What the Railways Have Done 399 



afforded by the railway in the bringing of huge quantities 

 at a low rate from even the most distant corners of the three 

 kingdoms. 1 



If, again, the railways had to share with invention and 

 industrial expansion the responsibility for the great increase 

 in town life, and for the overcrowding of many an urban 

 centre, they have, on the other hand, helped the towns to 

 spread out into healthy suburbs, or have otherwise relieved 

 them of much of their overcrowding by providing workmen's 

 trains for the conveyance of artisans and labourers between 

 their place of labour and entirely new centres of population 

 in what once were country districts. 



As for the town workers who can afford to live at greater 

 distances, the issue of cheap season tickets and the running 

 of business trains morning and evening have greatly extended 

 the suburbs of London, so that City men now have their homes 

 as far away as Brighton, Folkestone and Southend. 



The encouragement thus offered by the railways to the 

 setting up of country or even seaside homes for town workers 

 has further tended to the improvement of the public health, 

 in addition to effecting a complete revolution in social con- 

 ditions as compared with the days when the merchant or the 

 tradesman lived over his place of business in the very heart of 

 the City of London. 



What shall be said, also, of the effect on the national life 

 of that " travel habit " which received its greatest develop- 

 ment from the railways, though further encouraged in recent 

 years by the bicycle and the motor-car ? Under the combined 

 influences of fast trains, corridor carriages, dining, luncheon 

 and sleeping cars and cheap fares, whether for day excursions, 

 short-date or long-date periods, tours at home or abroad, or 

 any other of the various combinations for which facilities are 

 offered, the making of pleasure trips has entered so thoroughly 

 into the habits and customs of all grades of society that the 

 social and domestic conditions of to-day offer a complete 

 contrast from those that prevailed in the pre-railway period. 

 It is now only the poorest of families that fail to have an annual 

 holiday at a seaside resort or in the country, and even in their 



1 In the week ending April 17, 1909, the broccoli sent from the Penzance 

 district to various destinations throughout the country filled 1012 railway 

 waggons, and necessitated the running of 34 special trains. 



