Only a few years ago Lord Monkswell, the distinguished British student of railway problems, said:
"At sight it would appear that it [competition] has possessed certain advantages. It is found that in Great Britain, the only European country where different routes between the same important centers exist to any great extent under separate management, the train service is more complete than anywhere else _except France_ [the italics are my own] and the passenger-fares are by no means particularly high. But when we remember that Great Britain was the first country to develop railways and so got a long start of the rest of the world, and that the population of Great Britain for each unit of area is much greater than that of any other big country--more than twice as great as that of France, and half as great again as that of Germany--we see that there are other causes to which these effects may be ascribed.
"No conditions of this kind, however, tend in any way to show that competition, if attainable, is incapable of producing good results on railways at the present time. Far from it; railways present so many possibilities of improvement that if any really effective means could be discovered of inducing their managers to make bold experiments, it is more than likely that the best results would ensue. As has just been remarked the facilities offered to passengers are certainly on the whole greater in Great Britain than elsewhere, and in conjunction with--probably in consequence of--this, it is found that the passenger receipts per head of the population are approximately twice as large as they are in France or Germany.
"On the face of it then there is a very good reason for supposing that the receipts increase with the facilities offered. Now the two things above all others that passengers may be expected to care for are reduced third-class fares and increased speeds. If railway managers, animated by some real spirit of competition, were to offer these advantages, it is possible and even probable that travel would increase so much that the railways, besides conferring a great boon on their customers, would themselves secure large benefits.
"As regards the goods traffic, the definite elimination of all competition would be likely to have the result of doing away with several unsatisfactory features of this traffic. Even though there is ostensibly no competition in rates between the different companies serving the same points, there can be no doubt that the fear of losing traffic has frequently induced railways to make concessions of various kinds to traders, the results of which have been to give more or less secret rebates to the traders in whose favor the concessions were made."