WEST MIDDLESEX: ROAD TRANSPORT 101 



within cartage distance. From West Middlesex in- 

 dividual growers send off any number of loads, from 

 one to seventeen, each night. 



So it is that residents on the highways and main 

 thoroughfares leading from West Middlesex into Lon- 

 don have to sleep as best they can to the constant 

 rumbling of long processions of market-garden carts, 

 which, leaving the farms in the evening, do their 

 twelve, fifteen, or twenty mile journey, and arrive at 

 the London markets with their loads any time between 

 midnight and three o'clock in the morning. The 

 drivers may sleep comfortably en route, but that is im- 

 material provided they do not fall off, for the horses 

 know every inch of the way, and require no guidance. 



The attempt to substitute motor traction for horses 

 and vans is still in the experimental stage, and, un- 

 fortunately for the growers concerned, it is hampered 

 by the attitude of the local authorities. Water-troughs 

 have been provided at various points along the main 

 roads for the use of the horses ; but, though the growers 

 who employ steam-motors have offered to pay whatever 

 may be asked of them for water from the taps at those 

 troughs, for use in the motors, the local authorities 

 concerned have refused permission. Consequently the 

 motors have to start on the journey to London with 

 a ton of water, in addition to the load of vegetables. 

 It is also open to any aspiring young constable along 

 the line of route, anxious to secure the favourable notice 

 of his superiors, to stop the driver, take his name and 

 number, and cause him to be prosecuted, to lose a day 

 (his employer as well, it may be), and to pay a fine, for 

 some purely technical offence under motor-waggon law. 

 Drawbacks of this kind are locally regarded as ex- 

 amples of the sort of help that agriculture in Great 

 Britain can expect to get from the ' powers that be.' 



