Many Socialists complain, and they complain with good cause, about the railways of Great Britain. All the British railways are in private hands, and they are very inefficient. They are in many respects very backward, badly equipped, and badly managed. They have wasted their capital, watered their stock, and have paid dividends out of capital; their freight charges are exorbitant; besides, they give habitually and by various means, with which it would lead too far to deal in this book, preferential treatment of a very substantial kind to the foreigner. Many Socialists have extracted from British Government publications instances of such preferential treatment. One of the most widely read Socialist writers, for example, gives among others the following freight charges favouring the foreigner: "Carriage of a ton of British meat, Liverpool to London, _2l._: Carriage of a ton of foreign meat, Liverpool to London, _1l. 5s._: Carriage of a ton of eggs Galway to London, _4l. 14s._: Carriage of a ton of eggs Denmark to London, _1l. 4s._: Carriage of a ton of plums, apples, and pears, Queenborough (Kent) to London, _1l. 5s._: Carriage of same from Flushing (Holland), _12s. 6d._: Carriage per ton of English pianos Liverpool to London _3l. 10s._: Carriage as above of foreign, _1l. 5s._: British timber per ton Cardiff to Birmingham, _16s. 8d._: foreign as above _8s. 10d._ In the carriage of iron ore and steel rails the American railways charge _6s. 3d._ where the British charge _29s. 3d._"[729] "The real enemy are the monopolists of land and locomotion--the landlord and the raillord who are uprooting the British people from their native soil. It is in fact by no means easy to say which is the greater malefactor of the two."[730] Such differential charges are bound to cripple the British industries, and in view of the harm which is thus being done to British farmers, manufacturers, and traders, it is only natural that British Socialists are unanimous in condemning the anti-British freight policy of the railways and in recommending that they should be taken over and managed by the State.