an establishment of three hundred and eighty
horses, and they would only do the work in
four-and-twenty hours. Of course it is fair to ask,
Why is there no proportionate reduction in
the charges for conveyance? Because there
is, on the railway line, not only the coke and
water and working staff to pay for, but the
heavy charge on the capital sunk in making the
iron road. So, many say: forgetting that, the
road once made, the cost of each act of
conveyance deducted from the sum paid for the
service, is all that determines profits. The
prime cost of the road, except as an element in
its stability and cause of more or less current
expense for repairs, can have nothing to do
with the calculation. Upon a balance of current
profit and loss alone, it is to be decided what
fares will pay best.

The tradesman who raises the price of his
goods to pay for a new shop-front may lose old
customers worth many shop-fronts. He looks
rather to its effect in tempting new customers
over his threshold, and his question is simply
whether he can make most money by a system
of small profits and many sales, or by fewer
sales at higher profits on each article, or by
charging an enormous profit, and thereby
enormously reducing the number of those who deal
with him. Reliance is placed on the attraction
of large numbers of customers, by taking from
each only a modest toll of profit on the cost
price of goods sold in many a shop of costliest
construction. And, as a matter of fact, the
railway lines on which the most money was
spent for each mile of original construction, are
those on which the charges are the lowest.
Whatever the cost of making the line, when
once it is made, profits depend on the daily
relation between working expenses and receipts.
Now, the average fares on English railways are
at present twopence-farthing a mile for first
class, three-halfpence for second class, and a
penny for third, while in a railway train carrying
a fair load, when all expenses of conveyance,
indirect and direct, have been allowed for, it
appears that the cost price of carrying a first-class
passenger is a penny for sixteen miles, for
carrying a second-class passenger a penny for
twenty-five miles, and, by still closer packing, a
third-class passenger is conveyed forty miles for
a penny. Thus, if the number of travellers
increased sufficiently, it is, at any rate, conceivable
that a half-crown fare from London to Liverpool
might pay better than a fare of thirty
shillings.

Railways do find, indeed, at the season when
they are sure of a full load of passengers,
excursion trains to be a most profitable part of
their business. But in habitual use, trains run
at what we now regard as the exceptional
excursion price, would, it is found, yield a trifle
less profit than trains carrying a few passengers
who pay a high price for the use of them. It
pays shareholders a trifle, only a trifle, better,
while it answers the public purpose immeasurably
worse, for the railroads to carry one
passenger who pays nine shillings, instead of eight
passengers who pay only one shilling apiece.
Thus, for the sake of the odd shilling, the
train runs with an insufficient load, and seven
people, who might have been benefited by the
use of what has now become the common highway,
are shut out of it. By study of the relation
of tariffs to profits on the French bridges
and roads, it has been shown that, as the charge
rises, there is a diminution of their use, but a
gradual rise in the receipt from tolls up to a
certain point; beyond which, excess of charge
defeats its purpose, and receipts decline. Thus,
of a hundred persons who pay for the use of a
road or bridge at a charge of a penny, eighty
will use it, and the receipts are eighty pence.
At a charge of twopence, only sixty-three will
use it, but the receipts, being twice sixty-three,
rise to one hundred and twenty-six pence. If
the charge be threepence, only fifty will incur it,
but the receipts still rise, for three times fifty
are one hundred and fifty. At a charge of fourpence,
only forty-one will use it, but four times
forty is again a higher point attained in the
receipts. By charging a penny more, eight
persons more are excluded from use of the road;
but there is yet increase in the receipts, though
but an increase of a single penny. After that
point, the increase of charge produces dwindling
profits until it comes to a point absolutely
prohibitive. Now, the whole business of a
private railway board having its own monopoly
of traffic, is to find the point of highest receipt,
and if one more turn of the screw exclude
hundreds of persons from the use of their line, and
an almost imperceptible increase of revenue, yet,
if it be increase, it is the railway directors' present
duty to secure it.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the
companies were all extinct, and that the railways
were the Queen's highways: that is to say, pubfic
roads, with their traffic service under control of
the people for whose use they are constructed.
In that case, it is obvious that the addition of a
half per cent to the working profits—which is all
that is got by substituting a half prohibitive tariff
for habitual use of "excursion fares"—would be
as nothing to the diffused national prosperity that
must come of a thoroughly cheap, and still profitable,
system of passenger and goods traffic.
Towns would flourish, industries revive, town
workers could afford to live in country houses,
health would be cheaply restored by accessible
sea-breezes; we should all be practically nearer to
one another, healthier, wealthier, and wiser, for
our opportunities of free movement and ready
intercourse.

A committee of the House of Commons once
declared " that the roads of a country are public
concerns, and necessary to the people as the
air they breathe." Suppose the country now to
be of opinion that it is unwise to delegate to
conflicting bodies of private individuals the
whole charge of the roads as monopolies and
individual trade speculations of their own. Well,
for the present, that is too much to suppose.
Thirteen great companies now possess and
manage three-fourths of the land traffic of the