RAILWAYS, AND THEIR INFLUENCE OH AGRICULTURE.

Southland Times, Issue 1132, 29 March 1869, Page 3

RAILWAYS, AND THEIR INFLUENCE OH AGRICULTURE.

Railways have exerted a powerful in"flderice in improving both the husbandry and the inhabitants of this country. Although the first locomotive engine was started 1 oiithe Stockton and Darlington ""Railway as recently as the year 1825, nearly 14,000 miles of railway are now laid" down throughout the British Islands. ■-The improvement accruing from railways has been rapid and extensive. It has been 'mental and moral as well as physical. The populations brought under its all-pervad-ing power have been educated in habits of punctuality and activity of thought ; the favorable friction of mind upon mind has been facilitated; ignorance and prejudice have been weakened or overcome. The material advantages of our railway system have been, if possible, still more numerous and extended. The producer and consumer have been, as it were, brought nearer to each other ; time and ■ffldney 1 have been saved in the transit of the productions of the soil, the shop, and the factory. To the great masses of the peGplfe a saving in the cost of most articles in general Use has been thus effected. By shortening, as it were, time and distance, remote markets have been placed on a footing of more equality with the greater marts of populous districts. Quicker re-turns-have'been obtained in all departments of business. lir agriculture no less than in other industrial pursuits railways have proved, and 1 are proving of inestimable benefit. Thousands of cattle and sheep, dead and alivei are promptly and certainly forwarded*'without risk of delay from adverse wind or tide to the great centres of consumption. Grain, potatoes, and other-vegetables from remote parts of the kingdom are conveyed by the iron highways to our larger towns. Milk and gutter are quickly transferred from the if^tp^e shop, and enormous supplies o| these; important articles of food are yearly being drawn from ever-increasing distances around our larger cities. During , , the ' cattle plague times, when IxnTc'was scarce and dear in the metropolis, quantities were sent up from Devonshire, from Derbyshire, and even from far distant Cornwall. Manures of many sorts are distributed by the same all-powerful means to compensate for the draw oSF goOd things which in a vast and •yfiWincreaßing wave sets in from country kritown. ; ' , f'i^For light perishable goods, and where des patch is necessary, railways have l^peipseiSred, j canals, which in their day were an immense improvement on the older, tedious, and laborious highway conveyances. But the railway system, with all its advantages, is still capable of further development than it has hitherto reached. Cheap lines are yet to be made ev*Jn" in purely rural localities • tramways wS'pjfbbahly be laid down along our and in our streets ; similar tramways of portable construction may y«tl intersect highly cultivated farms, facilitating the outward movement of manures, and the homeward carriage of gran and roots. Many of our railways have been made at so serious an outlay -^preliminary Parliamentary engineering a»d mother expenses have been on so gigantic a seale — that some of these grand lines have swallowed up in their cbnsWuction £50,000 per mile. It is now, however, well ascertained that, with care, and economy, throughout an open country, and where serious obstacles do riot 'occur-; lines can be constructed at the ra'frof one-fifth of hat amount. Lines made on such sound and economical principles will evidently yield a profitable return, even if their mileage revenue is only one-half of that accruing from the more expensively - constructed railways referred to. It is thus that cheap railways benefit a locality, for such lines are able to hold out special inducements to all sorts of traffic ; their passenger fares and goods tariff are comparatively moderate. Under such favorable conditions, it is curious to note how traffic of all kinds quickly grows. Railway managers do not appear sufficiently to understand this, and seldom adopt the best means of attracting to their undertaking the profits that certainly flow from extending business. In railways, as in other mercantile matters, the nimble nihepence is proverbially better than the ilb^w shilling. Thousands of pounds sterling are still to be made by railway companies , affording cheaper conveniences for the transit of dead meat. Most companies still demand for the carriage of the carcass about four tunes the price charged for the live oxTTalthough whilst alive the beast is ne&rly double the weight of the dressed carcass, and is besides carried at much greater trouble and risk. Surely this is obstructive and short-sighted policy. Geo Stephenson reported that heavy goods, supn.aSjCoal, can be carried with profit by railway, at, a cost of one penny per ton per mile. The North British Railway by rttf.-lct is compelled to carry street manurjB £ 'froiri 'Edinburgh at a mileag6 rate of OAs,penny ; pex ton. For the advantage of agriculture, and also for the sanitary well-being of pur crowded towns, similar regulations might properly be imposed on all^aflways. It is a great public boon ttieiiall town manure should be cheaply and^^xp^ditiously removed 'fTom,she,fiifia.--ation where it is a nuisance to tile locality

