38.
The Municipal Buildings, Glasgow.
This is a crowd of workers, pouring out of a factory at the close of their work. Do you note the tall chimneys of the factory in the background? There are probably a hundred other factories in the neighbourhood. You may imagine the organisation that is needed to supply the wants of these great populations. Food must be gathered from the country districts and from distant parts of the world, and must be brought in daily to the crowded areas where millions of men live and little or no food is grown. And all the wants of the people must be attended to on a similar great scale. Here, for instance, is a hospital, in which the workers who chance to be injured in the pursuit of their daily duties are tended. Do you see the nurses moving about between the beds? This is a school where the children are taught. Every child is compelled by law to receive instruction. And this is a park such as have been provided for recreation in the great provincial towns—Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow, and others. Here, finally, we have the Town Hall in the centre of one of these towns, whence a million of people are governed, and where in these times even the generation of electricity for the supply of the factories is organized. Note the monuments erected to commemorate the services of those citizens, who either locally in the town, or in the Government in London, or in the parts of the Empire beyond the seas, have deserved well of people and King.
One thing more remains to be considered. We have seen something of the metropolis, something of the rural districts, the small country towns, the fishing ports, and the great industrial towns. But, in these days, the whole land of Britain is knit closely into a single community by the facts that the greater part of its food and raw material for manufacture must be distributed from the seaports, that modern means of communication have so reduced space within the islands that almost every village has a telegraph office, and that the extreme ends of the island are not more than 24 hours apart by express train. Let us look at a few aspects of these most recent developments.
39.
Corn Mill, exterior.
40.
Corn Mill, interior.
41.
Packing Biscuits at Reading.
42.
Locomotive Engine, Great Western Railway.
43.
Four-line Track with London and North Western Express.
44.
In a Travelling Post Office.
Here is a large corn mill, and here the interior of such a mill. The grain is lifted from the importing ship and carried on these straps, running on rollers, to the place where it is to be stored. And here is a scene of interest to all Britons who go to the remoter frontiers of the Empire. It represents the packing of biscuits in tin boxes for export. The food having been imported is carried into all the land by railways. The British railways are, of course, relatively short, but run through dense populations, and are probably the most efficient in the world. Here is a recent express engine capable of hauling a passenger train without stopping for 300 miles. Next we see such an express running on a four-line track and picking up water for its boiler from troughs laid between the rails. Time is very valuable in Britain. Here, as an instance, is the interior of a travelling post office, which runs on express trains. The letters are sorted on the road, and the mail bags thrown out and caught up at fixed points while the train runs.