[_Face p. 82_
]
For purposes of illustration, I will take British East Africa as an
example. A railway runs from Mombasa via Nairobi to the Great Lakes.
Forty miles on each side of this railway, generally speaking, is
commercially remunerative. This is the first belt I mentioned above, the
second two belts are productively a gamble for any but capitalist
pioneers, and the remainder of the country is but the playground of rich
colonists who can afford to speculate on likely railway extensions in
the future, or else of simple fools.
I will now suppose that a reliable roadless vehicle exists which can
transport across country five or ten tons of produce. What do we see? We
see the first belt extending from forty miles on each side of the
railway to a hundred miles, and the second two belts being pushed out,
in vastly improved circumstances, fifty to a hundred miles on each side
of the new central belt. In fact, we have more than doubled the central
belt and trebled the belts adjoining it, and, in doing so, have more
than doubled the commercial prosperity of the country.
What now is our next step in the evolution of economic movement? It is,
out of the wealth resulting, to extend from our main Mombasa-Nairobi
railway, metre gauge lines in herringbone fashion up to the confines of
the new central belt, and at the termini of these to build receiving
depôts. In place of metre gauge lines, huge roadless machines, carrying
and hauling from a hundred tons upwards, will in the end, I think, prove
more economical. Once these depôts have been established, the smaller
machines belonging to the farms and stations can bring produce to them
and dump it. Thus, by degrees, will the central railway be fed by a
prosperous area some four to five hundred miles in width.
[Illustration: