In any case, whether the railway shareholder be a capitalist large or small or only an ordinary thrifty middle-class person who has saved a little money which he seeks to put into something both safe and remunerative, the fact remains that since the advent of the railway era he is the person who, though supplying the means by which this huge system of inland communication has been brought into existence, has had the least consideration of all. The trader, the passenger and the railway servant have all been the subject of much legislative effort for the protection or the furtherance of their own interests, whereas the railway shareholder has been too often regarded with an absolute lack of sympathy, and treated as a person who must be severely restrained from becoming unduly wealthy at the expense of these other interests, and should be thankful that he is not deprived of his property altogether.
It has really seemed as though the aim alike of the State and of local governing authorities has been less to ensure to the railway shareholders, who have undertaken a great public work at their own risk and expense, a fair return on their enterprise than to extract from the railway system huge sums in the way of taxation.
What the railway companies have paid in the way of "rates and taxes" since 1894 is shown by the following table, which I compile from the Board of Trade Returns for 1903 and 1910:
| YEAR. | AMOUNTS PAID FOR RATES AND TAXES. | INCREASE (+) or DECREASE (-) as compared with previous year. | |
| £ | £ | ||
| 1894 | 2,816,000 | — | |
| 1895 | 3,011,000 | (+) | 195,000 |
| 1896 | 3,149,000 | (+) | 138,000 |
| 1897 | 3,249,000 | (+) | 145,000 |
1898 | 3,425,000 | (+) | 131,000 |
| 1899 | 3,582,000 | (+) | 157,000 |
| 1900 | 3,757,000 | (+) | 175,000 |
| 1901 | 3,980,000 | (+) | 223,000 |
| 1902 | 4,228,000 | (+) | 248,000 |
| 1903 | 4,493,000 | (+) | 265,000 |
| 1904 | 4,736,000 | (+) | 243,000 |
| 1905 | 4,933,000 | (+) | 197,000 |
| 1906 | 4,965,000 | (+) | 32,000 |
| 1907 | 4,863,000 | (-) | 102,000 |
| 1908 | 4,884,000 | (+) | 21,000 |
| 1909 | 5,010,000 | (+) | 126,000 |
| 1910 | 5,102,000 | (+) | 92,000 |
These figures show a continuous increase since 1894, with the exception only of the year 1907, when there was a decrease of £102,000 as compared with 1906, due to the activity of the railway companies in appealing against excessive assessments. The advance in the total paid in 1910 over the total for 1894 was no less than £2,286,000, or 77.9 per cent.
It should be remembered, also, that the figures given relate to sums paid for rates and taxes, and do not include the expenses incurred by the railway companies in respect both to their rates and taxes departments (conducted by highly skilled officers) and to litigation arising on their appeals against assessments they consider unfair. The total expenditure under these two heads has been estimated at over £80,000 per annum.
Since comparisons are frequently made between English and German railway rates, with a view to showing that the former are higher than the latter, it may be of interest to compare, also, the amount paid for taxation by the railways of the United Kingdom with the corresponding payments of the Prussian State railways. The length of line of the two systems is approximately the same; yet while the taxation of the British system comes to £5,000,000 a year, that of the Prussian State railways is only £750,000 a year. Naturally, when a Government owns the railways, it is much more interested in checking excessive taxation of the lines by the local authorities than when the railways are owned by commercial companies; and one of the questions to which proposals in regard to the nationalisation of the British railways gives rise is whether, when the Government owned the railways, they would be willing to continue the payment from the railway revenues of all the taxation which local authorities are now able to exact from the railway companies. Presumably not; and in that case the trader, whether or not he got lower railway rates from the State, would probably have to pay higher local rates in order to make up for the tolls no longer levied, or levied only to a much less extent, on the railway traffic.
The growth in the payments made by individual companies for rates and taxes between 1902 and 1910 may be illustrated by giving the figures for the London and North-Western, the Great Western and the Midland Companies respectively:—
| YEAR. | LONDON AND NORTH-WESTERN. | GREAT WESTERN. | MIDLAND. |
| £ | £ | £ | |
| 1903 | 520,000 | 524,000 | 418,000 |
| 1904 | 572,000 | 558,000 | 435,000 |
| 1905 | 599,000 | 592,000 | 453,000 |
| 1906 | 603,000 | 621,000 | 475,000 |
| 1907 | 603,000 | 608,000 | 458,000 |
| 1908 | 610,000 | 638,000 | 436,000 |
| 1909 | 631,000 | 663,000 | 438,000 |
| 1910 | 638,000 | 669,000 | 456,000 |
In addition to the items coming under the head of "rates and taxes" the railway companies still have to pay to the Government the passenger duty of which I have spoken on page [263], their function here, presumably, being that of honorary tax-gatherers who are required to get the money from the British public in the interests of the national exchequer, and save the Government the cost and the trouble of collection. The passenger duty thus collected by them in 1910 came to £319,404, the total contributions of the railways to the public finances for that year being thus increased to £5,421,715.