In the investigation of railways by the Senate committee in 1905, Mr. W. M. Acworth, who is regarded as one of the leading experts in England on railroad transportation and railroad economics, was invited to appear before the committee, with the request to give a review of the historical facts bearing on the control and management of the railways of England. After complying with the request of the committee, certain questions were asked him that were of great importance at that time in the consideration of the questions then being investigated by the committee. One of these questions involved the effect of the provision of the new canal and traffic act of Parliament, which for the first time embodied the provision that "railway companies must make no increase except for good cause, if anybody objects," and which, as construed by the courts, prevented any increase of a rate where objection was made, until after hearing by the board of trade. His examination will be found in the third volume of the hearings of that investigation, pages 1848, 1852, 1853 and 1854, and was as follows: "Since it has been decided that no rate can be put up once it has been put down, without appeal to the law courts, the railway companies have practically arrived at the conclusion that they will not put them down because they do not know whether they will have an opportunity to put them up again. "Senator CULLOM: Do you think it works to the advantage of the people that the railways will not put the rates down for fear they will not get a chance to put them up again? "Mr. ACWORTH: Personally, I have no doubt it does not. It is fair to remember always that it may protect the weaker in commercial strife. It is rather hard on the weaker man to be crowded to the wall by a wholesale concern in any walk of life. But if it be true in ordinary business that, on the whole, the public gains by the wholesaling method, it is probably true in railway business also. I think that, so to speak, the heart has been taken out of the railway man. The railway men understand this business; they know how to manage it in their own way. The railway men think 'the responsibility has ceased to be ours; we must maintain the status quo,' and that is what they do. "The CHAIRMAN: You think that dividing responsibility impairs the administrative power of the officials of the roads as well as the service they render to the public? "Mr. ACWORTH: From the operating point of view, I do not think our railways have been sufficiently interfered with to prevent them developing the goodness of the service. But as to rate making, I have no doubt that the interference of Parliament, the courts, and the Executive has all tended to stereotype and keep rates at an unnecessarily high level.