How London is Fed.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 390, 29 October 1903, Page 3

How London is Fed.

Everybody knows that London, capital of the Britisq Empire, is by very much the largest and most populous city in the world, but many fail to realise wfcat that starpendous fact implies. Nothing seems to check the growth of the gigantic metropolis on the banks of the Thames. During the height of the Boer War, when Englishmen were leaving their homes in thousands to fight in South Africa, London's streets and London's people continued to multiply as merrily as in piping times of peace. To assess the population of London at six millions, as is often done, is absurd. By including the vast and ever-growing suburbs, which closely lieiu it in on every side, and have become as much parts of London as a man's legs and arms are parts of his body, the figures come out nearly twice as large. ' It is a constant source, of astonishment where such a huge population, itself producing no food, finds sufficient to eat. . London opens its mouth in the morning, and when it closes it again at night it has engulfed as much food as all the inhabitants of this island continent consumes in five days. All the world is laid under contribution to feed London. But for the insatiable appetite of that city our frozen meat trade could not3sisfc. It might perhaps sp ,il the appetite of the good people at the other side of the world if they knew of the danger* attending that trade in this country. Let lis listen for a moment to what Mr J H Barnard, of 69 Ultimo Road, Ultimo, Sydney, has to tell us; he knows a good deal about this matter and his talk is interes'ing. " For a number of years,' says Mr Barnard, ' I worked at the wharves in Sydney. I was robust and hearty, and didn't know what it was to lose a day's employment through illness until one hot December, when I was engaged for a couple of days and nights in stowing frozen meat in the refrigerating chambers of a big ocean steamship. This work is very dangerous, and never a summer passes but it kills dozens of line, strapping fellows by pneu-. monia, or cripples them for life with rheumatism, unless they have the good fortune to know of beigel's Syrup. One very hot afternoon I was truokjng oases of general cargo, when I was suddenly called upon to take the place of a man who had become seriously ill in the refrigerating chambers of a boat then taking in a oargo of frozen meat. I was wet through with perspiration when I descended into the arctic tempera* ture of the hold. With short intervals fof meals I worked fifty hours, until ! all the meat cargo was aboard. For that feat 1 paid very dearly. After a brief spell of sleep I was awakened by a violent tit of coughing; my eyes were inilamed and I "was feverish and sore Then followed a long period of misery. These symptoms became worse; and others equally as bad were soon added to them. Nothing that I tried did me the least good, domestic remedies, various patent medicines, private arid hospital doctors, all failed to relieve roe. Although a young man (I am still under 36) my hair began to turn white, my appetite was gone and I lost three stone in Having read of some cures effected by Seigel's Syrup I decided to try it, though 1 with very little hope. But it soon changed me from a down, pairi-'racked invalid, into a strong, hearty man .again. The aches, night-sweats, cough, &c„ vanished, and I could eat and work as well as ever, though all the gold in Coolgardie wouldn't tempt me to enter a refrigerating chamber again." It is too much to hope that Science, which has made it possible to feed the people of one hemisphere out of the abundance of the other, may devise a method of doing it that shall take no tool of human ilife? .