TRANSPORT AND OUR FOOD SUPPLY.
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The Grouping of the Population of the Commercial Heptarchy and the Possibility of Reorganizing the Supply of Food.
TG. ,,, NLARGIN upon his previous analysis of the TG. ,,, NLARGIN upon his previous analysis of the 1 distribution of the population (as printed in The Commercial Mator for September 7th), Mr. Dudley. W. Walton, in the Sentinel News, says that "the population of England is made up of seven important groups. These seven groups constitute separate communities, much in the same way as the Seven Kingdoms constituted the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. They centre around seven great cities : London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Newcastle-on-Tyne,and Cardiff. Proposals have been made that these groups should be the basis for the provinces, or regions which seem to be destined to develop into the units of future local government.
Two Kinds of Traffic.
"When the map of England is thus laid out before us, divided into well-marked groups, each with . an industry and commerce peculiar to the region, it is manifest that the transportation necessarily associated with the gebups is of two distinct kinds. In the first place, there is the internal traffic within each group ; the movement of food and merchandise which is produced and consumed within the area. But, a group of cities cannot grow rich by 'taking in each other's washing.' It is the surplus products that pay, and these necessarily must be exchanged for the surplus products of other communities. So there is, secondly, an external traffic between group and group. This traffic, so vital to prosperity, has never been systematically organized. In the early days it was taken care of by an inadequate system of turnpike roads, the extension and efficiency of which always lagged behind the necessities of the population. Supplementing the highways, a magnificent system of canals grew up. A canal map of England proves the exist-, ence of a system of internal waterways which is the ' finest in the world. Why the system has been allowed to decay is not to be related now. To-day, the imports and exports of ourseven regions are quite inadequately carried by so-called railway ' Systems,' the result, not of intelligent planning, but of mad competition and vested interests. How mad and inefficient railway competition can be, is seen at ,a, glance at Glasgow, where the railway goods services are so laid out as to make each other inevitably inefficient and extravagantly expensive.
Population and Supply.
" In describing the three Lancashire-Yorkshire regions, it was pointed out that the ultimate limits of their population are dependent upon water supply. They are also dependent on available food supply. So far as we liveon imported foodstuffs, facilities in transit from port to city must keep pace with the growth of population. This involves organized traffic by sea and road. Behind the loaf of bread on the workman's breakfast table is the baker's •delivery cart ; behind the baker's cart the steam wagon bringing the flour from the mill ; behind the steam wagon the railway truckful of wheat from port to mill: and behind the railway an .organized and reorganized system of ocean traffic. And so also with all other imported foodstuffs. But Englishmen do not live on tinned tomatoes alone ; they consume every English
vegetable, that grows in the Market garden. ,.
"Market garden traffic is in a state of flux: and tht is one reason for cabbages costing sixpence, each Until recently our kitchen foodstuffs were all grown on the outskirts of our centres of population. Two
important things have intervened to abolish the suburban market garden, which only by chance was placed upon. the soil best suited for this kind of cultivation.. Housing and town-planning schemes—themselves involving much transportation—are covering aur suburban gardens, acre by acre; and the replacement of the horse by the motor vehicle has caused the supply of natural land fertilizers to diminish to zero. Never a lead of stable manure passes to-day over the London bridges. Hence our market-garden business needs reorganization.
"There are signs that this is being done unsystematically. Vegetables for Liverpool and Manchester now come in increasing quantities from Cheshire, and for London from Huntingdonshire. The traffic from St. •Neots has been fostered by the railway enterprise; but a local traffic which seemed at first to depend upon caprice is now seen to be the keystone of a national scheme of national food supply. It happens, b y the generous d i spensation
o f Nature, that a belt of fertile land, p re-eminently suited [or market gardening, exists to varying degrees of width, quality, and accessi bility right across England from Wiltshire -to L i ncolnsh ire. This land is associated with a definitely known geological formation, allied with the chalk ridges. The general position of the belt of garden land is indicated on the diagram.; a geological map Shows its true position, and extent. "That vegetable supplies have not been-systematic.ally produced on this land is due to several factors: It could not compete with the more accessible suburban market garden • and there were no reliable transport facilities. .Irideed, the lay of the land, and the absence of mineral deposits along the belt; have hindered and always will handicap systematic railway development. There are but few large towns along the strip. The. typical settlements on the formation between Hull and Bath are places like Calne (a bacon centre), Aylesbury -(poultry), Histon (fruit), Melton Mowbray (pork), all easily transportable byproducts. But an organized transport—good roads, good vehicles, co-operative development of production and collection, and the whole of this strip of the island Could grow enough vegetables for us all. Even with existing road facilities, there is hardly avillage on this belt that is more than a working day's steam' wagon journey from one or other of the seven densest 'centres of population." A diagrammatic view of England's seven groups of population, in which 75 to 80 per cent, of our people live. The solid curve indicates the approximate position of a belt of fertile garden land on which can be grown food for all the future provinces.