128 SPECIAL VEGETABLE CROPS 



traffic (which is handled mostly in large consignments) 

 has long been carried on, but during the last twenty 

 years it has increased 15 or 20 per cent. 



From the London markets substantial quantities of 

 these green peas are afterwards sent to Manchester, 

 Bradford, Leeds, Birmingham, and other places. 

 Some years ago the Great Eastern Railway Company 

 sought to induce the growers to forward direct to the 

 markets in these various towns. The company arranged 

 a series of fast trains going there from the green-pea 

 district of Essex, and ran them for several seasons. 

 They made the fact well known among the people in 

 the district, they supplied the names of salesmen in the 

 different markets, and they put themselves into com- 

 munication with these salesmen as well. But their 

 efforts remained unsuccessful, the reason being that a 

 very large number of the green-pea crops are bought, 

 while still in the fields and before they are gathered, 

 by London salesmen, who prefer to have the peas 

 brought to London, and distributed thence to their 

 ultimate destination. This double journey, persisted in 

 notwithstanding all the efforts of the railway company, 

 would seem to suggest that the item of railway rates 

 for green peas has not much to do with the selling price. 



The production of green peas forms an important 

 industry also in the stretch of country lying between 

 Goole, Selby, Church Fenton, and Wakefield, in South 

 Yorkshire. The amount of land so utilized is about 

 4,000 acres, but the acreage varies from year to year, 

 green peas being a rotation crop, resorted to the more 

 freely if other crops, and especially clover, should 

 fail. Goole is the chief centre of the industry. There 

 the green-pea area extends over a ten or twelve mile 

 radius, within which there are growers both large and 

 small. Some of the farms are very extensive. One 



