TRIUMPH OF THE MOTOR LORRY.
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WBITING AT a time when there are still infinite possibilities as regards. the development of the strike and when, in fact, the strength of the blow struck by the railway men and the adequacy of the defence put up by the community cannot be accurately assessed, it is dangerous to dogmatize or to assume too much.
One thing is, however, apparent, and outside argument. This is that the chief weapon which the community is using to parry what is intended' for a deadly blow is no other than motor transport. Little more than five years ago the average man would have ridiculed the ideaof the commercial motor vehicle figuring as anything more than a supplement or an appendage to the railway. He would have told you that, if the railways ceased working, motor vehicles would be autotnaticaly thrown into unemployment within two or three days, because by that time there would be nothing for them to carry.
The Ready Usefulness of Motor Transport.
During the war we learned a great deal. As early as the first battle of the Marne we discovered to our advantage, and the Germans to their discomfiture, that practically any form of motor vehicle could be put to very good purpose when the necessity arose for the harried movement of large bodies of men and their supplies. Later on, the defence of Verdun was only made possible by a, continuous motor service, unassisted by railways, in the vicinity of the front line. The war lnis, in fact, shown us that hundreds of thousands of men may be fed by the assistance of motor transport, while the assistance of railways is merely remote.
Now we are going a step further and endeavouring to prove that, even in the complete absence of railways, the absolutely essential communications of the country can be kept open solely by motor transport. The more civilized a nation becomes, the more definitely is it dependent upon its meansof communication. A simple or barbaric community must eitler be self-supporting or become extinct. The more civilization the more complex the organization necessary to provide the entire population with the means of life.
Transport a Key Industry. .
Hitherto, the professional transport worker has been obsessed with the idea that he has, it in his power to paralyse the entire community, bringing it to its knees by bringing it to starvation. The present strike is a great fight, fought to determine whether he is right or wrong. Granted a reasonable measure of lire-vision on the part of its Government, there is no minority section of the 'community so likely to be able to impose its will on the majority as those responsible for maintaining the recognized ,system of transport. This system as exemplified by the railways demands the collaborative working of very large numbers of trained men who have served long apprea ticeships in a variety of totally different skilled jobs. This is just the kind of organization which it is most difficult to maintain by means of amateurs hastily brought together.
We have always been told, and have admitted freely enough, that the great disadvantage of motor transport is that it consists of a large number of small independent units which, because of their independence, cannot possibly be operated in as economic a manner as would be possible were the units interdependent.
The Advantage of Individuality.
While acknowledging this disadvantage, -we have perhaps failed to recognize fully the concomitant advantage. Given an intelligent man at the wheel, the individual vehicle, so long as it is in working order, can go where it likes without the guidance of a signalling system or any external aid to keep it upon the proper route at junctions and crossings. If the motor driver has some mechanical knowledge, he can keep even a fractious vehicle upon the road by doing repairs, the equivalent of which would in the case of a railway call for the assistance of a haeakdown.gang. A man of average intelligence can learn to handle a car or lorry, reasonably well in a very short time. He does not have to spend years in training before he can be trusted to take charge of a vehicle. We have now in this country hundreds of thousands of men and women capable of handling, repairing, loading anti -unloading motor vehicles without any of this work being the work upon which they are permanently dependent for their livelihood. These people are the great strength of the community, when an attempt is made under modern condition,s to wreck that community's constitution by paralysing its communications.
We have heard a lot of talk about indispensable men and, perhaps, some people have been misled by regarding the word " indispensable " as a positive rather than a relative term. As applied to the enlistment of men for the Army, the word merely meant that the man was regarded as being more useful to the community where he was than he could be if he were put into khaki. Probably most of us who have troubled to think realize clearly enough that no individual is truly indispensable. Now we are asked to test the question of whether any one comparatively small section of the community can be so indispensable to the life of the remainder as to demand and obtain the power to dictate terms.
If a minority can ever prove that it possesses this power then the whole principle of majority rule goes by the board. A minority which makes the effort cannot succeed so long as the majority possesses the capabilities and the implements necessary to carry on with the minority's job or a satisfactory alternative until the latter cannot afford to remain idle any longer. It looks very much as if the development of the motor vehicle and the popular taste for handling motor vehicles have, if only by chance, saved the principle of majority rule, the alternative of which is a rank despotism.
Now, let us consider quite briefly what is the nature of the permanent lessons which we ought to learn from the service that motor transport is rendering the country in this time of crisis. Clearly, the first of these lessons is that the more motor transport is developed the more secure is the community against a minority despotism.
At the moment we are fortanate in having available, immediately, Very large numbers of vehicles actually owned by the Government. Unless we are to maintain permanent armies on a very large scale, or to do away with the principle a private ownership in favour of State ownership, this state of affairs is not likely to be maintained.
There is, however, an alternative, which is that the Government should encourage the running of motor services by private enterprise and should retain just sufficient control over those services to be assured of the satisfactory maintenance of the vehicles employed and the possibility of commandeering those vehicles in emergency.
If the Ministry of Transport works out any big scheme in favour of the establishment of an immense number of motor services for the haulage of goods and passengers in all parts of the country, then, whatever the proprietorship of those services, we have a magnificent safeguard against an undue aggression on the part of railway workers. The latter, if they he reasonable men, will have still sufficient assurance of fair treatment, inasmuch as the community will have a lively recollection of the discomforts of the present strike and, therefore, no desire to drive the railway men to the desperate course of repeating their attempt.
The railway man will remain indispensable in the ordinary sense of the term, inasmuch as everyone will be extremely anxious not to dispense with his services. ' A man whose position is acknowledged to be this need have very little fear of being down-trodden. On the other hand, directly any man comes to regard himself as completely indispensable he tends to grow overbearing, and the time may well come when he will have to learn an unpleasant lesson. It is difficult to see now how, without an extensive system of motor transport, the railway man can be brought to realize that there is at least a big possibility of any aggression on his part being quite effectively countered. Thus, the first and great lesson that we ought to learn at the present moment is that motor transport must be developed and motoring must be popularized to such an extent that, if the professional will not do his work, the amateur can— probably at great inconvenience—carry on in his absence.
The second lesson to be learned is that encouragement of motor transport and of motoring cannot result from oppressive legislation, undue restrictions of use, or unreasonably heavy taxation. If we wish new methods to be substituted for the old, then our legislation and our system of taxation should differentiate in favour of the new. This is a point of 'view which one imagines, after its present experience, the Ministry of Transport will be disposed to appreciate and to act upon when occasion arises,. as it will do in the near future when we have to consider the whole question of defraying the east of an improved road system and developing road transport to the best advantage. Yet a third lesson is the absolute necessity of maintaining, always more than adequate stocks of motor fuels, capable of being made available promptly at a considerable number of well-distributed points. This involves, incidentally, recognition of the desirability of encouraging the production of fuels both at home and in other parts of the British Empire, so that the maintenance of supplies may not be dependent upon foreign assistance which might under some circumstances, however improbable, be withdrawn at a critical moment. We must, then, do everything possible to develop and encourage the use of alternative fuels, including fuel alcohol and the group of products classified as henzole.