The age-herald., 1899-06-11
THE NOTES OF A
 TRAVELLER, No. }


 even if half the stock be water" How many know that the London and North western railway pays dividends on capi- tai of $5S2, 100000? Every dollar of the faco value of those securities has been paid in cash. And it does not earn those divI- dends in a way that harasses the people. For instance, a passenger is carried from London to Glasgow, 3SO miles, in eight hours, cold lunch basket supplied for 63 cents; a sleeping car section (not berth) for S1.25, and only eight sections made up in the car. The secret of the prosperity of British railroads lies in the dense pop uation, immense passenger travel, short hauls and terminal charges on freight. l learned today of charge on iron ore of $2.30 for POS miles, while a Belgian railroad handles the same business 150 miles for 61 cents. The railroads in Alabama have helped it enormously, and will have to stand to it for these people are waking up
 Fancy cars weighing four and five tons that only carry a load of six to eight tons of coal, ore or pig ironl 40 per cent. Of the gross weight hauled being dead weight. But this huge railroad is building fifty ton cars experimentally, and English freight charges may be radically revised to help producers against American compe- tition.
 This is a cheap city for working men to live in. The railroad runs trains of thir- ty cars eight miles to Clydebank ship-yard, holds them all day and return at night for cents per man each way. The city Of Glasgow owns the horse cars and electric cars and charges cent for a mile or ? cents for all the way. Deep down below the city and the Clyde and the railroads run two concentrc tunnels side by side in a ring of eight miles round the city. Cars run every few minutes in each direction. moved by cables, and lighted by electric ity. Fare was at first 1 cent any distance but when girls for irritation, or men to hide out from duns, took to riding round in definitely it was changed to 1 cent for ono mile and cents for the course The horse cars have roof gardens for smokers and others who desire to attain a high station In life; and as there is a winding stairway at each end of the car, with polished brass hand rails, the top is accessible to ladies who freely ride there and so make folks look up to them. The electric cars are en- tered at the middle at a wasp waisted place, where a man wastes no time in dividing the sheep from the goats, send ing smokers forward and the others aft.
 Yesterday we were shown over an $SOOOOO r. M. c. A. building, used also by the Christian Institute and Young Mems club. Young men have facilities in thar building for reading, writing, eating, sleep ing, studying music, athletics, participatine in mission work, scripture study and in social pleasure. Glee club and smoking hnth i,,s
 chance to speak of Birmingham's wide awake interest in all these things.
 The city hall is large and stately struc- ture and 1t pleases the folks to think (and say) that the marble staircase is the finest Tn the world Evidently they do not know or the entrance to the congressional library In Washington. Secured on the outside is a heavy iron plate provided by the government showing in reliefz the exact standard measurements of one foot, two feet and three feet. AS we saw no carpenters testing thelr rules there we were compelled to be- heVe from observation that the one foot and two feet measures were to test the length of Glasgow girls feet, but the three foot standard must certainly be meant for the Manxmen.
 We have been to the oldest blast furnace plant in the district and seen four furnaces blown by one engine. This was the plant where Nelson first used hot blast and re- duced the consumption of coal from eight tons to five per ton of iron. At these works the furnace gas is washed and tar and sulphate of ammonia obtained from it.
 What beautiful coal they have! All in hard blocks with about 3 per cent. of ash, it burns in a grate for a whole day with out making ashes enough to fill a cigar box.
 Although it is still cold the rhododen- drons are coming out and the primroses. Cannot we find shade enough in our wood lands for this yellow beauty?
 From our observation tower on top of a horse car we see an individual, black and smutty as a miner. At half minute inter- vals he puts his hand on his ear and howls 'Koh' Query: Is this an abbrevia- tion for coal or for cold. We have the one laid on gratuitously from the local Jacobs, and need the other laid on grate- -uitously.
 Some cog has slipped in the weather of flea, for the sun has come out at last, and thaws us out, but the wind Is bleak and 1t is 56 degrees in the shade though June begins this week. Let us mingle with the masses and go like them for an outing. Through smoky suburbs and rainy Greenock with it's ship-yards, pass Paisley, famous for it's thrcad, we whirl by rail through a panorama of verdanGy, green pastures fecked with the coicr of the opening hawthorn blossoms-urtl we reach the point where the Clyde throws off It's dark canal appearance ana WlQenS out into an estuary five miles across Here the moving thousands transfer to fleet steamers run by the competing railroad companies and away we go past lovely Dunoon to Rothesay and the Kyles of Butte. The summer homes look very pret- ty nestlng among the trees at the edge of the water and above them rise the dark and threatening mountains unpurped as yet by tEe heather, but blazing here and there with masses of yellow gorse, whose beauty so overpowed Sinnaeus, the great botanist, when he first saw it.
 It is a red faced, sturdy, hustling crowd; big, broad shouldered, bearded men, and stiff looking women with big feet and heavy, clumsy looking dresses. The high land dress is conspicuously absent; once or twice per day one sees lady with tar tan dress on a "wee bit laddie" with bare knees and kilt. It is a strikingly hand some costume and we regret it's absence. There are no bagpipes, but there are or gans and monkeys and the Dago, like the poor we have with us always.
 bright warm Sunday. Saloons tight