Then there would not be, it may be assumed, any body like a municipal council who would practically interfere with the management. There might be Advisory Councils, like the Prussian State Railway Councils, and, of course, there would be a Minister of State responsible to Parliament for the railway administration, and Parliament itself, already, one may remark in passing, clogged and overburdened with work. But it is certain that whatever the details of the organization adopted might be, the whole of the management would practically be left to the expert permanent officials of the railways. There is no reason to doubt that railway officers would serve the State with as much loyalty and with as great a measure of success as they now serve the proprietors. Instead of being responsible to boards of directors and shareholders, they would be responsible to a certain number of officers of State, probably, indeed necessarily, to a large extent recruited from their own ranks, and I do not think that the change would result in much practical difference so far as the work of those who really carry out the duties of management are concerned. The only difference would be that these officers would have in view that they were working for the State instead of for shareholders. There can be little doubt that if railways were nationalized they would be used as a field for many kinds of social experiments. The combination of philanthropy with business is generally regarded with suspicion, but the conversion of the railway manager into a social reformer would, I think, arouse serious and legitimate alarm. The certainty which we now possess that the action of any railway company, whether it be wise or foolish in itself, is wholly commercial in its motives and its aims, is a valuable safeguard. But if railway policy were to become the medium for the promotion of social or even economic theories under the guidance of politicians, would not this be a most alarming peril to trading and industrial interests? One group might insist, by political pressure, that the standard of wages should be maintained at a higher level than could be commercially justified. Another group, or many groups, might devote their efforts to securing the construction of railways in districts which could not support them with sufficient traffic, with the result of burdening the railway system with many unremunerative branches for which either traders, passengers, or the taxpayers throughout the country would have to pay. The policy of others would be to make suburban railways at enormous cost, and run cheap trains to serve the population resident in large cities, regardless whether such railways or trains were self-supporting or not. In this policy they would have the ardent and influential support of the owners of suburban land, who would rejoice in the increase of their rents, brought about by the expenditure of public money in creating railway facilities on uncommercial terms.