In the British mercantile marine all ships (except those employed exclusively in trading between ports on the coasts of Scotland) are compelled to keep an official log book in a form approved by the Board of Trade.
When the Labour party joined the Coalition movement in 1915 he became a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury; he was parliamentary secretary to the Board of Trade 1916-7; Minister of Labour, 1917-8; Food Controller, Jan.
From 1889 to 1892 he was parliamentary secretary to the Board of Trade in the Conservative Government, and from 1895 to 1903 (when he resigned as a Free Trader opposed to tariff reform) Secretary for Scotland.
On the whole, the best statistical source for this information is the annual computation published by the Archiv fiir Eisenbahnwesen, the official organ of the Prussian Ministry of Public Works; but the figure quoted above utilizes the Board of Trade returns for the United Kingdom and the report of the Interstate Commerce Commission for the United States.
The United States of America, with a capital of £3,059,800,000 invested in its railways on the 30th of June 1906, was easily ahead of every other country, and in 1908 the figure was increased to £ 3,443, 02 7, 68 5, of which £2,636,569,089 was in the hands of the public. On a route-mileage basis, however, the capital cost of the British railway system is far greater than that of any other country in the world, partly because a vast proportion of the lines are double, treble or even quadruple, partly because the safety requirements of the Board of Trade and the high standards of the original builders made actual construction very costly.
