London, for instance, formerly drew its chief supplies of food from its immediate neighbourhoods. The extensive market gardens which existed, especially in the eastern and western suburbs, sent their produce to town by heavy road wagons, and to this day they continue to do so. But as population increased, and the demand for food became greater, the facilities, both in regard to conveyance and charges, afforded by the railway companies, enabled farmers, graziers, and market gardeners in distant parts of the kingdom to compete with those in the immediate neighbourhood of London, to the obvious advantage of the consumer. In this way fat cattle from Norfolk, meat from Scotland and Devonshire, fish from Scotland, Ireland, and the East and West Coast of England, broccoli and new potatoes from the Scilly Islands, Penzance and the Channel Islands, store potatoes from Lincolnshire and Scotland, and other articles of food are conveyed by the railway companies at rates which, although not proportionate to those charged for shorter distances, are beneficial to traders and their customers. Meat is carried from Yorkshire, about 189 miles, at 55s. per ton; from Aberdeen, 516 miles, at 67s. 6d.; and from Stromness, in Orkney, 776 miles, at 90s. per ton. Potatoes from Yorkshire are carried at 15s.; from Sunderland, 269 miles, 18s. 4d.; and from Aberdeen, 30s. per ton. The effect is to open fresh markets to producers throughout the country, and to supply the wants of an ever increasing population at such reasonable prices as would not otherwise be possible.
“To move is practically to produce,” at least it often is so. The consumer desires that commodities and materials should be conveyed from places where they are produced cheaply or are abundant, to places where they are more in demand; that coal, for instance, should go to districts where there is ore without fuel available for smelting; that timber, or excellent building stone, should be conveyed to great cities; and that the small value of many raw materials, rendering it impossible for them to bear more than the lowest rate of carriage, should not prevent their being conveyed. This demand, also, the railway companies have satisfied by charging rates not always exactly varying with the distance. Writing of the marvellous effects of railways, the late Mr. Newmarch, in his edition of “Tooke’s History of Prices,” says: “Among their greatest achievements are the opening up of new fields of supply, and the deepening of old channels of consumption. They have brought into profitable use mines, forests, quarries, arable and grazing districts, fisheries, harbours, and rivers, previously inaccessible. The produce arising from these various and numerous sources is so much additional wealth placed at the command of the community.”[28] Had equal mileage rates been universally enforced many of those new sources of supply would still be useless; the articles would not bear the cost of transport.