Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/231

Rh corporation grows larger, since under normal circumstances each increment bears a lessening proportion to the whole, and steps become easier from one plane of organization to another. Thus, although a huge corporation like the London and North-Western Railway, for example, is subject to the class of dangers to which bureaucratic governments are liable, it is worth its while to secure an abler body of administrators than a smaller corporation, and, having altogether larger interests, can as a whole secure more adequate administration of details. The Scottish railways, especially the North British Railway, have grown too fast from insignificant into considerable corporations. They are at once too large and not large enough. Their development has been lop-sided. They have, in relation both to their mileage and their vehicles, only about one-half the engine power of the English lines. The rolling-stock and the station accommodation are alleged to be alike inadequate, especially on the North British and on the Caledonian lines. The three railway systems suffered from the strike directly as the rapidity of their expansion in recent years, and inversely as the proportions of plant to work. (b) The second cause as regards the companies was the keenness of the competition, especially between the Caledonian and the North British companies. This competition has manifested itself not so much in reduced rates either for passengers or for goods, as in securing main routes and access to large towns. The practical monopoly of the carrying trade in Fifeshire and the hold upon the North traffic secured by the North British Railway in its Forth and Tay Bridge schemes and connections, rank really among the great exploits of railway tacticians, but they have their evil side for all that. These enterprises were promoted for purely competitive reasons. They may pay future generations of shareholders; at present they can only be maintained by the company at the cost of parsimony in other directions. The extensive schemes securing access to Glasgow, in which the Caledonian Railway have embarked several millions, and the rival schemes now before Parliament involving access to Edinburgh, also mean immense capital expenditure for merely competitive reasons. In consequence of competition, too, trains are run on many routes half empty in order to give a delusively attractive service—delusively attractive because trains start at the same hour from each station, whereas the public convenience would demand that they should be so arranged as to give the maximum number of opportunities for travel.

2. As regards the men:—The lop-sided development of the railway systems described above affected the men (a) by increasing their hours of labour, and, in doing so, breaking in upon their established personal customs; (b) by unskilful arrangement of conditions of work, and want of obvious provisions for comfort of employees; (c) by No. 1.—VOL. I