Daily quote by Rail transport

• Before the railroad... you simply could not transport agricultural goods more than one hundred miles by land. By that mile marker, the horses or oxen would have eaten as much as they could pull. Either you found a navigable water course... or you were stuck in bare self-sufficiency for all of your staples. ...[O]verwhelmingly, what you wore, ate, and used to pass your hours was made within your local township, or dearly bought.
  • J. Bradford DeLong, Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century (2022)