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.
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