THE RURAL PROBLEM 91 



In the year 1911 the Framlingham (Suffolk) District 

 Co-operative Society, founded by the A.O.S. in 1903, sold 

 for its members 3,922,000 eggs for £16,000. 



In the eastern division alone the A.O.S. reports for 1912 

 a sale of eggs by the affiliated societies to the number of 

 6,768,944; thirty-two societies in the country sold 11,000,000 

 between them. The total value of eggs und poultry sold 

 by affiliated and unaffiliated societies during that year is 

 estimated at £50,000. Societies have now been formed in 

 every county in Wales except Radnor. 



§ 2. The Nationalisation of Railways. 



The high railway freights in England are more disastrous 

 to agriculture than to any other industry, and there is 

 probably no one reform which could affect the whole of 

 rural life so beneficially as the reform in our railway system. 

 The average cost in this country of sending a ton of goods 

 one hundred miles is nearly double that in Germany or 

 Austria-Hungary, is more than double that in Holland, and 

 is more than three times that in the United States of America. 

 And this British average includes the hundreds of millions 

 of tons of imported goods which are carried at far lower 

 rates than are available to the British trader.* 



The rate of a ton of apples from Normandy to London, 

 or even from California to London is 15s. 8d. ; for a ton of 

 English apples from Folkestone to London it is 24s. Id. 

 The . rates for walnuts, apples, plums, pears, etc., from 

 Flushing (Holland) to London via Queenborough is 12s. 6d. 

 a ton, as against 25s. from Queenborough itself. At a 

 discussion in the Norfolk Chamber of Agriculture on May 21st, 

 1905, a member stated that he was charged at a rate of 93s. 

 a ton for sending apples 32i miles. 



Foreign dead meat comes to London from Liverpool for 

 25s. per ton, British meat for 40s. 



* The figures that follow are taken partly from the evidence given 

 before the Railway Commission and the Agricultural Commission of 

 1905, partly from Railway Nationalisation, by W. Cunningham, 1906, 

 and from The Nationalisation of Railways, by Emil Davies, 1911. 

 The rates are always being altered and are unlikely to be accurate at 

 this moment, but the alteration is usually in an upward direction. 



