As has already been mentioned, trade depression and acute competition led the English railway companies to seek salvation in working agreements and amalgamation. When this occurred the Government stepped in and exercised more and more control over the conduct of the railways in order to prevent the monopoly they held from being used to the detriment of traders. Under the 1888 Railway and Canal Traffic Act maximum rates had been fixed for all the railways and they were restricted in various other ways, but this by no means satisfied the opponents of railway monopoly, and as Mrs. Knowles points out, this cessation of competition was giving rise in the early years of this century “to proposals to develop the canals as competitors, and to the question of the acquisition of the railways by the State.” (p. 284).

After 1918 a new factor entered into play, the competition of road transport. Just as the turnpike road interests had earlier tried to resist the encroachments of the railways so now the railways have made every effort to cripple and hamper their road haulage competitors, though latterly trying to achieve this purpose by acquiring road transport services themselves.

At the present time the situation is further complicated by the coming development of air transport, and the railway companies have entered this sphere too.

In the meantime the road transport interests which, until comparatively recently, proclaimed the need for competition are, through the Road Transport organisation Joint Committee, urging the need to oppose “unregulated re-entry into the industry after the war as a means of avoiding the chaotic conditions and unbridled competition that would otherwise result.” (Economist, 4 March, 1944).

The question of nationalising the railways is now being keenly debated. The spokesmen of the companies, concerned as they are with profit (and also no doubt with their own positions as directors who may become redundant with further amalgamation whether under the State or under a public board), mostly oppose any change. Lord Royden, Chairman of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway dealt with this at the Annual Meeting in March, 1944. He said that those who propose changes “not only fail to show that there is any lack of efficiency or economy in the present system but apparently have not considered what such a transfer would involve. It would, for example, be impossible for the State to stop with the purchase of the railways alone ; sooner or later it would be compelled to buy up all other forms of public transport in order to abolish competition between the State-owned system and those remaining in private ownership.” (The Times, 4 March, 1944).

Lord Royden, in the customary manner of those who invoke the “public interest” to support a campaign designed to defend a private capitalist interest, affirmed that “it is surely contrary to the public interest that the Government should be directly concerned in the management of any trading undertaking” ; but he disclosed clearly what is the dominant consideration in the minds of the Railway shareholders, in his further remarks about the possible setting up of a public board to control railways or the whole transport system. “The proprietors”, he said, “would continue to take the risks on the capital employed, but they would have no power to protect their capital or their income against loss.”