Land transport

“ Every here and there an isthmus is found to divide waters that appear as if they were intended by Nature to be joined together.
The same remarkable absence of facilities for promoting the requirements of commerce is apparent on land as on water. The surface of the earth, and the divisions of land and water, appear to have been left by Nature in such a condition as to tax the highest powers and capacities of man. The knowledge of roads, of bridges, of canals, has been laboriously acquired and slowly applied. The aboriginal inhabitants of a country usually care for none of these things. ”

“ All other things being equal, the system of transport that is able to afford the greatest average speed will be certain to command the lion’s share of business. There are, however, both natural and economical limits to speed, alike on water and on land. ”

“ As to those persons who speculate on making railways general throughout the Kingdom, and superseding all the canals, all the waggons, mail and stage-coaches, post-chaises, and, in short, every other mode of conveyance by land and water, we deem them and their visionary schemes unworthy of notice. ”

“ After the early companies had got their Acts and obtained their land they still, as railway pioneers, had to bear the expense of some very costly experiments, of which railways constructed at a later date had the advantage. ”

“ It must be borne in mind that a land power has the advantages of central position and interior lines, and the interior lines of to-day are those of rail and motor transport, offering facilities for a rapid concentration on any front. ”

“ Apart from other considerations, and taking only the one item of land, the State lines of Continental countries may well have cost less to construct than the English lines, while both in the United States and in Canada the pioneer railway companies had great stretches of land given to them, by State or Federal Government, not alone for their lines, but as a further means of assisting them financially. ”

“ It was almost impossible to get sufficient clay for the purposes of raw material, and the cost and the risk of damage involved in long land journeys before the goods could be put on the water, for carriage to London or the Continent, almost closed those markets for the Staffordshire manufacturer. ”

“ In those days, in fact, people bequeathed not only land, or money, but even live stock for the repair of roads just as they left gifts for ecclesiastical purposes, or as people to-day make bequests to charitable institutions. ”

“ There are in the United States between 35 and 40 millions of acres of land under wheat crops, an area about one-half that of the whole surface of England, Ireland, and Scotland. On this vast area there was grown, in 1886, 4591⁄4 millions of bushels of wheat, and of this quantity 1291⁄2 millions of bushels were transported from Chicago, the great warehousing centre, to New York, in the proportions of over 46 millions by canal and river and over 80 millions by railway. For many years there has been a great scramble for this traffic between the two rival systems of transportation. ”

“ In Australia the railways allowed of settlements established on the coast-line of a continent (covering three million square miles) gradually stretching far inland, utilising for agricultural purposes great areas of land that must otherwise have remained little better than barren wastes. ”

“ These surveyors were authorised to require occupiers of land to attend each Midsummer with wains, or carts, in proportion to their holdings, such carts being furnished, after the custom of the country, with oxen, horses or other cattle and necessaries, and to be in charge of two able men. All other householders, cottagers and labourers, able to work and not being servants hired by the year, were to furnish work in their own persons, or by deputy, bringing with them "such shovels, spades, pikes, mattocks and other tools and instruments as they do make their own fences and ditches withall." ”

“ The present condition of our inland transport is a subject which calls for the close attention of all who are in any way interested in the commercial prosperity of the country at large. The enormous increase in our imports and exports demands a corresponding increase in the facilities for inland transport. ”

“ Formerly, development was practically dependent on the river system, which is still of much importance, though the railways have now taken the first place as a means of transport. The production of important crops. ”

“ With ample facilities of transport, however, the most limited natural resources may be made to go a long way, and nations that are not possessed of great natural endowments may even rise to a high place in the economy of human industry. ”

“ Earths easily removed do not admit of so large a haul, with a given number of excavators, as hard earths. The nature of the ground, form of carts, kind of horses, season of the year, and price of labor are some of the elements entering the problem of transport. ”

“ The most pressing demand of the day connected with our inland waterways is for navigation and carriage of freight. The need is urgent. The notably reserved and cautious Interstate Commerce Commission has just declared:
It may conservatively be stated that the inadequacy of transportation facilities is little less than alarming; that its continuation may place an arbitrary limit on the future productivity of the land ”

“ The triumphant march of commodity economy thus begins in most cases with magnificent constructions of modern transport, such as railway lines which cross primeval forests and tunnel through the mountains, telegraph wires which bridge the deserts, and ocean liners which call at the most outlying ports. ”

“ They are not only matters of convenience, but they are really matters of great economy in every community. The farmer with one team of two horses is able to move on a good road more than he could move with four horses and a wagon of much greater strength on a poor road. This I have tested personally many times. Farmers are constantly in need of the use of highways to transport their property and to move themselves from place to place. The average farmer is five miles distant from the nearest railway station and his surplus produce must be moved that distance year after year. ”

“ Accordingly an option should be secured upon a large piece of land not over forty miles from a large city, near a railroad station. The transportation at first is not important, as the new commuters will make a demand for it, and cheap autos will largely fill the gap; it will improve rapidly.
If possible it should have a lake or a fair stream on it for irrigation and small water power; the soil should be examined by experts, to see that it is suitable for trucking and market gardening. ”

