A HISTORY 



OF 



INLAND TRANSPORT AND 

 COMMUNICATION 



CHAPTER I 



INTRODUCTORY 



THE gradual improvement, throughout the centuries, of those 

 facilities for internal communication which reached their 

 climax in the creation of the present system of railways has 

 constituted a dominating factor alike in our industrial and in 

 our social advancement as a people. 



Until transport had provided a ready means alike of 

 collecting raw materials and of distributing food supplies and 

 manufactured articles, industries of the type familiar to us 

 to-day were practically impossible ; and until convenient and 

 economical means of travel were afforded, England had to be 

 considered less as a nation than as a collection of more or 

 less isolated communities, with all the disadvantages, social 

 and moral as well as economic, necessarily resulting ; while 

 the social and moral progress facilitated by improved means of 

 communication reacted, in turn, on the industries by creating 

 new wants for manufacturers and workers to supply. 



To the right understanding of the position occupied by our 

 National Industries, it is thus necessary that the special 

 significance of internal communication and its development 

 should, at the outset, be clearly realised from the point of 

 view, not alone of present-day circumstances, but, also, of 

 conditions that either preceded the industries themselves so 

 far checking their growth that industrial development in 

 Great Britain came at a much later date than in many coun- 



