rate, and it usually goes into effect within fifteen days from that date. Thus on March 25, 1904, a proposed addition to one of the special tariffs of the Railway de l'Ouest was duly advertised. It was officially approved on the 11th, and took effect on the 26th of April, 1904. No rate can become operative until one month after having been advertised. In order to keep the public fully informed, the text of the proposal and that of the ministerial approval are published in the Journal Officiel.

The ministerial sanction given to any rate may be withdrawn at any time, and, in accepting a rate proposed, the Minister may attach to his approval certain conditions to which the company must assent before the rate can take effect. A passenger rate cannot be increased till it has been in force three months, nor a freight rate till it has been in force one year.

The interval between the proposal and the approval of a rate, which is normally one month, is sometimes a great deal longer. Should it, however, be necessary to put a rate into immediate effect, the Minister often grants a provisional "homologation," whereby the rate becomes at once available pending its formal consideration and approval.

The French tariffs that have been thus approved are published in the two large folio volumes of the Recueil Chaix, a revised edition of which is issued quarterly. The edition bearing date July, 1905, but not actually issued till last September, has 1712 pages in the volume containing the tariffs for slow freight, and 980 pages in that containing the rates for fast freight and passengers. These manuals would be less bulky if they embodied only the tariffs of the large companies, but they also include the rates of all the light railways, narrow-gauge lines, and tramways throughout France. In the intervals be tween the editions of this work newly approved rates are published in a special weekly bulletin, as well as in the Journal Officiel. Thus the authorized railway tariffs are at all times readily accessible to the French public.

Since the French regard railway tarification from a commercial standpoint, their tariffs, like those of England and the 1 Journal Officiel, April 3 and 25, 1904.

United States, are based on the so-called "value" system, which consists in charging such rates as the traffic will bear. Their system of classification would take too long to explain. Suffice it to say that, in compliance with the demands made by the government in 1879, the classification and description of freight was made uniform on all the French railways by their reformed tariffs approved between August, 1884, and December, 1890. At the same time the number of reduced tariffs and special rates was much cut down, and the Recueil Chaix considerably simplified. Since those reforms, however, the large family of special rates has continued to multiply, under the pressure of commercial needs, though the Consultative Committee is on principle opposed to them, and seeks, whenever possible, to procure in their stead reduced kilometric scales of rates drawn up on the Belgian differential plan, and applicable in any direction and on any line of the given railway.

In sanctioning a special rate, the Committee almost always insists, as a condition of approval, that intermediate stations shall also be entitled to it, and that a special rate, say from Toulouse to Orleans, shall be enjoyed as far as Orleans by goods shipped from Toulouse to points beyond Orleans.

The Minister of Public Works having no power to fix rates, the principal function of the Consultative Committee is to check unjust, discriminating, or capricious tarification, and thus by degrees to produce throughout France an equitable system of rates. It often suggests to the companies what changes it deems desirable, and, though it can only suggest, yet the possession of its veto often enables it, when granting one of the companies' requests, to gain its own point as a quid pro quo. This influence is all the stronger because the authority vested in the Minister, and through him in the Consultative Committee, covers not only the commercial (i.e., rate-making), but also the technical and financial1 sides of railway administration.2

1 E.g. no railway company can issue bonds without the assent of the Consultative Committee and of the Minister.

2 It is clearly to the companies' interest not to offend an authority on which they are in so many ways dependent. A different system of administration, interfering only in commercial matters, would be far from having the same influence (Colson, Transports et Tarifs, 1898, p. 350).

The Committee always declines to indorse any special rate savoring of undue preference or discrimination; for instance, a rate in favor of goods produced by a particular factory or of materials ordered by a particular contractor. It also rejects any rate calculated to draw away traffic from any other French railway or to ruin the business of coasting steamers or canal boats. Thus in April, 1899, a special rate of 15 francs on mineral waters shipped to Paris was requested by the P.-L.-M. Company. This rate was approved in April, 1900, but, the canal men of Roanne having pointed out that it was ruining them, the approval was withdrawn on August 24, 1901.

The Committee endeavors to adjust the tariffs enjoyed by competing industrial centers in such a way as to secure to each the natural advantages of its location. If, however, a particular place or industry has long had the benefit of certain special rates, and has thus acquired a quasi-vested right to them, the Committee will not allow them to be abolished without stipulating that they shall be reëstablished, "if within a year their disappearance gives rise to well-founded complaints."

A good illustration of the manner in which the Committee may obtain concessions from the companies is furnished by the negotiations leading up to the approval on October 27, 1900, of the new tariff of Accessory Charges (Frais Accessories). The companies had for twenty-five years been urging that the registration fee for luggage should be raised to 15 centimes, while the Committee still insisted on maintaining it at 10 centimes. The Committee also wished that the companies should guarantee to the consignor of freight using the lines of several companies the route offering the cheapest combination of rates, even when not demanded by him, as they had been doing since 1883 for the consignor of freight using the lines of a single company. The companies, on the other hand, had been anxious to suppress certain special rates affecting about 1350 kinds of freight. The matter was settled by a compromise, in which the companies waived their claim for the 15-centime registration fee, and consented to guarantee the cheapest route in the manner men

tioned, while the Committee advised the Minister to sanction the suppression of the special rates on the ground that they were practically obsolete.1

In Algeria and in the Regency of Tunis the service of commercial supervision has been organized in a manner practically identical with that above described, and proposals of rates are referred either to the Minister of Public Works in Paris or to the Resident-General in Tunis. This latter personage is assisted by a consultative committee of eight or ten members most of whom are officials connected with the administration of the Regency. W. H. BUCKLER

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

1 Arrêté du 27 October, 1900, Impr. Nat., 1902.

XXIX

RAILROAD OWNERSHIP IN GERMANY 1

THE Prussian railway administration was reorganized on

April 1, 1895.2 Previous to that time there had existed two distinct official bodies, or "resorts," immedately below the minister of public works. The latter was then, and is now, the executive head of the railway administration, and the two bodies subordinated to him were known as Eisenbahndirektionen and Eisenbahnbetriebsämter, respectively, the one having direct charge of the operation of the railways and the other performing purely administrative functions. Of the Direktionen there were 11, and of the Betriebsämter 75. The functions of both of these have now been consolidated in the royal State railway directories, of which 20 have been created,3 with their seats at Altona, Berlin, Breslau, Bromberg, Cassel, Cologne, Danzig, Elberfeld, Erfurt, Essen, Frankfurt a. M., Halle a. S., Hannover, Kattowitz, Königsberg, Magdeburg, Münster, Posen, St. JohannSaarbrücken, and Stettin. Each directory is composed of a president, appointed by the King, and the requisite number of associates, two of whom, an Ober-Regierungsrath and an OberBaurath, may act as substitutes of the president under the direction of the minister. Each directory has complete administrative control over all the railways within its limits, although the subordinate civil administrative organs of the State, such as the Oberpräsident, Regierungspräsident, and Landrath, have certain powers in the granting of concessions, police regulations,

1 From Annals of the American Academy of Political Science, 1897, Vol. X, pp. 399-421. Ibid. Vol. XIX, March, 1907, is another good description. 2 Only a few minor changes have been introduced since.

3 Since this was written (1897) the Hessian railways have been associated with the Prussian and the number of directories increased to 21.