Geddes has stood in his position in regard to the Scottish railways for the regional plan in its purest form. His theory was excellent. But it had to give way to hard-headed practice. It often so happens. Remember always, if you will, that railroad competition has been a great god in Britain as well as in the United States. Yet competition is not to be too hardly judged, even by the loftiest of idealists. It has its good points, and they are many. Most of the fine excellences of our railroad service in this country were built up in its hottest competitive period. That is irrefutable. It is entirely probable that if we had not had that competitive period we should not have had a service even comparable with the high standard of excellence that we reached a decade ago. The point is that within the last generation genuine competition has ceased to exist between our railroads; the sham of it that remains is a fearful drag upon any really economical operation of them to-day.
Only a few years ago Lord Monkswell, the distinguished British student of railway problems, said:
“At sight it would appear that it [competition] has possessed certain advantages. It is found that in Great Britain, the only European country where different routes between the same important centers exist to any great extent under separate management, the train service is more complete than anywhere else except France [the italics are my own] and the passenger-fares are by no means particularly high. But when we remember that Great Britain was the first country to develop railways and so got a long start of the rest of the world, and that the population of Great Britain for each unit of area is much greater than that of any other big country—more than twice as great as that of France, and half as great again as that of Germany—we see that there are other causes to which these effects may be ascribed.
“No conditions of this kind, however, tend in any way to show that competition, if attainable, is incapable of producing good results on railways at the present time. Far from it; railways present so many possibilities of improvement that if any really effective means could be discovered of inducing their managers to make bold experiments, it is more than likely that the best results would ensue. As has just been remarked the facilities offered to passengers are certainly on the whole greater in Great Britain than elsewhere, and in conjunction with—probably in consequence of—this, it is found that the passenger receipts per head of the population are approximately twice as large as they are in France or Germany.
“On the face of it then there is a very good reason for supposing that the receipts increase with the facilities offered. Now the two things above all others that passengers may be expected to care for are reduced third-class fares and increased speeds. If railway managers, animated by some real spirit of competition, were to offer these advantages, it is possible and even probable that travel would increase so much that the railways, besides conferring a great boon on their customers, would themselves secure large benefits.
“As regards the goods traffic, the definite elimination of all competition would be likely to have the result of doing away with several unsatisfactory features of this traffic. Even though there is ostensibly no competition in rates between the different companies serving the same points, there can be no doubt that the fear of losing traffic has frequently induced railways to make concessions of various kinds to traders, the results of which have been to give more or less secret rebates to the traders in whose favor the concessions were made.”
I have quoted Lord Monkswell in some detail because his remarks, made upon the British railway situation eight years ago, are so pertinent and applicable to our American railroad situation of this moment. He has seen the rise and the decline of competition upon his home island. And we too have seen its rise and its decline, upon the North American continent.
Return for a final moment to the British regional grouping plan as it has finally been effected by Parliament; some of the many details are vital to us because they are details that before long we shall be compelled to face in the remaking of our own national railroad structure. The Railways Act over there, after outlining rather precisely the geography of the regional grouping, sets up an Amalgamation Tribunal, consisting of three commissioners, who will approve and confirm the amalgamation schemes submitted to them. This tribunal is to be a court of record and is to have an official seal. Its decisions are subject to a review by the Court of Appeal, whose decision is to be final, unless it gives leave to carry it up to the House of Lords itself.
It is expected that the work of this tribunal will be finished early in 1923, so that the new groups may begin active operations upon July 1 of that year. At one time it was suggested that the entire scheme be made operative upon July 1, 1921; the whole thing was suggested by the minister of transport as early as June, 1920. But that was obviously far too short a time. The railway companies would have none of it. They wanted it to begin not before January 1, 1924, and have nearly had their own way in the matter.