ABSTRACT

This chapter draws attention to fundamental matters on working and finance of railway and harbours. The size of the net national income of community depends on the intensity of the economic exploitation of all its resources. In a modern economy such exploitation depends to an enormous degree on the efficiency and cost of transportation. In practice the South African Railways and Harbours have for years been, and are to-day administered purely and simply as a department of State and suffer from all the well known evils of the administration of an industrial undertaking on State departmental lines. Quite apart from the need of increasing the efficiency of the railway system, in the handling, conveyance, and care of freight, it is clear all over the world that the railway industry of the future will be radically different from that of the past.