LONDON AND NEW YORK.

Evening Star, Issue 11779, 8 January 1903, Page 5

LONDON AND NEW YORK.

A COMPARISON. "Will the world's capital be London or New York? " asks a writer in the ' MoutreaHerald.' New Yorker* can now claim tlia f their city is the world' 3 ehief financial centre. It will soon, they say, displace Imndon as the premier city in commerce and population. That New York will become tho world's capital "for "high finance" is probable—indeed, it is fast "becoming so—tint London will for long retain as one of it? leading local industries the conversion of private businesses, mining claims, patents, etc., into joint stock companies. New York may soon become a greater port than Lcn don. It depends on whether we reform and modernise our docks. It depends, too, on whether America develops its foreign (race by lowering its tariff—making the American metropoHs the clearing-house and emporium of the Continent. But there is no evidence in sight that New York will, in the lifetime «f anyone living, equal London, in population. London i 3 in great part as much a now city as is Chicago. London Las more elements of permanent greatness than New York. Unlike New York, London does not dapend on its' comn*rce for its growth. Four-fifths of the population of London, as the census shows, are dependent not on industries, but on the continuance of London as one of the leading pcrts of the world and as the capital of tie Empire- London, besides being the world's market for wool, tea, sugar, coffee, and ont of the chief markets for wheat, the undisputed commercial capital a vast emporium, is the political capital of the Empire. It is the City to which all civil servants, soldiers ,naval men, statesmen who have served in the colonies and dependencies, turn in the days of their retirement. The class and their dependents form a vast population in themselves. London is the one social centre of the Kingdom and the Empire; the Citv to which all traders and merchants, whether in Manchester, Glasgow, India, Australia, or Africa, come to spend the evening of then: daya. So loos therefore as London re-

mains the lodeatone of the Empire it -will increase. Compare the growth, of Loudon and New York. New York City, chiefly Manhattan Island, has now a population of 1,850,093; the enlarged, city, or Greater New York, has a population of 3,432,202. The County of London, at the last census, had a population of 4,536,063; Greater London had <i population of 6,580,616. New York has only .maintained its position as the first-city in America by annexation. It .annexed Brooklyn—a city almost as hirge as itself, which had absorbed a number of other towns. All the towns* of Greater London are natural outgrowths of the parent city. London, in its outward march, picks up small hamlets and absorbs them. It turns old cities, which, if left alone, would have long since sunk into insignificance, into populous'towns. London, in fact, from the Bank to the limits of the police area, and far beyond, is one homogeneous body, one vast community of interests, each part of which :3 dependent on the other. New York does not enjoy such homogeneity. London is in great part a new city. In 1861 the population of the zone between the county boundary and the limit*, of Greater London was 418,873 ; in 1901 it had turned two millions. In the same period the suburbs of New York, including therein Brook lyn and the boroughs of Bronx, Richmond, and Queen's, increased from 316,220 to L,587,0C0. In London the increase in the thirty years was at tho rate, of 435 per cent.; in New York, at the rate of 339 per cent. If we add Jersey City, Uoboken, and other places in Now Jersey as outgrowths of New York, tho comparison is still in favor of London. Nor can New York show such mushroom suburbs as West Ham, Walthum stow, or East Ham. London has no competitors. It is New York, Boston, and Washington in one. Chicago will bo a very serious competitor to New York. It is 'n great city, which, like London, has grown by natural expansion, ft is the natural centre of the North American continent. As the North-west develops so will Chicago grow. If it succeeds in shifting tho financial capital from New York, and becomes mere oi a literary and publishing cemrc, it will be the American metropolis of thefuture There is no indication that the phenomenal growth of London's suburbs will Uarrcsted. The development of rapid -transit -tho revolution brought by electric railways, tramways, and motor ears—will oxte.nd the area of the mammoth city, but it will still be London.