b where it is valuable as a source of planl l food. Nay more, the same moderate traffic mitrht be "extended to all descriptions of manure. The transit of fertil--3 isinu- agents, even at nominal rates, inusi s necessarily be indirectly advantageous tc - railway companies ; for, by encouraging i. the wide and liberal distribution of such I fertilisers— whether in the the form oi - street or stable manure, or of the raor( t portable auxiliaries of guano, superphoss phates, or nitrate of soda— an enormous T increase of corn, hay, and roots, anc even of meat and dairy produce is grown a and for the conveyance of these to the 3 great centres of consumption the railway \ in due time is called into requisition. These considerations have been mainly suggested by an instructive paper read or r the 7th instant, by Mr J. K. Fowler, oJ Aylesbury, before the Central Farmers ■ Club. Mr Fowler points out how railways have enabled the producer to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market. He indicates how prices of food and other commodities have been equalised by their being more equally and cheaply distributed throught the country. He shows that by the making and working of railways, which employed in 1866, 200,000 servants, labor is rendered more abundant, and hence IS better remunerated. He adduces many interesting facts illustrative of the facilities which railways present alike to buyers and sellers. Burton-on-Trent brewers now obtain their finest grain from all the best barley-growing districts of England and Scotland. Kent hops are rapidly conveyed into the far north, now no longer entitled to be termed remote. Graziers in the midland and metropolitan counties are rapidly conveyed to the Welsh and Scotch fairs, make their selections, truck their animals, and have them home, some hundred miles away, often within twenty-four hours from the time of purchase. Prime beef is consigned from Aberdeen and reaches London in about thirty hours, improved rather than injured by its rapid transit over 700 miles. It is estimated that £1,000,000 is annually received in hard cash for the cattle and sheep which Aberdeenshire fattens for the London market. Milk, to the extent of nearly one and a-half million gallons, is annually sent up to London by the Great Western Eailway alone, from various points, reaching as far as Swindon. From the milk being thus sold off, butter has become scarce, has considerably risen in value, and Is 6d per pound is the present price in pocket to the farmer in the sale of Aylesbury and other dairy districts within convenient distance of the London market. Vegetables of the choicest description go up from Cornwall to Covent] JGarden. Ducks from Aylesbury, to the value of £20,000, are annually conveyed to London alone. But although the up-traffic is the more extensive and diversified, the trucks do not all return from town empty. Into the country the railways convey feeding stuffs, brewers' grains, and manures. Although the metropolitan sewage of three millions of people is not yet utilised over any considerable area, a portion of the London debris is now available for agricultural purposes. Thousand of tons of , stable, cowhouse, and other dungs are dispersed over the country by railway, as well as by barges and boats. On the London and North Western Eailway, and also on the Great Northern, we see trucks, laden with good rich odorous London manure fully fifty miles from town. Nay, London muck finds purchasers even farther from the point of its pioduction, and many tons have helped to grow crops in Fifeshire and the Lothians. To this distance it is, however, brought not by railway, but by sea, and it usually comes down as ballast or in fitting exchange as return cargo for the shiploads of potatoes that are annually cleared out of the Firth of Forth. Mr Fowler's interesting paper takes cognisance chiefly of English railways. Scottish railways have also secured for their own localities benefits of equal value. Since the formation of the North British, the stock traffic of the Lothians has probably quadrupled. Previous to railway communication being made, potatoes were not grown for exportation in East-Lothian. Owing now to the quick and certain facilities for transferring them to the southern markets, potatoes on suitable soils have become an important and paying crop. In a backward spring, some years ago, when other vegetables were scarce in London, turnip tops were bought at East-Lothian for about five pounds per acre ; were cut, packed into sacks, and dispatched by rail to the metropolitan market, when they met a ready sale, and realised a handsome profit to the speculator. Railways convey town manures from Glasgow to Forfarshire, where they are laid down at a cost of about 8s per ton. When the Duke of Sutherland's proposed line is pushed on from Golspie into Caithness, we may find the.sweepings of Edinburgh and Glasgow caffied to John o' Groats in exchange for fish, potatoes, sheep, and cattle which Caithness now sends south by sea. A useful discussion followed the reading of Mr Fowler's suggestive paper. Mr Mechi, ever looking at agricultural topics in a liberal and cosmopolitan spirit, commented upon the intellectual and social advantages accruing from railways, and largely benefiting not only the farmer, but the agricultural laborer. Mainly through railway facilities a new field has in many foreign countries been created for improved implements and machines of British manufacture, in the making of which so many hundred operatives are profitably employed. Mr Mechi referred more particularly to the agricultural machinery which has been recently purchased in England by various Russian proprietors. Sir Henry Verney carried his auditory some thirty years back, to the days when railways were strenuously opP9st4 J. i\iß.l)9Bd&irv&a, ll-geafflyi i (arid clergy, when the noise and unwonted

b sight of the locomotives would, it was ; urged, frighten horses, prevent cattle and - sheep from feeding, and even hinder the - poultry kept near important lines from t enjoying undistubed their natural rest, ) Sir. Harry mentioned that so bitter was * the opposition of many of the resident i gentry to the making of the Buckinghamf" shire line, that they endeavored to 3 prevent the surveys being taken, sent out ■ their gamekeepers to pull down the poles, i and thus drove the promoters of the line I to undertake much of the work at night ; , and even it is said on Sundays, whilst i their annoyers were gone to church. Mr - Jacob Wilson, Morpeth, adverted to the rise which railways had effected on r agricultural rents. He spoke of advances j varying from 2s 6d to 4s per acre ; but f where potatoes are fittingly grown, the > increase has often been much greater ; indeed there are cases where railways • have forced up rents to the extent of one ; I and even two pounds per acre. — English J paper. I ======