THE IMPORTANCE OF SPEED TO COMMERCE. [TO THE EDITOR OF
THE "SPECTATOR.") Sin,—In your article (Spectator, October 13th) on the im- portance of speed to commerce you said nothing of the speed of our English goods trains, but the subject needs attention. A few instances, quite typical, will suffice to show this. On October 3rd a package of goods was sent to me from Shrews- bury addressed to a station about fifteen miles from Doncaster, on the Great Eastern and Great Northern joint line to London. It arrived on October 11th. On the same date it was sent on to Orford, where it arrived on October 22nd. A few days before a parcel of books sent to Oxford was eight days on the road. On Monday, October 22nd, a hamper of goods was despatched from Leeds; it arrived on the following Friday, having been four days in travelling about fifty miles. In each of these cases I have given the dates of actual de. spatch and arrival. Goods from London, I may add, are usually four or five days—sometimes more—on the way ; from Liverpool, five or six days. The Companies appear, too, to charge for time rather than for distance. Some time since I sent a friend at Egremont, in Cheshire, a sack of potatoes. They cost me eight shillings ; they were twelve days on the way, and the carriage was eight shillings and sixpence. My friend refused them. He said, very truly, that he could have got them from New York in less time for about half the
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