STATE CONTROL OR OWNERSHIP.
The history whose outline I have now very briefly sketched shows, I think, that whereas there is everywhere a tendency towards further state control, the tendency towards absolute state-ownership and state-operation is far from being equally universal. I shall have a word to say presently as to the reasons why America shows no signs of intention to follow the example of continental Europe. Meanwhile it is well to notice that American experience proves also the extreme difficulty of finding satisfactory methods of control. Sir Henry Tyler said some five-and-thirty years ago in England, in words that have often been quoted since, "If the state can't control the railroads, the railroads will control the state"; and President Roosevelt has again and again in the last few years insisted on the same point. "The American people," he said in effect, "must work out a satisfactory method of controlling these great organizations. If left uncontrolled, there will be such abuses and such consequent popular indignation that state-ownership will become inevitable, and state-ownership is alien to American ideas, and might cause very serious political dangers."
Perhaps some of my hearers may remember Macaulay's graphic description of the passion that was aroused by Charles James Fox's proposed India Bill; it was described as a Bill for giving in perpetuity to the Whigs, whether in or out of office, the whole patronage of the Indian government. The objection felt by American statesmen to handing over their railroads to the National government—for I think it may be taken for granted that if they were nationalized it would have to be wholly under Federal management, and that the separate states could take no part in the matter—is in principle the same. There are something like a million and a half men employed on the railroads of the United States, say roughly 7 or 8 per cent. of the voters. Americans feel that rival political parties might bid against each other for the support of so vast and homogeneous a body of voters; that the amount of patronage placed at the disposal of the executive government for the time being would be enormous; and that the general interests of the nation might be sacrificed by politicians anxious to placate—to use their own term—particular local and sectional interests. How far this fear, which is undoubtedly very prevalent in the states, is justified by the history of state railroads in other countries is a question exceedingly difficult to answer. Dealing with state railroads in the lump, it is easy to point to some against which the charge would be conspicuously untrue. To take the most important state railroad organization in the world, the Prussian system, no one, I think, can fairly deny that it has been operated—in intention at least, if not always in result—for the greatest good of the greatest number. But then Prussia is Prussia, with a government in effect autocratic, with a civil service with strong esprit de corps and permeated with old traditions, leading them to regard themselves as the servants of the king rather than as candidates for popular favor. An American statesman, Charles Francis Adams, wrote as follows more than 30 years ago: "In applying results drawn from the experience of one country to problems which present themselves in another, the difference of social and political habit and education should ever be borne in mind. Because in the countries of continental Europe the state can and does hold close relations, amounting even to ownership, with the railroads, it does not follow that the same course could be successfully pursued in England or in America. The former nations are by political habit administrative, the latter are parliamentary. In other words, France and Germany are essentially executive in their governmental systems, while England and America are legislative. Now the executive may design, construct or operate a railroad; the legislative never can. A country therefore with a weak or unstable executive, or a crude and imperfect civil service, should accept with caution results achieved under a government of bureaus. Nevertheless, though conclusions cannot be adopted in the gross, there may be in them much good food for reflection."
CONTROL BY DEMOCRACY, OR OWNERSHIP BY AUTOCRACY.
I am inclined to think that the effect of the evidence is that the further a government departs from autocracy and develops in the direction of democracy, the less successful it is likely to be in the direct management of railroads. Belgium is far from being a pure democracy; but compared with Prussia it is democratic, and compared with Prussia its railroad management is certainly inferior. Popular opinion in Belgium seems at present to be exceedingly hostile to the railroad administration; official documents assert that, while the service to the public is bad, the staff are scandalously underpaid, and yet that the railroads are actually not paying their way. There was, it is true, till recently an accumulated surplus of profits carried in the railroad accounts, but the official figures have been recently revised, and the surplus is shown to be non-existent.
The Swiss experiment is too new to justify any very positive conclusions being drawn from it; but this much is clear: the state has had to pay for the acquisition of the private lines sums very much larger than were put forward in the original estimate; the surplus profits that were counted on have not been obtained in practice; the economies that were expected to result from unification have not been realized; the expenditure for salaries and wages has increased very largely; and so far from there being a profit to the Federal government, the official statement of the railroad administration is that, unless the utmost care is exercised in the future, the railroad receipts will not cover the railroad expenditure.
The Italian experiment is still newer. It would not be fair to say that it proves anything against state management; but I do not think that the most fervid Etatist would claim that, either on the ground of efficiency or on the ground of economy, it has so far furnished any argument in favor of that policy.
If we wish to study the state management of railroads by pure democracies of Anglo-Saxon type, we must go to our own Colonies. My own impressions, formed after considerable study of the subject and having had the advantage of talking with not a few of the men who have made the history, I hesitate to give. It is easy to find partisan statements on both sides; for example, in a recent article in the Nineteenth Century, entitled "The Pure Politics Campaign in Canada," I find the following quotation from the Montreal Gazette—a paper of high standing—dated May 27, 1907: "Every job alleged against the Russian autocracy has been paralleled in kind in Canada. First, there is the awful example of the Intercolonial Railway, probably as to construction the most costly single-track system in North America, serving a good traffic-bearing country, with little or no competition during much of the year, and in connection with much of its length no competition at all, but so mishandled that one of its managers, giving up his job in disgust, said it was run like a comic opera. Some years it does not earn enough to pay the cost of operation and maintenance (I may interpolate that its gross earnings per mile are equal to those of an average United States railroad), and every year it needs a grant of one, two, three or four million dollars out of the Treasury to keep it in condition to do at a loss the business that comes to it. When land is to be bought for the road, somebody who knows what is intended obtains possession of it, and turns it over to the government at 40, 50 and 100 per cent advance. This is established by the records of Parliament and of the courts of the land."
AFRICAN CAPE GOVERNMENT RAILROADS.
Probably no one outside the somewhat heated air of Canadian politics is likely to believe this damning accusation quite implicitly; but even if there were not a word of truth in it—and that the management of the Intercolonial Railway is, for whatever cause, bad, appears, I think, clearly from the public figures—it is bad enough that such charges should be publicly made and apparently believed. Let me quote now from a document of a very different type referring to a colony very far distant from Canada: "A memorandum relative to Railroad Organization, prepared at the request of the Railroad Commissioners of the Cape Government Railways, by Sir Thomas R. Price, formerly general manager of those railroads, and now general manager of the Central South Africa (i. e., Transvaal and Orange River) Railways, dated Johannesburg, February 22, 1907."