cease to operate unless they are continued under the provisions of the Act. It is therefore incumbent upon all traders, and particularly private siding owners, who are parties to any agreement and who desire their charges to be continued in their present form to take the necessary steps to have all charges payable under such agreement continued as indicated in s. 34 (see pp. 166-169, post).

If the trader can satisfy the Tribunal as to a charge levied under contract or by virtue of a provision in any Act on the following points, the Tribunal is obliged to continue the charge with or without modification

(a) It must have been in operation on 4th August,

1914.

(b) It must still be subsisting.

(c) It must have been entered into for valuable consideration.

(d) It must be shown that the relative positions of the parties to the contract as against other traders has not been prejudiced or improved.

Even if all the above requisites are satisfied, the rate will still be subject to adjustment by the Tribunal. Where a contract does not satisfy all above four requisites, it can nevertheless be continued under S.-S. 34 (2), which gives the Tribunal discretionary power to continue it wholly or in part and with or without modification.

THE RAILWAY RATES TRIBUNAL.

Prior to the appointed day the work of the Tribunal was confined almost exclusively to its statutory duties in preparation for the introduction of the new system of rates and charges. On 1st January, 1928, the full powers of the Tribunal come into operation.

A summary of those powers is given in tabular

form at the end of the present chapter in order that the reader may see at a glance what is their scope. Even a cursory inspection of them will show that, as from the appointed day, the trader will enjoy facilities and will have at hand methods of seeking relief which have never hitherto been at his disposal.

Apart from the periodical review of rates and charges and other statutory duties, the chief function of the Tribunal is to act as a readily accessible and inexpensive court before which the trader may seek relief from any rate or charge which he considers unreasonable, or obtain a legally binding decision in regard to any dispute which has arisen between himself and the railway companies as to a variety of matters.

The rules and procedure of the court, as explained in Chapter VIII of this book, are simple and entirely free from legal difficulties, and, even when only small sums of money are involved, the trader need not hesitate to seek relief because of expense or the fear of complicated or protracted legal proceedings.

Broadly speaking, the test of the jurisdiction of the Tribunal is whether or not the matter giving rise to dissatisfaction concerns the reasonableness of any charge made for or in connection with the carriage of merchandise by railway. Within its jurisdiction the decisions of the Tribunal have all the legal force of those of a court of law.

THE RAILWAY AND CANAL COMMISSION.

By s. 27 of the Act, as from the appointed day, the Railway and Canal Commission ceases to exercise any functions or powers it may have had or exercised in regard to any matters which are now subject to the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, and their powers are also greatly curtailed by reason of the legislation amended

and repealed by ss. 56 and 86 and set out in the Sixth and Ninth Schedules to the Act.

It is not within the scope of this book to discuss the powers of the Railway and Canal Commission as from the appointed day at any length, but for the convenience of traders it may be pointed out that the Commission will still have jurisdiction, inter alia, in regard to the following matters :

(1) Undue or unreasonable preference or advantage. (2) The provision of reasonable facilities in respect of accommodation (including private sidings) and services.

(3) The legality of a rate.

(4) The identity of any article which is to be the subject of a charge.

THE SETTLEMENT OF THE SCHEDULES OF STANDARD CHARGES BY THE TRIBUNAL.

In order that the trader may be able to appreciate more readily the principles underlying the standard charges which are dealt with at length in Chapter IV, and may be able to trace their evolution from the old charges, the following information has been abstracted from the unanimous judgment of the Tribunal consisting of Mr. W. B. Clode, K.C. (President), Mr. W. A. Jepson and Mr. G. C. Locket, J.P., delivered in writing on 30th December, 1926 :-*

The problem presented by the Act was to fix standard charges which would produce a certain definite sum.†

The railway companies, in preparing the proposed schedules of standard charges which were finally accepted by the Tribunal subject to certain minor modifications, had in mind two first principles :

(1) That as far as possible there should be uniformity of charge, and

* Published by H.M. Stationery Office.

† See p. 69, post.

(2) That as far as possible the new charges generally should reproduce the relativity of charges existing under the old system.

The companies found, however, that it would be impossible to sacrifice the considerable sum accruing from the flat rate additions which ceased to be operative as from the appointed day, and they gave notice at the outset that in order to recompense themselves for this loss, certain additions would have to be made to short distance rates which would disturb the relativity existing between long and short distance rates.

When they came to the actual preparation of the schedules, the railway companies were faced with the problem of fixing charges which might be expected to yield for an estimated tonnage of re-classified merchandise passing over the railways in a future year, a given revenue. It seemed at first that the task was an impossible one.

They decided, however, first to start their new scale on an existing base scale of one of the companies and to adjust it so as to make it available as a uniform scale after adapting it to compensate them for loss of discontinuous mileage and shortest working distance (the outcome of the grouping of the railways), and to reproduce by mileage additions so much of the revenue as they were then receiving from flat rate additions on class traffic. The base scale selected was that of the old London and North Western Railway.

For the loss of discontinuous mileage they made an addition of 7 per cent. to the mileage charges for every class and 21 per cent. to compensate for the adoption of shortest working distances within the new groups.

For the loss of the flat rate additions they added from 15d. to 30d. to the mileage charges for the first 20 miles, except in the case of coal, coke and patent fuel, where,

owing to the additional break at 10 miles, they added in the first 10 miles division 10 per cent. and 30d. and a further 05d. for "equation of scale."

The scale so adjusted was, of course, an eight-class scale. The next step was to interpose the new classes where they would pick up the greatest number of exceptional rates and to affix mileage charges to these classes. They then had a 21-class base rate scale.

This scale was then tested to see how nearly it would reproduce the relativity existing under the old scheme of charges. For this purpose they took the traffic for the week ending 27th March, 1920, which was regarded as a typical week, and reduced the actual charges which had been made to a pre-increase station-to-station basis by stripping them of the percentage increase and the flat rate addition, and by taking out collection and delivery charges. The traffic of that week was then put into the new 21 classes and charged up at the old base rates and on the new 21-class scale. By this means the companies were enabled to compare the yield under the two systems.

The result of the comparison showed in most of the classes a fair measure of agreement between the two, but in the lower classes, in particular, it showed that the allowance made for the flat rate additions was not sufficient. The railway companies proceeded therefore by a process of trial and error to make the necessary adjustments until the maximum degree of relativity possible was attained. The rates so adjusted plus an addition of 60 per cent. are the rates which the railway companies submitted to the Tribunal in their proposed schedules and which are now embodied in the new Schedules of Standard Charges.

After surveying the methods by which the standard charges were arrived at as described above, the Tribunal