MOTOR-WAGGON SERVICES 187 



published in the Co-operative News of December 2, 

 1905: 



There is good reason to think that the motor may yet prove a 

 potent agent in promoting that co-operative organization which is 

 believed by many to be essential to the development of small 

 holdings and the restoration of agricultural prosperity. We are 

 not now thinking of the fashionable car . . . but of the industrial 

 car, which is to solve some of our greatest transit problems, as 

 they concern both passengers and goods. ... In England many 

 of the sparsely-populated regions which are off the main route are 

 retarded in their development by their inaccessibility, and the 

 lack of facilities for the rapid and prompt transmission of 

 produce. . . . The chief hope of the producers of marketable 

 commodities in such districts as these is centred in the self- 

 propelled motor vehicle where there is no prospect of the construc- 

 tion of light railways. . . . 



By its aid distances will be diminished and time will be saved ; 

 hamlets will be brought into touch with the villages, and the 

 villages will be linked up with the towns. The lives of the people 

 will be quickened, and new opportunities of usefulness opened out 

 to them, and rural activities will be stimulated in a way which has 

 not hitherto been possible. The countryside will be less isolated, 

 and better worth living in, and its industries will be assisted so 

 that its prosperity will increase. This is not a poetic dream, but 

 a practical forecast. Already the signs of its realization are on 

 every hand. . . . 



But to reap the fullest advantage of the new means of transport, 

 it is necessary that the producers in a district should organize 

 themselves and co-operate to send their goods to market in the 

 most economical way. One example will suffice. The North- 

 Eastern Railway Company, which has shown itself very sympa- 

 thetic towards the efforts of traders to consign in bulk, started a 

 motor goods service between Tollerton Station and the village of 

 Brandsby. This was done at the wish of the Brandsby Dairy and 

 Trading Association, which receives the goods, organizes the 

 traffic, and acts as forwarding agent. Other examples of similar 

 working could be given, and many of the market-growers in the 

 home counties have co-operated to this extent for the rapid and 

 economical transport of their produce. Where the willingness is 

 shown to make use of it sagaciously, the heavy motor must come 

 as a boon and a blessing to agriculture and gardening, and to 

 every other rural employment which depends on quick marketing. 

 This may not be a complete cure for all the diseases of agriculture, 

 but it must be beneficial in its effects, and may do much to restore 

 rural activity. One of its immediate results will be to quicken the 

 interest of the rural people in that practical co-operation in dis- 

 tribution, as well as in some forms of production, which has placed 

 Holland and Denmark foremost among the producers of some of 



