Take, again, Australasia. In that region the whole of the railroads, with negligible exceptions, now belong to the different state governments, and the public sentiment that railroads ought to be public property is today so strong that it is impossible to imagine any serious development of private lines. But at the outset the traditional English preference for private enterprise was just as strong there as it was at home, and it was only the fact that the whole of the available private capital was absorbed in the development of the gold fields and that, therefore, if railroads were to be built at all, public credit must be pledged and English capital must be obtained, that caused the state to go into the railroad business. ITALY. Take, once more, the case of Italy. In the days when Italy was only a geographical expression, the various Italian states experimented with railroad management of all sorts and kinds. When, after 1870, Italy was unified, it was necessary to adopt a national railroad policy, and the Italian government instituted an inquiry whose exhaustiveness has not since been approached. The force of circumstances has indeed already compelled the government to acquire the ownership of the railroads, but the Commission reported that it was not desirable that the government should work them. The railroads were accordingly leased for a period of 60 years, running from 1884, to three operating companies, and it was provided that the leases might be broken at the end of the 20th or the 40th year. From the very outset a condition of things developed which had not been contemplated when the leases were granted, and for which the leases made no provision. Constant disputes took place between the government and their lessees. Capital for extensions and improvements was urgently needed; neither party was bound to find it; and agreement for finding it on terms mutually acceptable was impossible of attainment. In the end the government has been forced to cut the knot, to break the lease at the end of the first 20 years' period, and for the last two years the Italian government has operated its own railroads. But it is safe to say that an _a priori_ preference for state management over private management played but scant part in the ultimate decision. GENERAL INCREASE OF STATE CONTROL.