The Latter Makes A Study Of The Rail And Its Awkward Ways, And Manages To Get The Goods Through, Of Course Adding To Their Cost When They Reach The Public.

Without the dealer, under present circumstances, the farmer would often find it practically impossible to get to markets not in his immediate neighbourhood.

The rail and its awkward, inconvenient ways actually shut him off. In manufacturing districts the transit of iron and minerals and worked-up metal is managed with considerable ability. There are appointed to manage the goods traffic men who are alert to the conditions of modern requirements and quick to meet them. In agricultural districts the question often arises if there be really any responsible local goods managers at all. It seems to be left to men who are little more than labourers, and who cannot understand the patent fact that times are different now from what they were thirty years since, when they first donned their uniforms. The railways may bring their books and any number of their officers to prove that everything is perfectly satisfactory, but the feeling remains, nevertheless, that it is exactly the contrary.

Look at the map, and place the finger on any of the spaces between the lines of rail. Take, then, the case of a farmer in the midst of that space, not more than five or six miles from the metals, and able at times to hear the distant whistle of the engines, but not less than eight from a station. This present season he finds his wheat damaged by the rain after it was cut, and he comes to the conclusion that he must supplement his ordinary crops by some special culture in order to make his way. On the last occasion he was in a large city he was much struck by the quantity of fruit which he found was imported from abroad. The idea naturally occurs to him of setting aside some ten or twenty acres of his holding of four hundred or five hundred for the culture of fruit. He goes to his landlord, who is only too willing to give him every facility, provided that no injury be done to the soil. He faces the monstrous injustice of the extraordinary tithes, and expends fresh capital in the planting of various kinds of fruit.

In places at that distance from a station labour is dear relative to the low profit on the ordinary style of farming, but very cheap relative to the possible profits on an improved and specialised system. The amount of extra labour he thus employs in the preparation of the ground, the planting, cleaning, picking, and packing, is an inestimable boon to the humbler population. Not only men, but women and children can assist at times, and earn enough to add an appreciable degree of comfort to their homes. In itself this is a valuable result. But now suppose our enterprising farmer has the fortune to have a good season, and to see his twenty acres teeming with produce.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 142 of 204
Words from 73473 to 73979 of 105669