so that the boats may be specially constructed. The companies never attempted to cope with these difficulties. Yet their failures were never due to their hopeless unpunctuality, but to general bad management and false economy, and above all to over-capitalization and other financial follies.

Failure of "Private Enterprise."

Since 1840 seven steamboat companies and several private owners have plied upon the Thames. For twenty-five years the London, Westminster and Vauxhall Steamboat Company ran seven boats between London Bridge and Vauxhall, any distance for 1d. The service was fairly good, and was profitable. The company promoter stepped in; a new company bought up the service and raised the fares. High fares and over-capitalization brought bankruptcy.

The City Steamboat Company was established in 1848 with eight boats. The company paid 10 per cent. and an occasional bonus, and built a new boat every two years out of revenue. In 1875 the London Steamboat Company bought them out, with the usual resultbankruptcy.

The River Thames Navigation Company, which followed, collapsed through bad management. A syndicate of financiers bought them up for £24,000 and immediately afterwards sold the concern to the Victoria Steamboat Company for £75,000. The new company within a few months wrote up their property to £90,000. The traffic continued to increase rapidly, despite a system of fares unparalleled for complexity. Moreover, despite inexplicably high expenditure, handsome profits were made from the first, but these were immediately divided, no proper allowances were made for reserve, depreciation, etc., and the accounts generally were very badly kept. In the last three years of the company's existence, its average gross earnings were £70,000, and its average annual profits, after allowing for depreciation, 6,450. But the over-capitalization and financial mismanagement led to bankruptcy in 1894. In 1896 the Thames Steamboat Company commenced the service which was intermittently kept up until the past autumn.

i

Practical Proposal for a Municipal Service.

The report to the Rivers Committee of the County Council, presented in 1895 and revised in July, 1900, advocates a central service of short interval traffic in conjunction with extensions up and down the river: the central service to run from London Bridge to Vauxhall, about 2 miles, calling at Blackfriars, Waterloo, West minster and Lambeth; the eastward extension to run down to Woolwich, about 9 miles, calling at Cherry Garden, Limehouse, Greenwich and Blackwall; the westward extension to run to Hammersmith, about 64 miles, calling at Chelsea, Battersea, Wandsworth and Putney. On the central service the fare would be, id. for any distance; the same for any points between Vauxhall and Wandsworth, or between Wandsworth and Hammersmith, going west; and

going east. Thus the fare for the whole route from Hammersmith to Woolwich would be d. For the same distance, when boats are running, the companies charge 1s. or more, whilst for each of the proposed id. stages they charge 3d. or 4d. Self-registering turnstiles. as used in the Birkenhead and Wallasey services, would obviate the complicated and expensive ticket system. The times occupied and the fares charged would compare favorably with the fares and times of competing rail, tram and omnibus services.

Why should London Wait?

With 33 million passengers annually the traffic would pay. The annual passenger traffic of Greater London is about 1,300 millions. For the metropolis it is calculated at 878 millions, of which 453 millions are within the central area, or adjacent to the river. Onetenth of this central traffic diverted to a river service would make it pay handsomely. As a fact every new facility for travel increases the total of passengers, that is to say it creates a large proportion of its own traffic. In London the number of single journey passengers per head of the population is 202, whereas in New York, where there are better facilities for travel, it is 284.

The Wallasey service, with less than a million of population to draw upon, and with but four stations-corresponding, say, to London Bridge, Greenwich, Woolwich and Gravesend-carries fifteen million passengers, mainly a residential and pleasure traffic. A Thames service, with twenty or more stations, with 5 millions of population to feed it, and running through the heart of the greatest business centre in the world, could hardly fail to carry five passengers to Wallasey's one, or 75 millions, more than double the required traffic. It is ludicrous to contemplate a citizen of London nervously apprehensive that his County Council may fail to possess as much business capacity as a provincial District Council!

AUTHORITIES.

(1) Report of Statistical Department, London County Council, to the Rivers Committee: originally made 25th October 1895, and amended, added to, and republished July 1900.

(2) Abstract of accounts and other information received from (a) General Manager and Secretary of the Clyde Navigation Trust; (b) Clerk and Solicitor of the Wallasey Urban District Council; (3) Ferries Accountant of the Birkenhead Corporation.

FABIAN MUNICIPAL PROGRAMS.

First Series (Nos. 30 to 37).—The Unearned Increment. London's Heritage in the City Guilds. Municipalization of the Gas Supply. Municipal Tramways. London's Water Tribute. Municipalization of the London Docks. The Scandal of London's Markets. A Labor Policy for Public Authorities.

Second Series (Nos. 90 to 97).-Municipalization of the Milk Supply. Municipal Pawnshops. Municipal Slaughterhouses. Women as Councillors. Municipal Bakeries. Municipal Hospitals. Municipal Fire Insurance. Municipal Steamboats. Each series in red covers, price 1d. each, or 9d. per dozen. Separate leaflets, Is. per 100, or 8s. 6d. per 1000.

