STEAM ON COUNTRY ROADS. 233 



to their homes. In itself this is a valuable result. But 

 now suppose our enterprising farmer has the fortune to 

 have a good season, and to see his twenty acres teeming 

 with produce. He sets as many hands on as possible to 

 get it in ; but now what is he to do with it ? Send it to 

 London. That is easily said ; but trace the process 

 through. The goods, perishable and delicate, must first 

 be carted to the railway station and delivered there, 

 eight miles from the farm, at most inconvenient hours. 

 They must be loaded into slow goods trains, which may 

 not reach town for four-and-twenty hours. There is not 

 the slightest effort to accelerate the transit, and the rates 

 are high. By the time the produce reaches the market 

 its gloss and value are diminished, and the cost of tran- 

 sit has eaten away the profit. The thing has been tried 

 over and over again and demonstrated. One need only 

 go to the nearest greengrocer's to obtain practical proof 

 of it. The apples he sells are American. The farmers 

 in New York State or Massachusetts can grow apples, 

 pack them in barrels, despatch them two thousand eight 

 hundred miles to Liverpool, and they can then be scat- 

 tered all over the country and still sold cheaper than the 

 fruit from English orchards. This is an extraordinary 

 fact, showing the absolute need of speedy and cheap 

 transit to the English farmer if he is to rise again. Of 

 what value is his proximity to the largest city in the 

 world — of what value is it that he is only ninety miles 

 from London, if it costs him more to send his apples 

 about ninety miles than it does his American kinsman 

 very nearly three thousand ? 



As we have in this country no great natural water- 

 ways like the rivers and lakes of the United States, our 

 best resource is evidently to be found in the development 

 of the excellent common roads which traverse the 



