e great centres ever has more than, at the outside, a fortnight’s supplies on hand. The complete stoppage of the railway system for any such period would thus be a national disaster. Food might still come to the ports in the same quantities as before; but without the railways there would be no adequate means for its distribution, and the large inland towns would more especially be at a disadvantage. The mere possibility of such an eventuality may help one to realise the extent of our dependence to-day on rail transport from the point of view, not alone of trade, industry and commerce, but of our daily life and sustenance.
While it is true that many rural centres suffered a decline in population when the railways led indirectly to so many agricultural workers leaving the fields for the attractions and the supposed 杭州养生保健 advantages of urban life, it is no less true that the expansion of the towns gave to those who remained in the rural centres greater markets for the sale there of such produce—and especially for such market-garden produce, eggs and poultry—as they could supply to advantage. The railways may not have annihilated distance, but they were engaged in curtailing distances; and such
curtailment became still more effective when the achievements of the locomotive were {387}followed by the adoption of the sliding-scale principle under which the rates per ton per mile decreased in proportion as consignments were sent for a greater distance than twenty miles.
The towns and the industrial centres expanded further as rail transport afforded increased facilities for the conveyance of raw materials to works which, thanks to the steam-engine, 杭州洗浴一条龙 could be set up in any part of the country, regardless of the once indispensable water power; and the procuring of these raw materials not only gave a further great expansion to national wealth, but led to the opening up to industrial activity of many a district previously isolated and undeveloped.
Increased congestion in the towns was thus none the less supplemented by a widespread development of the interior resources of the country; and in this respect the railways accomplished results that could not have been attained by the most complete system either of canals or of 杭州水疗会所丽池 turnpike roads. There certainly were losses, besides those in the rural districts, and this was notably the case in some of the county, market, or smaller towns which no longer command the same distinction in the social and economic world as before; but the balance 杭州洗浴按摩一条龙 as between gains and losses was in favour of an industrial expansion, a commercial development, and an unexampled increase in general prosperity.
On the general trade of the country the railway was to produce results no less striking than those that related to individual industries.
When the facilities for distributing domestic and other necessaries throughout the inland districts, and even in the most remote parts of the country, were so greatly increased, the reason for the fairs which had for many centuries played so all-important a part in English trade and commerce 杭州有名气的足疗店 no longer exis