For these and other Fabian Tracts apply to the Fabian Society, as below. Printed by GEOrge Standring, 7 and 9 Finsbury-street, London, E.C.; and published by the Fabian Society, 3 Clement's Inn, Strand, London, W.C.

STATE RAILWAYS FOR IRELAND.

PUBLISHED BY

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SOCIETY.

"The tolls for the maintenance of a high road cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons."-ADAM SMITH.

"The charge made for services which cannot be dispensed with is, in substance, quite as much compulsory taxation as if imposed by law. . . This applies to the case of a road, a canal, or a railway. These are always in a great degree practical monopolies, and a Government which concedes such monopoly unreservedly to a private company does much the same thing as if it allowed an individual or an association to levy any tax they chose, for their benefit, on all the malt produced in the country or on all the cotton imported into it."-JOHN STUART MILL.

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OCTOBER, 1899.

STATE RAILWAYS FOR IRELAND.

"RAILWAYS are, in their origin, public highways." This is the dictum of the Railway and Canal Commission. It expresses a great historical fact. The original conception of the railway company was very different from that which obtains to-day. In the beginning of the railway era, the idea was that the railway company would provide a permanent iron road, along which the old firms of carriers and private traders should be at liberty to haul goods for a payment to the company of so much per ton per mile. In this way, and for some time, an active competition prevailed between the different firms of carriers upon the iron road, just as previously a real competition had subsisted between them on the old cart roads. But then the promoters of each particular road became their own collectors and delivery agents, hauliers and carriers.

Getting Rid of Competition.

They squeezed out the firms of carriers, and established a complete and rigid monopoly upon each line. Their extortions became scandalous, and Parliament was induced to provide a "remedy "— which was, in the end, probably as bad, if not worse than the disease-at least in its effect on rates. In its peculiar wisdom, Parliament granted to rival promoters rights to promote what they were pleased to call "competing systems." For a few years a keen competition prevailed among the "competing lines," but as Robert Stephenson rightly told Parliament, where "combination is practicable, competition is impracticable." Of course, combination between the rival lines was practicable, and it came quickly. Then the farmers and traders found that they had to pay interest on the several capitals of the so-called "competing lines" instead of upon one as before. This they had to do in still more extortionate rates, and so the process has gone cn to the present day. Competition has been gradually squeezed out between the different companies by means of amalgamations, pools, subsidies to other companies and rate conferences, until at the present moment, with a few unimportant exceptions, the railway companies are welded into one vast monopoly. To the ordinary onlooker, who sees many outward and visible signs of competitive machinery, it is a little difficult to realize that there is practically no active competition among the different companies. While admitting that there is no competition among them in the all-vital matter of rates, the companies allege that there is an effective "competition in facilities." This, in fact, is only true to a very limited extent, and chiefly in the matter of passenger trains. In respect of goods traffic, the phrase is a pretty little

euphony that has not the merit of being accurate. In the case of goods traffic, at least, competition in facilities means a multiplication of wastes for which the traders and the consumers have to pay. It embraces the zealous regiments of canvassers who wait upon customers, the erection of a large number of handsome warehouses in the same place which can only be partially utilized, the provision of large surplus teams of horses and drays by each company "to meet emergencies," and the running of three or four short half-filled trains from the same place to the same place, at the same time, instead of one heavy and fully loaded train.

The leakages in this direction are simply enormous. But you must add to them the expenses of the many separate directorates, with all their attendant paraphernalia; the running of many passenger trains but fractionally filled by several companies where one would suffice; the movement of nearly as many empty as full goods trains, so as to escape the demurrage charged for remaining upon a neighbor's line more than three days; the huge expenses of promotion and litigation. All this waste falls as an extra burden upon the customers in higher rates and fares.

High Rates and Fares.

The Irish railway rates and fares are the highest in the world. This is of striking significance. According to such recognised spokesmen of the present railway régime as Mr. Acworth and Mr. Grierson, the high rates and fares in England as compared with the Continent are largely due to the much greater primary cost of construction in England than elsewhere. If this contention were really sound, then Irish rates and fares ought to be about one-third of English, for while the English lines have cost on an average £45,000 per mile to construct, the Irish have cost only 14,000. Mr. Acworth has also alleged that the great disparity between the passenger fares in the different countries is due to the fact that the prices of commodities vary with the purchasing capacity of the community. It has been further contended by the apologists for the existing order of things that where rates and fares are lower on the Continent than in England, it is because of the slower services. Again, therefore, for these two reasons, rates and fares ought to be much lower in Ireland than in England, because the purchasing capacity of its people is much lower, and the speed of the Irish trains is, on the average, barely up to that of most Continental countries. Nevertheless, the facts in Ireland are completely at variance with these theories. Taking the goods rates first, we find that they are frequently 40 and 50 per cent. higher than for corresponding goods and distances in England.

Even taking the average the difference is startling. According to a recent Government Return the following were shown, on the usual basis of comparison, to be the comparative rates in the three countries: