356 DO THE RAILWAYS HELP THE FARMERS? 



them in respect to such produce. The railway 

 company supplied cloths and hampers ; they sent 

 a man to collect the produce ; they carried it by 

 rail and delivered it to the salesman in the 

 London markets to whom it was consigned ; and 

 they afterwards obtained from such salesman 

 the amount due to the sender, to whom they 

 then paid it over. In 1880, when the business 

 was in a prosperous condition, the sum total 

 thus collected for the local producers of poultry, 

 without any charge for the services so rendered 

 being made by the railway company, was over 

 £3,000, and the benefit conferred on the 

 consigners — who were mostly producers of a 

 " small " type, to whom a prompt settlement 

 was a very great convenience — must have been 

 considerable. What more the company could 

 have done for them it is difficult to imagine. 

 Later on, as the facilities offered by the 

 Post Office for the remittance of money were 

 developed and better understood, there was no 

 longer any need for the railway company to 

 continue their role as financial intermediaries in 

 respect to these branches of the business. As 

 regards the butter forwarded from Bucks to 

 London, the senders were chiefly farmers whose 

 accounts were already settled monthly by the 

 salesmen direct. 



