The Coolidge examiner., 1938-02-10

I ~ ~ 4 ( Z II l. " II ~ ~ - -
/ " growth after the Great
Fire can compare with
tod a y S swift, significant
changes. More than 500, 900
new homes, besides square
miles of flats, have been built
in recent years to house peo-
pie taken from slums, crowd
ed sections, and from areas
cleared for parks, factories,
or new streets.
Historic Metropole hotel served
its last summer. Sad-faced walters
closed its doors forever. Meanwhile
the famous Adelphi terrace was
! torn down. even as Hotel Cecil melt
ed into scrap.
AS ancient city landmarks fade,
queer modernistic structures, bewil-
/ dering to Londoners returning after
long absence, rise in their place.
Look at that big cube of metal and
glistening black glass which holds
Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express
in Fleet street; or the classic stone
temple of the British Broadcasting
corporation.
Or at Sheu-Mex house on the
Strand. Bush house in Aldwych. and
all the monster new piles raised
here as official headquarters by
Canada, Australia, South Africa,
and other members of the British
Commonwealth whose show win
dows display the products Of these
far-away lands. They seem unreal,
out Of place, in this long static,
smoke-stained. weather-beaten old
town.
Rise Of new suburbs is no less
astonishing. Satellite" towns, dor
mitorieS Of $4,000 or more, spring
up where yesterday lay green fields
and truck gardens. Smoky forms
of new factories rim the horizon.
City Steadily Spreading Out.
Middlesex county, men say, will
soon be wholly urban. Steadily the
city unfolds down through Surrey.
Southeast towards the hop fields OF
Kent ribbon towns" sprawl beside
the highways; in Essex and Hert-
fordshire the scaffold poles of the
builder are like wands that coniure
new towns out of the ground"
Drawn by this boom. industry
tends to shift here from the less
prosperous north. Workers flock
along; each year London adds a
young city to its population, and
each day 100000 visitors pass
through its streets. In one week,
at Regent Palace hotel, 40 different
nationalities filed out the police
form. Yet you see few idle men.
Munition works run day and night:
10000, 900 gas masks are being
made-even every child is to have
one; flying field schools turn out
more and more pilots.
To learn how London, growing so
fast, handles its passengers, go to
London Transport" headquarters,
a system which hauls crowd each
year equal to twice all the tabulated
people on earth.
This greatest of all urban trans
port systems was formed under the
Passenger Transport act Of 1888.
Its board has issued more than half
a billion dollars worth of stock.
Listed on the exchange, it is an ex-
ample of the British public utility
sponsored by the government, yet
owned by private stockholders.
Buses and the Underground.
Londoners have a deep affection
for their buses. They grow up to
respect the conductor for his cour-
tesy, efficiency. good temper, and
wit Many visitors hold out hand
fuls of pennies, trusting the con-
ductor to pick out the right fare.
Here the JOY Of sightseeing ride
on bus never stales. London
played skillfuny on human nature
when she sent buses to France with
British troops in the World war.
These gay. red vehicles, or scar
let galleons," bore London's famil-
lar advertisements right up to the
front line.
There is no less romance under
ground than above. 1t is easy to
imagine the relationship between
the notorious of 1888 and the first
wheeled vehicles, made by shaping
logs. that rumbled along prehistoric
roads.
But the Underground. ~ triumph
of mechanization, is uncompromis-
ingly of today The automatic tick
et-vending and change-giving ma
chimes, the fast-mOving escalators,
the air-operated car doors, and the
automatic signaling which enables
forty eight-car trains an hour to
travel on some lines-these wonders