ABSTRACT
The combined result of a vast increase in industrial production; the decline in river, canal and road transport; and the various conditions which checked competition on and between the railways was to increase greatly the need for transportation facilities, and to make traders and the public in general more and more dependent on the one means of consignment and locomotion thus so rapidly becoming paramount. The earliest railway rates of all were simply a toll at the rate of so much per mile, or so much per ton per mile, for the use of the rails, with an extra charge if the railway owners supplied the waggons. In the meantime much trouble had also arisen as the result of the haphazard fashion in which the railways of the country had been called into being. In the canal companies Acts the authorised tolls and charges were generally specified in respect to only about a dozen different articles.
