Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/273

 The State purchase of railways would involve an objectionable amount of interference with the industries of the nation, and with the character of the people. The Government would become the direct employers of a vast army of men of all classes, from labourers to highly trained artisans, clerks and officials; they must come in contact with trades unions, face the question of employers' liability, and all the other difficult labour questions which from time to time agitate the industrial community, and at times they would even have to deal with strikes. In all matters of this kind, they, as a Government, would occupy a very invidious position as compared with the railway companies, who are merely mercantile bodies, dealing with labour as a marketable commodity, under the ordinary laws of supply and demand.

Trade would suffer from the absence of the efforts now put forth by the different railway companies, by granting low rates, constructing branch lines, and by other facilities to develop the competition of markets and to open up new districts.

The Government would be invested with a large amount of patronage, not only in the appointment and promotion of the staff, but in the placing of contracts for coal and iron and other materials, in granting railway facilities, and in many other ways, and they would always be open to the accusation of making use of this patronage for political purposes.

The policy of the railway administration, instead of being guided by one consistent principle, as at present, viz., the improvement and development of the traffic, with which the prosperity of the country is necessarily bound up, would, in all probability alter from time