y and easily at a steady table,
read papers, have one's hair cut, and dine in comfort[9]--none of which
things are possible at present, and none of which require any new
inventions, any revolutionary contrivances, or indeed anything but an
intelligent application of existing resources and known principles. Our
rage for fast trains, so far as long-distance travel is concerned, is
largely a passion to end the extreme discomfort involved. It is in the
daily journey, on the suburban train, that daily tax of time, that
speed is in itself so eminently desirable, and it is just here that the
conditions of railway travel most hopelessly fail. It must always be
remembered that the railway train, as against the motor, has the
advantage that its wholesale traction reduces the prime cost by
demanding only one engine for a great number of coaches. This will not
serve the first-class long-distance passenger, but it may the third.
Against that economy one must balance the necessary delay of a
relatively infrequent service, which latter item becomes relatively
greater and greater in proportion to the former, the briefer the journey
to be made.

And it may be that many railways, which are neither capable of
modification into suburban motor tracks, nor of development into
luxurious through routes, will find, in spite of the loss of many
elements of their old activity, that there is still a profit to be made
from a certain section of the heavy goods traffic, and from cheap
excursions. These are forms of work for which railways seem to be
particularly adapted, and which the diversion of a great portion of
their passenger traffic would enable them to conduct even more
efficiently. It is difficult to imagine, for example, how any sort of
road-car organization could beat the railways at the business of
distributing coal and timber and similar goods, which are taken in bulk
directly from the pit or wharf to local centres of distribution.

It must always be remembered that at the worst the defeat of such a
great organization as the railway system does not involve its
disappearance until a long period has elapsed. It means at first no more
than a period of modification and differentiation. Before extinction can
happen a certain amount of wealth in railway property must absolutely
disappear. Though under the stress of successful competition the capital
value of the railways may conceivably fall, and continue to fall,
towards the marine store pr