The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-05-04

England, 1t must be remembered, is 2 1 very old-setued country and it's road and river communications were complete ] long before railways were thought of. | Towns have grown in the railway era but hardly any have come into their be- l ing since then. The road is still the best way of reaching all the little market l towns and villages which Londoners sheer at as being sleepy" but which would wake up if they were not starved | by needless isolation. Continental coun- | tries have always seen we'll to their roads, having in the back of their minds the l expectation that armies would have to | march along them, but England has let 1 any small district allow it's by-roads to 1 lapse into bad repair, while main roads between the large towns were but little used except for pleasure traffic. There are, it is true fruit farms in Kent which send their strawberries and apples straight up to Convent garden by motor 1 lorry, but most of the soft fruit is still. carted to a village station, unloacled into 8 train, transferred again to carts, sold in central market and carted again to suburban shops, which ought to get their supplies fresh from the farms. Road and rail have been jealous rivals and agriculture and consumer have suf- fered for it.
 Railways have been even more jealous of canals, many of which the railways have bought up to stop their competi- ton. When most of the English roads were still unrnetalled tracks the water ways were full of traffic. The stone of which the Eastern county churches were
 built soon after the Norman conquest came by sea from Caen, in Normandy,
 and to it's destination in river barges
 Transport officers who have dealt with
 the giant strings of barges at Rouen in war time will see we'll enough how Eng1
 land has wasted her river roads for hun dreds of years and what might be made of them. lf5f
 Again, good transport would help the
 development of cultivation that must
 have seasonal labor. The hop fields, the
 Kentish cherry orchards, the apples in
 the vale of Evesham, the hundreds of
 acres of plums in Cambridgeshire, tho
 strawberry farms which occupy reclaim
 ed land around the Wash and near
 Southampton Water, the profitable broc-
 coli gardens in Lincolnshire, Cornish
 green peas, Chatteris carrots, the huge
 potato crops of the Fens, all want
 large supply of extra labor for com
 paratively short season of the year. And all these districts waste much good food
 for want of labor and markets which good transport facilities would insure to them.
 If farming is to be prosperous there must be no more waste of land. It is said that the best of the Belgian refu- gees spent their first weeks in England at the singular wastefulness of the British in this respect. An ob- vious example is the neglect of forestry English woodland as a rule is regarded l as merely a feature in the landscape, ! instead of profitable though slowly ma turing crop. Pembrokeshire moors have | been left desolate and improbable when | they are capable of growing valuable pit | props in a period of no more than 30 | years. Valuable and nearly worthless l timber is grown almost haphazard and | and when d tree falls | nc one feels bound to plant successor. 1
 Forestry with it's slowly developed | profits is rather a concern of the state l than of the private individual, but it's | neglect reacts unfavorably upon agricul l ture. If carried on scientifically it af- | lords well-paid winter work when agri- | cultural employment is scarce, and a cheap and plentiful supply of timber is for farm buildings and their ] repair and for gates and fences. A war, when even the wood of which matches W ere made, was grudged to the civilians. " as needed to bring home the importance of aboriculture to the English country man. "