failings noted above are almost inevitably found wherever the government
owns the railroads or other utilities, or else these utilities are run
at a loss and the difference made up in the tax bills of the people.
Government control never is as efficient and economical as private
control, even though all questions of political power and influence be
omitted from consideration.[10]

The important testimony of Mr. W.M. Acworth, an English authority upon
railroads, which he gave by invitation before the Senate Committee on
Interstate Commerce at Washington, has not been fully appreciated by
American public opinion. The National City Bank of New York rightly
stressed the importance of this testimony in one of its bulletins
during the year 1918. Mr. Acworth was in this country during the early
part of 1917 as a member of the special Canadian Commission on Railways,
and he told the Senate Committee that "while American companies have
revolutionized equipment and methods of operation, Prussia has clung to
old equipment and old methods. This is typical. In all the history of
railway development it has been the private companies that have led the
way, the State systems that have brought up the rear. Railroading is a
progressive science. New ideas lead to new inventions, to new plant and
methods. This means the spending of much new capital. The State official
mistrusts ideas, pours cold water on new inventions and grudges new
expenditure. In practical operation German railway officials have
taught the railway world nothing. It would be difficult to point to a
single important invention or improvement, the introduction of which the
world owes to a State railway."

Is it not a rather significant fact that with all their boasted advance
in science and learning, the Germans have failed utterly in the two
realms of politics, as shown in the preceding pages, and of railroading?