Large Tracts Of Country Look To One
Town As Their Central Place, Not By Any Means Always The Nearest Market
Town; to such places, for instance, as Gloucester and Reading, thousands
resort in the course of the year from hamlets
At a considerable distance.
Such road trains as have been described would naturally converge on
provincial towns of this kind, and bring them thrice their present trade.
Country people only want facilities to travel exactly like city people.
It is, indeed, quite possible that when villages thus become accessible
many moderately well-to-do people will choose them for their residence,
in preference to large towns, for health and cheapness. If any number of
such persons took up their residence in villages, the advantage to
farmers would of course be that they would have good customers for all
minor produce at their doors. It is not too much to say that three parts
of England are quite as much in need of opening up as the backwoods of
America. When a new railroad track is pushed over prairie and through
primeval woods, settlements spring up beside it. When road trains run
through remote hamlets those remote hamlets will awake to a new life.
Many country towns of recent years have made superhuman efforts to get
the railway to their doors. Some have succeeded, some are still trying;
in no case has it been accomplished without an immense expenditure, and
for the most part these railroad branches are completely in the control
of the main line with which they are connected.
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