This reduction in price will have far-reaching effects. Motor transport
will receive a real stimulus. Small tradesmen all over the country who have been waiting for a slightly cheaper vehicle and rather cheaper petrol will now take the plunge and set up as van-owners. We wonder how many people have appreciated the quiet revolution that has been going on in the countryside by the multiplication of light motor vans ? The small tradesman has now a far wider range of action than ever before and his supplies are more various and fresher because they are continually arriving by motor vans and lorries. Finally, cheaper petrol will be a new argument, and perhaps the most potent of all, for the reduction of railway fares. Most long-distance trains now run half empty. People cannot afford such journeys. The certainty that cheaper petrol, and the intensified buying of motors which cheaper petrol means, will transfer more people from the railways to the roads will prove to the railway companies that they must do something to recapture their failing passengers rather sooner than they had contemplated.
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