Economic justice demands a diminution, if not a total abolition, of the proportion of the national income which goes to the recipients of rent and interest.  But when the holders of railway shares are given government stock to replace their shares, they are given the prospect of an income in perpetuity equal to what they might reasonably expect to have derived from their shares.  Unless there is reason to expect a great increase in the earnings of railways, the whole operation does nothing to alter the distribution of wealth.  This could only be effected if the present owners were expropriated, or paid less than the market value, or given a mere life-interest as compensation.  When full value is given, economic justice is not advanced in any degree.

There is equally little advance toward freedom.  The men employed on the railway have no more voice than they had before in the management of the railway, or in the wages and conditions of work.  Instead of having to fight the directors, with the possibility of an appeal to the government, they now have to fight the government directly; and experience does not lead to the view that a government department has any special tenderness toward the claims of labor.  If they strike, they have to contend against the whole organized power of the state, which they can only do successfully if they happen to have a strong public opinion on their side.  In view of the influence which the state can always exercise on the press, public opinion is likely to be biased against them, particularly when a nominally progressive government is in power.  There will no longer be the possibility of divergences between the policies of different railways.  Railway men in England derived advantages for many years from the comparatively liberal policy of the North Eastern Railway, which they were able to use as an argument for a similar policy elsewhere.  Such possibilities are excluded by the dead uniformity of state administration.

And there is no real advance toward democracy.  The administration of the railways will be in the hands of officials whose bias and associations separate them from labor, and who will develop an autocratic temper through the habit of power.  The democratic machinery by which these officials are nominally controlled is cumbrous and remote, and can only be brought into operation on first-class issues which rouse the interest of the whole nation.  Even then it is very likely that the superior education of the officials and the government, combined with the advantages of their position, will enable them to mislead the public as to the issues, and alienate the general sympathy even from the most excellent cause.

I do not deny that these evils exist at present; I say only that they will not be remedied by such measures as the nationalization of railways in the present economic and political environment.  A greater upheaval, and a greater change in men’s habits of mind, is necessary for any really vital progress.