ABSTRACT
Parliament, it is true, stepped in to limit to some extent, by more stringent regulations and detailed requirements, the unreasoning demands for new charters. But this had little effect. The most tremendous effor ts were made to hurry forward the completion of repor ts, and estimates, and plans, and evidence of traffic and public utility. It was indeed a time of stress and strain. All the records of the period prove tbat the eagerness displayed reached the pitch of positive lunacy. Half-a-dozen ot· more schemes were proposed for eaeh of the possible routes, nod as many more for those which were manife.<;Lly hopeless from the first. Each promoter was far m<Jre anxious to crush his 1·ivals than to ensure the soundness of his own enterprise. All were in the most desperate haste to put in their demands before the appointed time for closing the list of applications. If half the proposed lines had been carried out, Great Britain would have been gridironed from one end to another with railways, and ordinary traffic would have been rendered impossible. Engineers, draftsmen, lithographers, engravers, and, above all, lawyers, had more work than they could do, paid for at rates far in excess of any that they had previously been able to command. Landowners who opposed and landowners who favoured railways alike asked prices for their land quite beyond anything which i t could have realised in a free market. The cost of construction wa:s thus enormously enlumecd in the case of success-
ful competitors for any given Lime; and the people of England are actually paying to-day, in the shape of el'cessive fares, for the p1·ivilege 1>f that ruinous competition, which has only resulted in a. monstrous monopoly.
