of which railway service is only one, and not the most important." Those causes are indicated under the large head, "the decay of industries." In an aside the minority admits that the railways "have tended to check the development of Irish manufactures by facilitating the imports of British goods into Ireland," but this of course has nothing to do with "the decay of industries." Emigration, perhaps, had a good deal to do with that decay? Very likely; but "so far as a congested population have taken advantage of improved communications to better their condition, the result cannot be regarded, economically speaking, as an unmixed disadvantage." The decay of industries is, evidently, as you see, to be attributed to one thing alone - the decay of industries! The report then proceeds to compare Ireland to Belgium and to Denmark. It instructs Ireland on the importance of increasing its products so that the railways may justifiably cut their rates. Reducing rates would be "to begin at the wrong end. It would be, in effect, to impose a tax upon railways receipts in order to put a premium upon faulty agricultural methods. If winter dairying were established first, we believe that there would be such an increase in the volume and regularity of the traffic that lower rates would follow as a matter of course."

Then comes that wisdom of the capitalist, which is so often sedentary. "How large a field is open to Ireland in this single industry [butter] is shown by the fact that in 1908 butter to the value of £24,080,912 was imported into the United Kingdom from abroad against only £4,026,023 exported from Ireland."

What Ireland wants from its railways, you observe, is adroitly turned round into what the railways want from Ireland-" improved methods of production, and increased volume of trade." Amalgamation and a new management, " made up largely of the most important chief officers of the existing railways, and the most prominent directors who are commercial men," is the chief reform desirable, remembering always that "no place of any importance in Ireland is unprovided with railway communication."

THE OTHER ATTITUDE.

Considering that the best Irish coalfields have no railway communication, this last statement of the minority report passeth understanding. Much more fundamental, however, is its slack conception of the deficiencies of Ireland - the sad decay of industry, the mad decrease in population, the faults in agricultural method. These consequences of the past merely make the railway experts throw up their hands. No " artificial stimulus of reducing rates to an uncommercial level," please! Let the Irish railways go on paying a select class 4 per cent., as they have been doing. That is the "commercial level." And then, please, please, "laissez faire."

The majority report gives a smashing answer to this dividend preoccupation of the three English commissioners. Four men, three of them Irishmen; signed the majority report. These three were Lord Pirrie, a Liberal, the chairman of Harland and Wolff, Belfast shipbuilders; Lt.-Col. Poë, a Tory landlord; and Thomas Sexton, nationalist ex-M.P., of whom Gladstone once said, "the man is little

short of a master." The fourth was Sir Charles Scotter, chairman of the London and South-Western Railway. They heard the same 248 national and international witnesses, including the premier of New Zealand; listened to the same facts and theories and watched the same clash of opinion and interest. They came out of the inquiry with the kind of constructive policy that makes an honest commission seem the most creative of all governmental devices. The majority's suggestions for reforming the railways have their special value, but the point is how clearly they exhibit the acute reality of Irish disadvantage at the present hour. These men never stooped to the impolicy and in truth the wickedness of dealing with Irish disadvantage in the spirit of laissez-faire. There is such a thing as necessary reparation in this world, reparation as a preliminary to the recovery of function. It is convenient, for example, to define emigration as " taking advantage of improved communication to better your condition," and it is agreeable to hint that it has been a benefit. But that is not the tone of persons who realize the duty of reparation. The more practical and imaginative members of this commission did not shirk the question of re-making Ireland. They investigated in the public interest with broad and sincere concern. They had the creative energy to handle the railroad problem as something more than a problem of dividends.

The decay of industries and the faults of agricultural method are fully recognized in the majority report, but the evil effects of railway policy are never evaded.

What causes have retarded the expansion of traffic

upon the Irish lines? There have been increases, yes, but mainly through the imports of flour and bacon, provisions and manufactured goods, "produced or producible in the country." "What essentially constitutes the Irish railway problem," the majority agrees, "is the restriction of industry and trade in Ireland, by reason of the fact that internal and export transit rates are on a higher scale than the rates charged for conveyance of commodities which compete with Irish products in Irish and British markets, or with which Irish products might compete, if conditions were rendered less disadvantageous to Ireland by lower scales of transit rates."

No narrow administrative policy can help in a situation so radically wrong. "The solution of such a problem is as far outside the sphere of amicable effort by the Board of Trade, as it is beyond the jurisdiction of the Railway and Canal Commission Court. The question and the only question as to the future of Irish railways, referred to us for an answer, is this: By what methods can economic, efficient, and harmonious working, be best secured?' The answer dictated by the evidence is that such working cannot be secured in any sense commensurate with the object set before us, namely, the full utilization of the Railways for the development of Irish resources except by making them public property, consolidating them into a single system, and working that system under representative control for the benefit of the country. It follows that, in our judgment, fractional or superficial measures would leave the essential problem still unsolved, and its economic evils, to all practical intents and purposes, unabated."

THE OCTOPUS

The nigger in the Austen Chamberlain's unionist woodpile begins, I think, to exhibit his curly head. "The large imports in coal for domestic uses which swell the returns of railways traffic, certainly do not suggest development of Irish resources," says the report, more especially when it is remembered that there are coal fields in the country which are worked only to a limited and comparatively unimportant extent, and which, under conditions of adequate capital, better railway communication, and more favorable rates, might be extensively opened up, to the benefit, not only of the mineral districts concerned, but of the country as a whole. . . . . It is difficult to understand why the efforts made from time to time to secure railway communication have up to the present proved ineffective. The Great Southern Company declined to construct the branch themselves, or, even if it were constructed by others, to work it, without a guarantee against loss, and this decision seems to have proven a deterrent to private enterprise, which, if encouraged by substantial assistance from the country, would probably have long since surmounted the difficulty."

The coal of Ireland, "net tonnage available for use," was estimated by Professor Hull in 1881 at 182,280,000 tons. The amount raised per year is about 100,000 tons. The important contrast here is not between the enormously greater mineral resources of England and Scotland but between the full Irish resources and the meagre Irish production.

Against the ironclad competition of England and Scotland the main hope of Ireland has been agri