For a time the canal companies clung obstinately to their high tolls and charges, in the hope that they would still be able to pay their big dividends. But, when the superiority of the railways over the waterways became more and more manifest, and when the canal companies saw greater and still greater quantities of traffic being diverted from them by their opponents, in fair competition, they realised the situation at last, and brought down their tolls with a rush. The reductions made were so substantial that they would have been thought incredible a few years previously. In the result, benefits were gained by all classes of traders, for those who still patronised the canals were charged much more reasonable tolls than they had ever paid before. But even the adoption of this belated policy by the canal companies did not help them very much. The diversion of the stream of traffic to the railways had become too pronounced to be checked by even the most substantial of reductions in canal charges. With the increasing industrial and commercial development of the country it was seen that the new means of transport offered advantages of even greater weight than cost of transport, namely, speed and certainty of delivery. For the average trader it was essentially a case of time meaning money. The canal companies might now reduce their tolls so much that, instead of being substantially in excess of the railway rates, as they were at first, they would fall considerably below; but they still could not offer those other all-important advantages. As the canal companies found that the struggle was, indeed, "utterly hopeless," some of them adopted new lines of policy. Either they proposed to build railways themselves, or they tried to dispose of their canal property to the newcomers. In some instances the route of a canal, no longer of much value, was really wanted for the route of a proposed railway, and an arrangement was easily made. In others, where the railway promoters did not wish to buy, opposition to their schemes was offered by the canal companies with the idea of forcing them either so to do, or, alternatively, to make such terms with them as would be to the advantage of the canal shareholders.