Excerpt from State Railways Mean More Employment: 20 Per Cent Lower Freight Rates, 50 Per Cent Lower Fares, 100 Per Cent More Journeys

In railway matters we are at the parting of the ways. The era of competition is passing and combination on a growing scale is being introduced. Bearing in mind that whatever savings railway companies effect by combination must add to the price which the State will have to pay if it eventually takes over the railways, the question of nationalisation becomes at once a question of first-rate public importance. "Healthy" competition having degenerated into "wasteful" competition, and the fact having been established that co-operation is essential to economy of working and efficiency of service, why, it may be asked, should not the State step in and carry that excellent principle to its logical completeness? This question is all the more urgent because railway combination under private enterprise means private monopoly. The only safe owner of a monopoly which controls the supply of such a public necessity as transit is the State. The State can afford to look further ahead than a body of shareholders, for the State never dies.

The State has the right to purchase the railways. The granting of a charter for the construction and operation of a line of railway is one of the prerogatives of the people exercised through their elected representatives in Parliament, moreover, by an Act passed in 1844 the right to purchase on a defined basis is expressly reserved.

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