Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/376

 354 THE ECONOMIC JOURNP. L 2. PERFORMANCE OF CONTRACT e.g. PUNCTUP. LITY. This is a point, to which in my opinion, not nearly enough attention has been devoted in this cojntry by the higher railway intelligence; probably owing to the system of competition which has led one railway, though with a longer route, to attempt to do the distance in the same time as the shorter railway, even when in practice it is impossible. Had the courts originally held that the time table was a contract and the fare or part of the fare was recoverable if the contract was broken, our present gross un- punctuality, as exemplified in the returns presented to Parliament last year, would never have existed. But as the law at present stands a passenger can only recover against a company if he shows special pecuniary damage, after a long and elaborate legal process.  Speaking as a railway man, I believe habitual unpunctuality to be quite unnecessary, and also, from the railway point of view, that it is most extravagant. As it is a point of great interest to the public, and will un- doubtedly be much discussed during the next decade, it may be worth while to consider a few of the technical reasons why in France a late train should be the exception, and in England the rule. The principal reason is that in France the locomotive department is entirely subordinate to the traffic department (which arranges the time table), in fact, as a French director expresses it, the locomotive department is only cocher de In England, on the other hand, the traffic department is usually separate, and has absolutely no control over the locomo- tives or their drives; the locomotive department being a com- pletely distinct establishment. Possibly this is a relic of the extraordinary strong personality of George Stephenson, who was ar excellence a 'locomotive man.' In England, drivers get a valuable premium on coal saved, and it is in consequence not to their interest to make up time lost at stations or signals; in France they also get such a premium, but they get treble this premium .for running punctually. The consequence is that (lay after (lay you may see the French  It would of course be unfair to alter the law now, since our present train-service has grown up on another basis, but I believe that had punctuality originally been insisted upon in this way, our traffic would have been conducted with practical exacti. rude, though somewhat less speed.