Doodlegraphs
Page 45
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DID you know that in 1938 the average man earned enough in an hour to entitle him to 24.5 miles of travel on the railways, whereas in 1957 he could have had 42.3 miles? This kind of out-of-the-way information has a considerable appeal in the Ivory Tower, and when it is
discovered one may be certain that sooner or later somebody will embalm it in the form of a graph, or in this particular case of two graphs.
In the annual report of the British Transport Commission for 1957, diagram 6 shows the time taken in 1938, and in each year from 1948 onwards, to earn the fare for a 20-mile journey. In the glossy version of the report, intended, one supposes—although the Commission are too delicate to say so—for the less instructed members of the public, the comparison is made easier by showing the actual number of miles that could be purchased in each year by an hour's work, and a formal representation of railway lines is used to make sure that no reader misses the point.
Exactly what the point is I must confess to have forgotten. From my recollections of the rest of the report, I am fairly confident that the Commission are not rejoicing that -the average man now has more leisure and money to play at trains than he did before the war. They are more likely to be grumbling, either because he uses the extra time and mileage to wear out the rolling stock (while complaining about the shortcomings of nationalization) or because he uses the extra money to buy a car or a television set.
The report is on the whole a bad-tempered and introverted document. The Commission virtually ignore what has been done for them, and are full of criticism of the obstacles placed in their way.
One would have thought that perhaps the most important piece of legislation in 1957, from their point of view, was the Transport (Railway Finances) Act, one provision of which allows them to borrow up to £250m. between 1956 and 1962, and has already been used to the extent of £118m.
The Commission regard this as such a minor item of news that it is not even mentioned in the chapter headed "Main Features of the year."
Far from Grateful Far from being.awed or grateful at the chance of getting their hands on the money, the B.T.C. claim, or in Ivory Tower English " feel it fair to emphasize," that railway investment is still only a fifth of the investment in road transport, and that the current level of capital expenditure on railway track is much less than that on new and improved roads.
They find room in the report for a couple of graphs : to illustrate this point also. Combined in one diagram, the graphs are repeated in the popular edition, and present a not unattractive design, rather like an eclipse of the moon as seen over a brickworks, and in keeping, therefore, with the elegiac atmosphere that in general clings to the report.
Squat black columns show the amount spent on the railways each year since 1948. By the side of each column is a towering chimney, five or six times as high, part of which represents expenditure on roads, road vehicles, equipment and buildings, and the rest, the cost of cars and motorcycles "on personal account." The moon gives a more detailed breakdown for 1957, indicating that, out of every £100 spent on road and rail transport, £6 was on roads and only £2 on railway track, £43 on business road vehicles and buildings, £35 on cars and motorcycles, and only £14 on railway vehicles, buildings, plant and machinery. Once again, the significance of the diagram escapes me. Somewhere in the report I had noticed that the Commission described themselves -as operators of buses and lorries on a large scale, who "welcomed road improvement schemes." My assumption on first seeing the diagram, therefore, was that the Commission sympathized with other road users, who had only £6 spent on roads for every .£78 they spent themselves on capital development, whilst for the railways the figures were £2 and 114, and most of the money was being found for them.
On looking into the matter more closely, I am inclined towards a different conclusion. Under the Transport Act,. 1947, the Commission have the duty of preparing an annual statement of accounts to the satisfaction of the Minister of Transport (with the approval of the Treasury). The annual report is also made to the Minister, who has to lay it before Parliament, but it would appear that, in preparing it, the Commission have only to satisfy themselves. They are entitled to indulge their spleen to the full.
Symbolic Satisfaction That they have done so seems to be borne out by the diagrams. What the doodle is to the ordinary person, so is the graph to the Ivory Tower. It satisfies the possibly artistic impulse to squeeze and manipulate the intractable raw material of life so that it fits within an orderly framework.
The diagrams sprinkled through the 1957 report seem like pica:it-jai reflections upon the mass of facts and figures, mostly unpalatable, that constitutes the complete record of one year in the life of the Commission. The draughtsman, whoever he is, might prefer a happier subject, in which case he must have welcomed the day-dreaming opportunity provided by the Commission's memorandum to the Minister, published in October, 1956, as an appendix to a White Paper. One diagram in the memorandum plotted the imaginary future of the Commission in terms that allowed of the full romantic treatment. The curve of profit and loss began with a melancholy droop over the first few years, and then progressively recovered, ending with. a triumphant line that was the graphic equivalent of living happy ever after.
There are no such diagrams in the 1957 report. It is concerned with 12 months lying wholly within the acknowledged and anticipated bad period, the lean years to be followed by an endless succession of fat years. A big loss was expected, although perhaps not quite as big as the actual £63.5m. This is more than in any other year since nationalization, and in the circumstances the Commission's verdict that the results "were not far short of expectations" seems a remarkably restrained statement.
As there is little room for rejoicing, the graphs show the Commission always at the losing end, the victinis of brute force or unfair tactics. Their share of the transport investment cake is shown as only 16 per cent. Another remarkable series of diagrams shows railway charges over the years, in terms of 1938 purchasing power, for the three main types of traffic: and also the corresponding wholesale prices for those traffics. In each diagram, the line for the railways is at the bottom, as if to stress their depressed state. The symbolism is even clearer in a further graph, showing the growth of freight vehicle numbers. The line for railway wagons only just scrapes in, some way below the line for vehicles of hauliers, and far below that for C-licensed vehicles, which rears no across the page like a cobra about to strike.