96 THE RURAL PROBLEM 



unreasonable to expect private railway companies to suffer 

 such losses ; it is impossible to make the most of our transit 

 system while it is worked for profit and not for use, by 

 different companies, with different boards, different methods, 

 and different rates of carriage. The nationalisation of the 

 railways must therefore be placed in the very forefront of 

 agricultural reform.* 



§ 3, A State Motor Service. 



In the meanwhile it is high time that the State made some 

 experiments of its own in transit other than railway transit. 

 The great businesses are now using the roads for the purposes 

 of motor conveyance, the G.P.O. has its motor vans, and 

 there would be an enormous saving both of time and 

 expense if a similarly speedy and simple means of transport 

 could be organised in agricultural districts, more especially 

 for fruit and stuff that deteriorates with time. 



A country motor service is needed not for produce only, 

 but for passengers as well. Going to market is very difficult 

 in rural England; and village life as a whole is unnecessarily 

 isolated. The farmer farms in a corner and is consequently 

 ignorant of agricultural movements ; the labourer fossilises 

 body and soul and is a political danger to the community. 

 In parts of Germany the mails are taken from the village 

 post office in motor brakes that also carry passengers, and 

 twice a day, at least, the remotest villages in the Bavarian 

 Highlands are brought into touch with one another and with 

 the country town. For a few pence the labourer's wife rides 

 to market with her basket on her arm and the carpenter goes 

 to put in for a job in the neighbouring village. Local enter- 

 tainments and educational facilities can thus reach a larger 

 public; the point of view of the villager is broadened and 

 his sphere of activity enlarged, not financially alone, but 

 socially and morally as well. Village life would be far healthier 

 if the community would once and for all break down the 

 barrier of prejudice that impedes collective enterprise, and 

 seriously set itself to develop the possibilities of country life. 



* Mr. Balfour Browne, K.C., in a paper read before the London 

 Chamber of Commerce, February 10th, 1897, said : " I am not exag- 

 gerating when I say that the Agricultural Question ... is nothing 

 else but a question of railway rates." 



