OTHER OBJECTIONS.
Apart from the objection to State ownership there are no doubt many who are now deriving income from railways who will fear that their interests may be prejudiced by the proposed change. Fortunately there can be but very few who will be thus prejudiced. As to the existing staffs, such as booking clerks and the Railway Clearing House staff, whose services would no longer be required in those particular departments, there ought to be more than sufficient vacancies for these in other but more necessary branches of the railway service, especially in view of the increased traffic which is sure to arise.
Many traders who may at first sight consider that their profits would suffer if the scheme is adopted will find on further consideration that the benefits they will have by the proposed scheme will be greater than any loss they could possibly sustain. To take one instance. Newspaper proprietors may consider that upon railways being nationalised they would lose the benefit of the extensive and remunerative advertisements they now receive from competing railway companies. So far from there being any loss, there will be profits, partly by the official announcements which the Department will cause to be inserted in all newspapers of time tables, rates, etc., but even more so by the enormous saving in the carriage of paper and of the newspapers, in travelling expenses of special correspondents and others, and by the additional profits arising from increased circulation which is sure to follow upon the increased facility and cheapness of distribution.
Mr. W. M. Acworth, the well-known railway expert, to whom I submitted a rough draft of this pamphlet, was kind enough, while refraining from any detailed criticism, to call my attention to what he considered a difficulty in my proposals. He says:
“The fundamental objection to a scheme of average fares and rates is that people whose fares and goods rates are ‘averaged up’ will, so far as possible, cease to use the trains; those whose fares and rates are ‘averaged down’ will increase enormously, with a corresponding increase in working expenses. Have you appreciated that under your scheme a passenger from London to Glasgow would, in fact, in most cases pay, not 1s., but 3d. or 4d., by taking local tickets from London to Birmingham, Birmingham to Crewe, etc?”
And he instances the Hungarian zone system, which has completely broken down, as a case in point.
My answer to this is, first, that according to my scheme there is no “averaging up;” the flat fares are all “averaged down” to the minimum. Secondly, while welcoming the admission that the effect of “averaging down” is to increase the traffic “enormously,” I am sure that Mr. Acworth himself does not mean that the working expenses will increase in anything like the same proportion. He has himself pointed out in an article on railways[16] that the train cost of carrying 200 passengers and 10 passengers is practically the same. Further reasons for this fact are given under the heading of “Working Expenses” in this pamphlet. Thirdly, while admitting that under my scheme a passenger might, by taking three local trains which stop at all stations travel from London to Glasgow for 3d., I can hardly imagine that any but the smallest percentage of travellers would endeavour to save 9d. by taking a journey in which they would spend sixteen hours and have two changes at least, instead of travelling the same distance by one train, in eight hours, for 1s. As to the zone system, the whole advantage of the flat rate or uniform fare is lost by the difficulty of passing from one zone to the other.