affecting railways was passed between 1911 and
1913; and since the war began no such legislation has even been
attempted, excepting always the _Ways and Communications Bill_ which, as
I write, is pursuing its course through the House of Commons.

The form of half-yearly accounts prescribed by the _Regulation of
Railways Act_, 1868, admirable as they were, in course of time were found
to be insufficient and unsatisfactory. They failed to secure, in
practice, such uniformity as was necessary to enable comparisons to be
made between the various companies, and in 1903 a Committee of Railway
Accountants was appointed by the Railway Companies' Association to study
the subject, with the view of securing uniformity of practice amongst
British railways in preparing and publishing their accounts. This
Committee, after an expenditure of much time and trouble, prepared a
revised form, but the companies failed to agree to their general
adoption, and without legislation, compulsion could not of course be
applied. This led to the Board of Trade, who were keen on uniformity,
appointing, in 1906, a Departmental Committee on the subject. On this
Committee sat my friend Walter Bailey. The Committee heard much
evidence, considered the subject very thoroughly, and recommended new
forms of Accounts and Statistical Returns, which were (practically as
drawn up) embodied in the Act of 1911, and are now the law of the land.
From the shareholders' point of view the most important changes are the
substitution of annual accounts for half-yearly ones, and the adoption of
a uniform date for the close of the financial year. In addition to the
many improvements in the direction of clearness and simplicity which the
new form of accounts effected, the following two important changes were
made:--

(1) _All information relating to the subsidiary enterprises of a company
to be shown separately to that relating to the railway itself_

(2) _A strict separation to be made of the financial statements from
those which were of a purely statistical character_

The first of these alterations had become desirable from the fact that
practically all the larger railway companies had, in the course of years,
added to their railway business proper such outside enterprises as
steamships, docks, wharves, harbours, hotels, etc.

One bright morning, in the autumn of 1911, I was summoned to the
telephone by my friend the Right Honorable Laurence A. Waldron, then a