HUB OF THE WORLD ALL ROADS LEAD TO LONDON

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 138, 7 December 1912, Page 12

HUB OF THE WORLD ALL ROADS LEAD TO LONDON

| SOME- STARTLING FIGURES. The romance of great cities depends to some extent on advantages of situation, says T.P.s Weekly. The Thames lines London's pockets. The attraction of the population to o great city demands extra pockets to line. London has one thing all its own. It is not only a place of manufacture, but of all manufactures. All trades, mechanical industries, textile industries, find a roost in London, till it is said "London has no staple industry" be' cause London has all sorts. The rate' able value of tho metropolis is nearly double the rateable value of Lancashire.! The bulk of its population is commercial, and is massed at the rate of 40.000 toj the square mile. The docks are the dump j ing ground of the drift population ofj several countries. Imports arrived at, them worth £565,019,000/ exports w&rth £329,816,000 departed in 1905/ London monopolises the Mint, and stamps the coinage for 40,000,000 people. And yet we ai-e gravely told that "very little actual gold is needed to carry out the multitudinous transactions of a trading people." We must not take this too jiterally. 1 Many a small country would Courit itself prosperous if its revenue equalled the gold coinage circulating in London only. But the bill-brokers and banks put gold in the shade by ' the^ magnitude' of their transactions in 131115' of exchange. The Americans say _ that 'the London Clearing t ; House handles seventy billion dollars' in cheques- 1 -" the real money of England. Coin is only odd change." These dollars are nigh on fourteen billion pounds. Every spring John Bull has about twenty billion pounds to reinvest in the miscellaneous enterprises of the world. Is it not prodigious? At the end of 1905 the United Kingdom had 22,84? miles of railway open. The railway companies carried a total of 1,199,000,000 passengers ; 461,159,000 tons of merchandise and minerals were conveyed. The capitalised value of the iron road system totalled £1,282.801,000, and half an hour with Bradshaw will tell how all roads lead to London. Country carriers, with hobble-de-hoy horses, trundle folks alone; the rural highway to catch the train foi' London. It is thei playground of the land as well as i its accumulating and distributing empotium. Commercial travellers compass land and sea to make a proselyte to London's trade. The congregating of the Throne, the Court, Parliament, and fashionablesociety in London is anothet source of~ wealth and cause of its distribution. Philanthropic societies, enough to handle over £7.000,000 a year, have their offices in London and disburse their funds thence. The, churches hold their great councils and . gatherings there, and thousands, of delegates-assemble annually, all adding something to London's wealth. The , first regular .settlement of foreign merchants on English soil was probably the London .Ho use, which dates from the time of .aSthelred the Unready. In all probability German merchants frequented the port "from 1000 *A. D." An old document says, "If a merchant thrived so that he fared thrice over the sea by his own means, then he was thenceforth of thaneright worthy." The numbers of foreign settlers would alone make a Continental city. In Hatton Garden, as an unspaiing hand describes it, " Shabby men, looking as though they had not ten shillings in the world, meet in shabby offices and taverns to deal in v«hle3 that run into millions sterling "yearly." Competition may come and go back whence it came; Lotidqn "continues to be ths world V tracfiifg ! ' v cenUe CbVoatile, trade is drawn to it by an irresistible magnet." Its annual trade is computed' at £40,800,000,000— millions "more than the entire manufacturing' output of the United States.". Prodigious! Was c'ver such> sight since men began to barter as is> seen" at the insurance offices of London, from Ljoyd'a downwards', with 'their i handsome' building's ' and " busy . offices,? Their turnover represents many, milliuns a year. Millions are the mere, commas in tho sentence, in London. Its bank deals with the national expenditure of about £789,000,000. London thinks in millions —^Sometimes of needs, sometimes of possessions. 'Ib it too big? &o i measure cat: be set to ,growth except the capacity to grow.