a public parcels and goods delivery
on cheap and sane lines in the place of our present complex, stupid,
confusing, untrustworthy, and fantastically costly chaos of post-office,
railways, and carriers, it is quite conceivable that Messrs. Omnium will
give place again to specialized shops.

It must always be remembered how timid, tentative, and dear the postal
and telephone services of even the most civilized countries still are,
and how inexorably the needs of revenue, public profit, and convenience
fight in these departments against the tradition of official leisure and
dignity. There is no reason now, except that the thing is not yet
properly organized, why a telephone call from any point in such a small
country as England to any other should cost much more than a postcard.
There is no reason now, save railway rivalries and retail
ideas--obstacles some able and active man is certain to sweep away
sooner or later--why the post-office should not deliver parcels anywhere
within a radius of a hundred miles in a few hours at a penny or less for
a pound and a little over,[19] put our newspapers in our letter-boxes
direct from the printing-office, and, in fact, hand in nearly every
constant need of the civilized household, except possibly butcher's
meat, coals, green-grocery, and drink. And since there is no reason, but
quite removable obstacles, to prevent this development of the
post-office, I imagine it will be doing all these things within the next
half-century. When it is, this particular centripetal pull, at any rate,
will have altogether ceased to operate.

A second important centripetal consideration at present is the
desirability of access to good schools and to the doctor. To leave the
great centres is either to abandon one's children, or to buy air for
them at the cost of educational disadvantages. But access, be it noted,
is another word for transit. It is doubtful if these two needs will so
much keep people close to the great city centres as draw them together
about secondary centres. New centres they may be--compare Hindhead, for
example--in many cases; but also, it may be, in many cases the more
healthy and picturesque of the existing small towns will develop a new
life. Already, in the case of the London area, such once practically
autonomous places as Guildford, Tunbridge Wells, and Godalming have
become economically the centres of lax suburbs, and the same fate may
very probably overtake, for example, Shre