84 RUKAL RECONSTRUCTION 



in this country we have railway companies occasionally lending a very 

 helping hand, such as we have had to thank the North-Eastern Rail- 

 way Company for. It is a public service, but it is also a prudent 

 planting of business, likely to grow to a big tree and to yield ample 

 fruit. In the United States, railway companies — although occa- 

 sionally fighting agricultural organisation fiercely — as in the case 

 of the " elevators," when in alliance with big profiteers — at other 

 points go very much further than our own railways in assisting 

 organisation, by providing valuable facilities for inspection and 

 delivery of goods at departure and arrival stations, and allowing 

 such goods to be forwarded in " track cars," which may be directed 

 and re-directed to new destinations while en route, at the sender's 

 pleasure, so as to avoid " glutting " — communication by wire 

 being continually kept open, so that the sender knows at all times 

 at what particular point to find his car, and may direct it without 

 further charge, to the most tempting market. The value of such 

 facility given is manifest, and in practice it appears to have a very 

 stimulating effect upon markets. Equally valuable is the provision 

 of convenient cold storage waggons and cold storage depots — in 

 respect of which, by the way, not a little is also done in France, 

 where, as we know, since a long time, special trains are run at high 

 speed to carry easily perishable goods, such as fruit, flowers and 

 those valued jorimeurs — for which the south of France is famous — 

 either to Paris or else to the Channel ports, for conveyance to 

 England. And under the effect of American 'cuteness even joint 

 stock companies have become very serviceable — without any 

 " profiteering," which would lose them their business — in cases 

 in which co-operative enterprise may be assumed to lack either 

 the necessary ready cash or else the necessary technical skill to 

 carry out the business altogether for itself. It is taken as an axiom 

 in some of the busiest parts of the United States — busiest under 

 our present aspect — that one co-operative organisation cannot 

 carry its produce advantageously from seed-bed to table, or from 

 mill to till, by its own unsupported action. The business wants to 

 be divided into its several stages. The changing service in this age 

 of highly-specialised business skill and keen competition calls for 

 varied knowledge and varied competency at various points of the 

 progress of goods to the consumer ; and where there has to be a 

 change, it may at times be not amiss to turn outside service to 

 account. There are joint stock companies in America which enjoy 

 the reputation of doing the transporting and selling of produce, 

 for instance fruit from the richly-bearing Californian orchards, at a 



