agreements and amalgamation. (Cd. 5927, 1911).

Two cases, however, may be quoted as being typical. Mr. A. H. Pibell represents the National Sea Fisheries Protection Association, an association which represents the entire fish trade of the country. He was appointed by them to give evidence before the committee.

Mr. Pibell stated, among other things, that a special rate would be charged for a box of sole travelling in a wagon load of plaice from the same consignor to the same consignee, on the ground that soles are prime fish, and realise a higher price. To be logical they should possess a machinery for ascertaining how many of these plaice are sold in London eating-places as sole !

Be that as it may, the distinction is obviously ridiculous.

It has been stated, earlier, that the cost of the carriage often exceeds the value of the article itself.

The cost of bringing the fish from the bottom of the sea to the desired port, and packing it in a box on the quay at Hull, amounts to Is. a box; the transport rate of this box of fish from Hull quay to Billingsgate is from 5s. 6d. to 6s. 6d. Here the cost of transport is not only more than the cost of the article, but six times as much, and, to cap this, the owner has to take all risk during transit. If he did not take this

risk, that is to say, if the railway took this risk, the cost of carriage would be 10s. Ten shillings to carry one shilling's worth of fish 190 miles, and an additional charge for carrying the empty box back to Hull.

The reader will in this instance realise the foolery he is called upon to pay for. A reasonable system would reduce the price of fish in London to a fraction of its present cost.

Again, Mr. Pibell says: "There is a large quantity of fish sent direct from the ports to the fishmongers themselves. It frequently happens that in these cases the fish is delayed until it is too late for the day's trade, and 'it is refused by them.' It is then taken back to the station, and in many cases there is no real attempt to dispose of it to advantage. One of the railway officials buys it for a small sum, and it is then divided between them, each paying his share, and thus getting it for a trifle. . . ." In some instances the sender is actually called upon to pay something on account of this scandalous transaction.

...

The cost of transport is therefore swelled by a considerable percentage of non-delivery and delayed arrival, which, in the case of fish, is obviously a serious matter, and means a dead loss to the sender.

A thousand pages of the Blue Book teem with these absurdities, which are not exactly calculated to encourage internal trade.

At this same Departmental Committee Mr. William B. Lobjoit officially represented the fruit and potato trades, and gave a very important piece of evidence, because it is indicative of the difficulties which market gardeners a class whose encouragement is essential to the nation-have to contend with. Owing to smashing and destruction and late delivery, Mr. Lobjoit's firm had to give up using railways altogether, and now employ motor-cars for a radius of thirty to forty miles from their various centres of production.

Loss of eatable consignments, such as strawberries,

is frequent, and one railway intimates that it will not consider a claim unless its employés have been sufficiently thorough, and eaten the lot.1

It is eminently desirable in the interests of transport reform that a flat rate should be introduced as speedily as possible—that is, a rate based on the amount of work done.

It is essential that the rate-book with its millions of absurdities should be abolished.

Of which later.

Even if it be conceded that Free Trade has been a relentless enemy to English agriculture, it was surely never intended by Cobden and Bright that so-called Free Trade should be practised side by side with a system of Protection entirely in favour of the foreigner -i.e., a bounty presented gratis to the foreigner; for, by our present system it is verily a bounty.

If the country compels the home producer to bear an incubus in the shape of a double or treble charge on the carriage of his goods to market, it, in effect, is granting a bounty to the foreigner, who is exempt from this heavy and quite unnecessary disadvantage.

No sophistical gerrymandering can evade the issue, which is quite clear. English agriculture must compete on equal terms before other incentives to its revival can be discussed.

It is of little use to train agriculturists in scientific methods and co-operative ideas, if it is not made, in the first place, a business proposition to get home produce to market.

The overwhelming argument for goods transport reform, in the case of agriculture, is therefore incontestable. The argument is further developed in the chapter on Agriculture.

At the same time it is typical of the demoralising effect of our party system of government that, because

1 Blue Book, Cd. 5927, p. 217.

Free Trade is a party cry, politicians are content to announce themselves as Free Traders, whilst imposing on the public the most disastrous form of Protection.

It was an axiom of the earlier political economists that the home producer enjoyed a natural protection by being nearer the market than the foreign importer. This should, of course, be the case, other things being equal. It costs 18s. 6d. to send a ton of ware from Stoke to Liverpool by canal. It costs only 10s. to send a ton of 40 cubic feet from Liverpool to New York. China clay comes from Cornwall. It is cheaper to send it to the Rhine than to the Trent.

Thus the old economists failed to reckon with the fact that marine transport, being subjected to healthy competition, was compelled by necessity to improve, and did improve. On the other hand, in the case of inland transport, whilst there has been a certain competition between the bureaucracies governing railway companies, it has been a restricted competition, working within the limits of a monopoly.

It has been stated that the maladministration of railways loses the country £365,000,000 a year, or £1,000,000 a day, a sum which, if saved, would pay for a three years' war of the present character in fifteen years. The country would in fifteen years have saved £5,475,000,000. The casual answer, or the answer of the idle critic, is that it is an absurd statement to claim a possible saving of £365,000,000 a year, seeing that the gross receipts of railway companies in the United Kingdom are only £139,000,000 odd per annum, or £2,085,000,000 in fifteen years. This is a superficial contention.

No serious economist, however much he were opposed to the above claim, would contend that the economic evils of the railway system went no further than the railway terminals. Once granting an excessive or prohibitive freight charge, the development of commerce is either retarded or absolutely arrested.