“ ONE-WAY ROADS
4.35 The "one-way traffic" sign to diagram 652 may be used only to indicate the effect of a traffic regulation order which requires vehicles to proceed in one direction only. It should not be used to sign traffic along one carriageway of a dual carriageway road. However, where a rural dual carriageway comprises two one-way roads (i.e. where there is non-highway land between the two carriageways) each carriageway should be subject to a one-way traffic order and signs to diagram 652 provided accordingly. ”

“ A glance at a map of the United States will suffice to show that it has unique natural facilities for water transport. Its great lakes, which are inland seas of no inconsiderable dimensions, now connected together by the Erie and St. Mary’s Falls Canals, its magnificent rivers, such as the Mississippi and the Missouri, and the natural configuration of the country, create an ensemble for cheap transportation such as no other country can surpass. Besides these resources, however, the United States have now a railway system of over 160,000 miles. ”

“ The construction of roads, and, in particular, of railways connecting the advanced stations with the coast, and presenting easy access to the inland waters and to the upper [Pg 71] reaches of streams and rivers which are broken by rapids and cataracts, so as to substitute economical and speedy means of transport for the present means of portage by men. ”

“ One hundred and twenty-five thousand miles of railway, fifteen thousand miles of navigable water, exclusive of the Great Lakes, and several thousand miles of canals are insufficient to transport this enormous production; thousands of miles of railway are therefore yearly built in order to keep pace with the growth of population and the settlement of new lands. ”

“ Agriculture, properly so called, establishes itself and spreads along the waterways or railways which facilitate the transport of the harvests. The crops principally grown cannot afford the cost of transport at a greater distance than 180 or 190 miles by railway from the nearest point of embarkation or consumption, and the nearest railway-station must not be further than 18 or 20 miles. There are only a few crops of greater value that can be profitably grown at greater distances, their higher prices covering the increased cost of transport. ”

“ The question of cheap transportation by water, so important to present-day society, would be of minor importance to the new society. Nevertheless transportation by water will be regarded as a very convenient means of transportation, requiring the least expenditure in strength and material. But of the greatest importance an extensive system of rivers and canals will be for purposes of irrigation and drainage, for the transportation of manure and other materials for the amelioration of the land, and for the distribution of the crops. ”

“ Furniture-removers, by resorting either, for small removals, to motors carrying pantechnicons, or, for large removals, to traction-engines and regular road trains, can now cover distances of up to 100 or 150 miles a day, the "record" down to the autumn of 1911 being 166 miles in a day. Brewers, mineral-water manufacturers, oil companies, coal merchants, pianoforte-makers, brick-makers and scores of other traders, besides, are all taking to the new form of street or road transport. ”

“ In spite of all the changes and disasters of successive Governments, a steady and rapid advance has been made in providing means of transport and shipping, by the construction of railways to every part of the country, the making and keeping in condition of admirable highways, and {171}the building of breakwaters and quays in many of the seaports, so that now the output of the mines and produce of all kinds can find market within the country, or be shipped abroad freely. ”

“ On the same principle, lowering the expence of carriage would enable you to apply additional quantities of labour and capital to all the soils already under cultivation. But it is not necessary to go into any illustrative examples to explain this, it being a well-known principle, that every improvement which allows us to cultivate land of a quality which could not previously be cultivated, also enables us to cultivate in a higher manner, lands already under tillage. ”

“ In a system of civilisation in which transport costs so little as it does in railway and steam-ship freights, the patches of territory which can be irrigated by water brought by gravitation from the hills or from the upper reaches of rivers are comparatively easy of access to a market. ”

“ Nevertheless it seems probable that new methods of operating the motor truck transport, and possibly new types of trucks or trucks and trailers will be developed so that freight traffic over many roads will be of considerable tonnage and an established part of the transportation system of the nation. ”

“ Intensive cultivation, raising a big crop on little land, can be carried on most profitably near areas of dense population; for perishable products, like fruits and vegetables, can be best marketed near the consumer. The limit for delivery by auto is about fifteen to twenty miles, and then only if roads are good; if the land selected lies on the line of a railroad which gives equal terms to way freight and to through freight, you will fare nearly as well. Railroads control agricultural development. ”

“ In countries of large area, where commerce and intercourse must cover great distances, these natural and therefore cheap highways assume paramount importance, especially in the forest and agricultural stages of development, when the products of the land are bulky in proportion to their value. ”

“ Man, however, found out, in course of time, that it suited his interests and his convenience to establish a system of interchange of commodities. The simple and self-contained habits of the trapper and the hunter gave place to a more composite order of being. Then it was that the primeval forest, the jungle, the morass, and the prairie became rectangulated with roadways over which traffic could be rudely transported on the backs of mules, horses, or other beasts of burden. ”

“ As the towns or the industrial centres developed, however, there grew up increasing need for improved means of transport—supplementary to the roads of that day—in order, more especially, to facilitate the better distribution of the commodities then being produced in ever-increasing quantities. ”

“ Now, to show the enormous importance of that load of tonnage, that tonnage that is greater than any other city in the world, I undertake to say, and do say, that there are not 1,000 people, men, women and children, connected directly or indirectly, with moving that traffic between the land and the water in both directions. There is such a thing as doing a very large business without a harbor at all. ”

“ If a new region distant from a large water course is opened up, as is being done rapidly in the West through irrigation and dry farming, the people are entirely dependent on the railways to develop it, to bring them all the conveniences of the outside world, and to carry the products of their land to the market. ”