The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-06-07
BIRDS VIEW OF
 CITY OF LONDON Utter Inability to Feed It. self Striking Feature LITTLE BRITISH BEEF London Eats More Foreign Meat Than Any City in the World-Grocery
 Side of Food Supply Most
 Complicated
LITTLE BRITISH BEEF
FACTS ABOUT LONDON

London covers 12o square miles There are Sso miles of sewers in Lon- don
 The London fire brigade is called out, on an average. 15 times day. Tn the county of London there are 9o6 railway bridges crossing over streets. London spends e15oo0 day on it's gas
 bill and uses 224, 175 GOO gallons of water. There are 657 miles of railway line in
 Greater London, 605 railway stations and over SO miles of underground railway. In the immmedate neghborhood of the
 Bank of England freehold land is worth
 f75 per square foot; in the Strand 1t
 is worth from e12 10 f20 a square foot; and in Bond street e35.
 London Is a city and a county, but 1t Is so immense and so diverse that it
 might almost be said to be a country. It
 is too big to be understood even by those who have lived in it all their lives, and the wonders of it's management are taken as matter of course, mainly because
 they seem too complex to .be taken in any other way, says. the London Satur- day Journal. We !1nd it easiest to think about London jpfwhat we call "com- prehensive waN because we do not com-
 prehend its<and althoug-in a general sense-1.We, regard the statement that "the WnoTe is greater than the part as very ,obvious truth, London as a whole seems less terrifyingly monstrous and meaning less than when we begin to think about the parts of which 1t is composed. A large number of people who live in Islng- ton are better acquainted with Brighton than with Battersea, and there are men and women in Highgate who have never
 seen Bermondsey. It takes longer to travel from Wood Green to Wandswortf than from Paddington to Oxford, and a vast number of Londoners who wander
 into the far corners of the kingdom never They live in land that is virtually un-
 known to them.
 Down at the Docks
 One of the most striking things about London is it's utter inability to feed itself Tn the matter of food it's very immensity is the cause of it's utter dependence. Ii supplies were cut off from without il would starve to death 3n a few weeks It Is the richest city in the world: il has palatial shops, thousands of stores and countless warehouses; but it pro duces practically nothing in the shape of foodstuff. It Is like a great baby that has to be fed by it's mother, the world and the produce of the world fills tht mouths of its seven and a half million inhabitants. By the rail, the river an6 the road all that we est and dring i. 1 brought to us and three-quarters of i all is conveyed in ships from abroad Un | til the beginning of the nineteenth centur, | London had no docks; today they cove an area of 22 miles and wheat from tn l United States, Russia Canada and tn Argentine is disgorged into their gran aries from the holds of ships like S, much sand. Many Londoners have neve
 seen the docks but two 1oaves out O every three that we eat are made iron
 the grain that comes to us through thos,
 docks. Most of the grain ships berth ir the Victoria docks, but since they are st
 necessary to our welfare they have tn,
 right to moor at any quay in the DOT
 of bondon-a privilege no other vessel possess.