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258 although they have been compiled by a different hand, and arrived at by a different process, is to confirm the conclusions based upon the more recent calculations prepared under the writer's directions, and which have already been quoted, and to show that the altered conditions under which the business is carried on have contributed to render the profits derived from first and second class very small indeed, and that the companies must now look chiefly to the third class traffic for their revenue. In fact, in contemplating the returns for a series of years, nothing is more striking than the enormous and uninterrupted growth in the number of third class passengers from year to year, no matter how the other classes may fluctuate. The companies, in short, have spent and are spending large sums of money in providing the most luxurious accommodation, and every facility and convenience for the benefit of the superior classes, but they are doing this practically at their own expense, and it is really the humble and once despised third class traveller who furnishes the sinews of war. It must be borne in mind, moreover, that although the figures show a profit, however small, upon the carrying of first class passengers, this result is only arrived at as an average, by treating all first class passengers alike, and while it may still be a profitable business to carry first class season-ticket holders, or passengers by local and suburban trains, it may well be doubted whether, under present circumstances, upon first class passengers carried long distances by express trains—say between London and Scotland—there is any profit at all.

On the whole, therefore, it would appear that the revenue to be derived from the conveyance of passenger traffic upon English railways is a diminished and