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Academic Interest
Page 123
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OXFORD UNIVERSITY has a Faculty of Social Studies, and for some time past the Institute of Transport has looked towards Oxford as a suitable place for the appointment of a reader or lecturer in transport economics and organization. The subject might ultimately merit a professorial chair, and the plan provides in addition for one or two research fellowships.
The university authorities are not likely to make the endowment themselves. Financial support would have to come from the transport industry, although the people putting up the money would have no control over the course that the studies would take. This may seem strange to people accustomed to knowing—and insisting upon knowing—exactly what they are buying, but a moment's thought will show that it is inevitable.
Research, if it is to be of any value, must be allowed to come to its own conclusions. The subject of transport bristles with prejudices, and it would be fanciful to suggest that a scholar who happens to be appointed as a professor in the subject is any more free from those prejudices than the rest of us. In spite of his ineradicable bias, however, he must be left to do his work without restrictions.
If, for example, he decides to study transport costs, he can hardly be expected to agree that, whatever happens, he must come down in favour of a reduction in the fuel tax. His task is to examine all the facts, without fear if not without the favour that lies within himself, and he must publish the result that, to his way of thinking, the facts appear to warrant, even if the result is a recommendation to increase the fuel tax to 5s. a gallon.
Sake of Prestige
Some sections of the transport industry, and particularly those that are nationalized, no doubt take what I have said for granted, and are probably willing enough to make the contribution expected from them towards the cost of endowing a readership. The scheme may reach the stage where action is bound to be taken, and at that stage all sections of the industry will probably feel it necessary to come in, if only for the sake of prestige. They may still have mental reservations.
The elevation of transport to the status of an academic subject may seem desirable from some points of view, but not from that of many road transport operators. Before giving their support, they would prefer to know what kind of man would be appointed as reader or professor. They would like the candidate to be sound on, say, nationalization, just as 100 years ago he would have had to be sound on the 39 Articles. The suspicion of the egghead that is said to be prevalent in America exists also in this country, especially among practical men with practical problems that they feel are solved more satisfactorily in the workshop than in the cloister.
Distrust of the academic approach is reinforced by a recent statement from Professor Gilbert Walker, ranked by some road operators as the biggest egghead of them all. Professor Walker is Dean of the Faculty of Commercial and Social Science of the University of Birmingham, and it fell to him to make the presidential address to the economics section of the British Association's annual meeting at Sheffield. Professor Walker chose as his subject "Prices—and competition—in transport as an instrument of policy." After a discussion mainly concerned with the relations between road and rail, he led up to what he evidently regarded as the 60-dollar question. "May I ask my audience," he said, "to devote their attention to the issue of motor road carriers' licences, public, limited and private, and to the question, really significant now that competition is to be relied upon to control the price of transport, of why indeed there should be any restriction at all upon the right to carry by road."
If his audience had been composed of hauliers, he would have asked in vain. He might scoff at their antagonism by suggesting that naturally the man in possession wishes to keep other people out, or that hauliers have become so much a part of the licensing system that they cannot visualize life without it. There is some strength in this argument, but hauliers also have more persuasive reasons for condemning Professor Walker's proposal.
No "Free Access"
Professor Walker complains that there is no "free access" to the transport market. Only the British Transport Commission can start a new public railway, and entry into road haulage is at the discretion of the Licensing Authorities. The private carrier alone is free to run more lorries as he pleases, but he cannot carry for others. On the basis of these facts Professor Walker feels justified later on in referring to the "monopoly of the public carrier."
The impression of a group or ring of hauliers holding the public to ransom is, of course, not true to life. Before making his announcements ex cathedra, Professor Walker should look at the actual situation in the road haulage industry. He will find operators bitterly accusing each other of rate-cutting. A few of them, with established traffic and reputations, may be finding little trouble, but the rest of them are painfully .vulnerable to attack from the new owners of transport units, and from other people who have apparently found a Licensing Authority less discreet than those Professor Walker has met.
Back to Pre-1933
Professor Walker would no doubt approve of the situation before the passage of the Road and Rail Traffic Act in 1933. If he compared that situation with what is happening now, he might be hard put to it to tell the difference.
He would probably not claim that he was engaged on profound research. He was expressing opinions that he has put forward several times before. Most operators will feel that he is promoting a theory at the expense of practical experience. Unrestricted competition and the abolition of licences would mean more rather than fewer vehicles on the road. Applications in the traffic courts show that, apart from established operators wishing to increase their fleets, there is an apparently inexhaustible supply of would-be hauliers, with a little knowledge and a little money, who would come into the transport business with a rush if the door were opened. Rates might fall even lower than they are now, but the reduction would be only at the expense of quality of service.