In places at that distance from a station labour is dear relative to the low profit on the ordinary style of farming, but very cheap relative to the possible profits on an improved and specialised system. The amount of extra labour he thus employs in the preparation of the ground, the planting, cleaning, picking, and packing, is an inestimable boon to the humbler population. Not only men, but women and children can assist at times, and earn enough to add an appreciable degree of comfort 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 transit 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 scattered 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?