The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-01-14
FOG COSTS LONDON
 $2O,0OO,0OO AYEAR Some Wonderful Statistics oi
 Expense and Mortality
MORE FATAL THAN BATTLES
A Total of 15o,ooo,ooo Cubic Feet of Gas Burned in One Day-Alr Holds 300 Tons of
 Coal Dust.

London-Distress. dangers and fatalities of the last great fog fromf under whose dreadful pail London has just emerged, have set people counting the tremendous coast of the black plague, and have started anew the agitation for it's removal. Here are some of the astounding facts and figures that have been furnished to the daily press:
 A week of fog costs the railway com panies s1l0OO00O, and the cabmen of Lon don lost $5OO0 a day because of the visi- tatlon. The loss in trade to the shopkeep- CTS Is incalculable. but runs easily up into the millions
 In the matter of extra illuminants, 1t Is estimated that the excess of gas used on a foggy day would supply town of from 4O,OO0 to 5000 inhabitants for a whole year.
 On one day of gloom in the metropolis 15oOoO,OOO cubic feet of gas. costing over s1oO.0O0, represents an extra expenditure of $4OOOO. When to this sum the profits of the candle maker, the cost of the cleo tricity consumed and the value of the extra paraffin and petroleum burned is added, 1t can readily be ascertained that an ordinary clear day in November is worth $10,0O0 an hour in daylight alone to the metropolis.
 What absence of fog means to the metropolis In other respects can be gath cred from the fact that five days fog Is estimated to entail a loss in business to the Londoner of S. 3750,000.
 How Londons losses by foggy weather are augmented Is, by the way, ingenious l ly illustrated by a statement that shows that if on single morning 1,500000 people are late for business a quarter of an hour, the unpunctuality would amount In the aggregate to a loss of fortytwo and one half years work, at one shilling an hour. $9S, ,750
 1 The Hon. Rollo Russell, the great au- l thority on fogs, has estimated that in consequence of foul atmosphere London CTS are put to from $l5000,000 to $25,- 000.000 unnecessary expenditure annually, while In the winter months he calcu- lates that they enjoy just about one- quarter of the sunshine that people in the country revel in.
 The cause of this state of affairs, of course, is chiefly cue to the coal smoke of London. whose 600.0O0 houses and 14,- GOO factories, according to W. N. Shaw, pour fourth from their cnimneys 100000 i tons of smoke laden air, that carries with It 300 tons of coal in suspension. No won der that fogs invariably bring about a considerable rise in the death rate
 Magersfontein plunged a nation in grief. but the total casualtes-sixty- eight killed and 794 wounded-on the night of the attack were nothing like so severe as those resulting from great fogs. that of 1880 for instance, increasing the nor tality by 2994 in three weeks, or ninety two lives more than the number of pri- yates and non-commissioned officers killed in action during the first year of the South African war. fn November, 1901, one days fog sent up the death rate of London from 161 to 17.4 the number of lives lost owing to the fog being 112. while deaths from diseases Of the resplra- tory organs rose in London, as the re- suit of the same weeks fog from 196 to 445, the difference between the two figures, 249 being the roll of victims that fell before the frontal attack of the fog fiend