certain fixed expenses remain much the same, no matter what may be the volume of traffic, the movement or operating expenses increase with the traffic. It may be confidently stated that no trustworthy data as to the cost of conveying each consignment or each class of goods in the actual intricacy of business could be obtained. At best only estimates could be roughly arrived at by arbitrarily making allowances and assumptions. Will those who talk about cost of service reveal the formula by which they can accurately calculate the cost of carriage of a particular article carried in the same truck with a dozen others, all coming from different places and destined for different stations over three or four different lines, the cost of no two of which has been the same, and the working expenses of which are totally dissimilar? If they have discovered this formula, it remains to be stated how it may be applied.

So serious are the difficulties in the way of ascertaining the facts as to cost of transport, so varied are the circumstances in this country, that it is not surprising that in every instance in which the principle has been brought before a Parliamentary Committee or Royal Commission it has met with the condemnation expressed by the Select Committee of 1872—“it is impracticable.”[5]

If the use of each wagon were charged for, according to its capacity, the cost of conveyance per truck could, no doubt, be approximately known. Whether such a system is the best for railway companies need not be here considered; certain it is that it is extremely undesirable in the interest of the trader. According to it, he must pay for a five or a ten ton wagon, whether he filled it or not, and whether the merchandise which he sent was silk, bales of cotton, or fruit. The system of charging so much a wagon instead of so much a ton—wagenraum tarif, as it is called—is, to a considerable extent, in force in Germany and Holland. In both these countries, however, it has been found incompatible with the necessities of commerce to abide strictly by this principle. One curious result would be brought about by charging per wagon—there would be a return to practices some forty years ago given up in England as needlessly costly and unsuitable to business. Every customer of a railway does not want a whole truck. He wishes to send ten cwt. of bales or a cask weighing one hundredweight; he could not send his goods if he had to pay for a full truck. To provide for the wants of the great mass of traders and the ordinary requirements of business, intermediaries between the railway companies have sprung up in Germany and Holland. Indeed, the great bulk of the traffic in the latter country is carried by carriers or forwarding agents in full wagon loads. The company is practically only a toll taker. The forwarding agents charge the consignor or consignee of the goods sums over and above the tolls or rates paid to the companies. So far as a large part of the public is concerned, the rates of the companies are, in those countries, mere paper rates. Not being able to take a full wagon, small traders must pay what the forwarding agents demand, or make special terms with them. This is very much the state of things which existed in England before 1844, when the companies were, as a rule, merely owners of the road, locomotives, &c., and when they left to private persons the business of carriers. Those who can recall that time, or who reflect what the results of such a system would be, will scarcely wish for its return; it would be indeed a lamentable retrogression, injurious alike to the public and the railway companies.[6]

SECTION IV.
EQUAL MILEAGE RATES.

Another proposal which, though always condemned by competent judges, is still, in some form, very often brought forward, is to charge equal mileage rates.[7] Admitting the impossibility or impropriety of making rates vary according to the cost of conveyance of goods without reference to their value or quality—recognising the expediency of classification in some form—many persons think that it would be well to charge for the same kind of goods the same sum per mile universally. This plan is simple; it has an appearance of being equitable; and, as such, it is attractive. But, on the slightest consideration, it becomes apparent that exceptions which mar this simplicity must be admitted. In fact, no one proposes that this principle should be inflexibly carried out. Far from being really equitable, equal mileage rates would often act most unfairly. Mileage run is only one element out of many in cost of service; and to compel companies to charge the same sum between points equally distant, irrespective of the original cost of constructing the way, the nature of the gradients, the amount and regularity of the traffic to and fro, and the extent of back haulage of “empties,” would be doing great injustice. Obviously an allowance must be made to cover the cost of specially expensive undertakings, such as the Runcorn, Tay and Forth Bridges, the Sol way Viaduct, or the Severn Tunnel. So, too, allowance must be made for steep gradients; manifestly the same paying load cannot be carried over gradients of one in forty as over one in eight hundred. In Germany and Holland an effort has been made to adopt the mileage system; and (subject to exceptions for import, export and transit rates, referred to afterwards) it is assumed to be carried out. But patent facts could not be ignored; in these countries an extra mileage up to 12 kilometres (about 7½ miles) is taken into the calculation of rates for expensive bridges and steep gradients. Speed, too, must be taken into account; as it increases, a more than proportionate increase in engine power is necessary.[8]

Equality is here not equity. To all railway companies the result of establishing a system of equal mileage rates would not be the same. Much would depend on the question whether the rates were the same over all parts of the same railway, or whether equal mileage rates were in force throughout the country: a distinction not always borne in mind by those who propose such rates. Undoubtedly to many railways the loss of traffic as the result, of equal mileage rates would be serious. Unless a very low scale of rates, entailing heavy and unnecessary loss, were adopted, much of the long distance traffic would cease to be carried. On other railways, however, the present net revenue might be maintained by levelling up rates; although the amount of traffic would be less, the working expenses might be reduced. On the whole, the more the theory of equal mileage rates is studied, the clearer it becomes that its adoption would probably be much less injurious to some railway companies than to colliery proprietors, manufacturers, traders, ports, and to the country at large.