The sixth cause is the anxious search for more revenue for the State. National expenditure has grown to such enormous and alarming dimensions that the provision of revenue to meet it has become a serious and urgent difficulty. A Chancellor of the Exchequer on the lookout for cash has not been able to resist the attraction of railways as a source of revenue for the State. He has noted the various influences at work which are tending to bring the question of railway nationalization to the front, has looked with envy at the large revenue which Prussian railways yield to the State, and has at least gone the length of asking himself the question, within the hearing of reporters, whether he ought not to encourage and to take advantage of a state of opinion which might conceivably be worked upon so as to create a majority prepared to approve the principle of State ownership of what might be a highly lucrative State monopoly.
The mileage of railways open for traffic in the United Kingdom at the end of each of the last four decades up to 1907 is shown in the following table:
| Mileage open | Increase in | Average increase | |
| Year. | for traffic. | ten years. | per annum. |
| 1877 | 17,077 | — | — |
| 1887 | 19,578 | 2,501 | 250.1 |
| 1897 | 21,433 | 1,855 | 185.5 |
| 1907 | 23,108 | 1,675 | 167.5 |
The growth has been slow and decreases with each decade. It is probably true that the period of construction has nearly come to an end. Future additions to the mileage are not likely to be either large or of substantial importance. This rather indicates the present as a suitable time for considering a change of system. The considerations which are applicable to what I may call the age of construction are very different from those which become most important in the age of operation.
It would probably be accepted as indisputable that in a country like England, where capital is plentiful and enterprise active, the system of leaving the construction of railways to private enterprise is the best system.
Whatever may be thought as to the respective merits of private and public ownership, it cannot be denied that private enterprise does take more risk than any Government is likely to do, except under pressure of military necessities. The hope of gain is the strongest motive for enterprise, and this desire operates more strongly on the private citizen than it does on the State.
The growth of railway mileage during the age of construction in any country is promoted by the constant influence and moving force of those incentives which act on capitalists. The spur of competition is always in active operation. Then there are the very powerful professional influences which are constantly at work to induce capitalists to spend their money on works and enterprises which afford professional work, even if they do not subsequently provide dividends.
Theoretically; no doubt, railways promoted by private enterprise tend to the favoring of particular localities at the expense of other localities. Perhaps it is right that the stronger should grow at the expense of the weaker, but, at all events, it is inevitable. You cannot expect private competitors to think of anything but their own interests. And if this be so, you cannot expect from a system in which private interests predominate the same consideration of general design, from the point of view of the interests of the whole country, as from a system which places public in front of private interests.
It is difficult to deny that the miscellaneous and unequal activities of private enterprise fail in the absence of some central guidance to produce the best results so far as harmony and completeness of design are concerned. In England railway construction has not been, as in America, almost entirely free from any public control. We have had the control, I think the most salutary and useful control of Parliament, so far as it has gone, both over location and capitalization. But it has not gone far. Although there has been a certain amount of control, there has been practically no guidance. The control, under the system of private bill legislation, has been very ineffectual except as regards capitalization. It has been mainly negative; never constructive. All that Parliament could practically do was to prohibit the making of particular railways which aroused opposition from some landowning or railway interests powerful enough to oppose and wealthy enough to pay the heavy costs of opposition. Private interests have been protected, but the general interest has, in the main, been ignored.
But whilst conceding that it would have been a great advantage if the vagaries of private enterprise had been more restrained by some prudent, general guidance, I think that the chief public requirement during the age of construction is that as much mileage as possible should be constructed; and I submit, as a true conclusion on the point I am discussing, that, as regards the age of construction, at all events, England has derived incalculable benefit from the fact that the railway system has been made by private enterprise. But the problem of working the railway system after it has been constructed is, I admit, essentially different from the problem of securing its construction.