They Must
Be Loaded Into Slow Goods Trains, Which May Not Reach Town For
Four-And-Twenty Hours.
There is not the slightest effort to accelerate
the transit, and the rates are high.
By the time the produce reaches the
market its gloss and value are diminished, and the cost of transit has
eaten away the profit. The thing has been tried over and over again and
demonstrated. One need only go to the nearest greengrocer's to obtain
practical proof of it. The apples he sells are American. The farmers in
New York State or Massachusetts can grow apples, pack them in barrels,
despatch them two thousand eight hundred miles to Liverpool, and they can
then be scattered all over the country and still sold cheaper than the
fruit from English orchards. This is an extraordinary fact, showing the
absolute need of speedy and cheap transit to the English farmer if he is
to rise again. Of what value is his proximity to the largest city in the
world - of what value is it that he is only ninety miles from London, if
it costs him more to send his apples about ninety miles than it does his
American kinsman very nearly three thousand?
As we have in this country no great natural waterways like the rivers and
lakes of the United States, our best resource is evidently to be found in
the development of the excellent common roads which traverse the country,
and may be said practically to pass every man's door.
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