I. THE TRADE FEATURES OF THE BRITISH ISLES
LONDON AS A FOOD CONSUMER
London is the greatest seat of trade and commerce in the world. Its commercial greatness is evidenced by its greatness of population. Its inhabitants number over 6,000,000. The houses in which this vast population lives, would, if placed end to end, make a continuous street that would stretch across all Europe and Asia. The mere effort of providing food for this vast population necessitates an enormous commerce. Half a million of beeves are required every year to supply its meat market; also 2,000,000 sheep and 8,000,000 fowls. To supply its fish market 400,000,000 pounds of fish are required, and 500,000,000 oysters. Grain, flour, fruit, butter, eggs, cheese, sugar, tea, and coffee, are brought to London daily in such quantities that the prices of these commodities all the world over are based upon what they will fetch in London. Whole nations and provinces and districts get their subsistence from industries that have for their end the supplying of some of this enormous food demand. Denmark, for example, owes its entire prosperity of recent years to its profitable manufacture of butter for the London market. Brittany and Normandy, in France, are almost wholly occupied in supplying that market with poultry and eggs. The islands of Jersey and Guernsey derive their principal wealth, not, as might be supposed, from the sale of milk and butter, but from the supplying of London with potatoes. Canada during the last six or eight years has built up with London an immense trade in cheese, a trade that exceeds in importance any other that Canada has, while even our own home States—Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, for example—have found new sources of wealth in catering to the London dairy trade. "Elgin" and "Ames" creamery butters are products well known to the London consumer.
LONDON THE COMMERCIAL CENTRE OF THE WORLD
What is the reason of London's wonderful prosperity? Already its population is one fifth the entire population of England and Wales, and it is increasing at the rate of about 20 per cent. per decade. Three hundred people are added to the number every day in the year, a rate of 110,000 inhabitants in the course of the year. It is now one half greater than the total population of all Ireland. London's Scotch population is almost as numerous as that of Edinburgh, while its Irish population is quite as numerous as that of Dublin. Every civilised country is represented among its people, and every civilised tongue is spoken among them. A sea of brick and mortar, even now fifteen miles long and ten miles broad, it is growing at the rate of a new house every hour of its existence. Its streets are already 28,000 miles in length, and these are spreading out so rapidly that every year many whole villages and townships are enmeshed by them. Every day 1,000,000 people enter London by railway, and at least 500,000 people have occupations in it in the daytime who reside beyond its limits at night. Fifty thousand people have occupations in it in the night-time who reside beyond its limits during the day. It is the largest importing centre in Great Britain, and the largest in the world, and its exports are exceeded only by Liverpool, and not always by Liverpool. It is also the centre of the world's financial business. For example, traders in the East Indies who ship cargoes of spices and other Eastern produce to America, draw in settlement on London rather than on New York, while traders in America who ship cargoes of cotton to Marseilles or Riga, draw in settlement on London rather than on Paris or St. Petersburg. What is it that thus makes London the chief seat of population in the world, the commercial metropolis of the world, the great financial clearing-house of the world?
LONDON THE CENTRE OF THE LAND SURFACE OF THE GLOBE
London stands as nearly as possible in the centre of the land surface of the globe. Its situation, therefore, eminently adapts it to be the great centre of the world's trade—the great distributing centre of the world's products. Its ships can go to the farthest parts of the earth, and, loading themselves with the natural products of these parts, can bring them to its docks without breaking bulk, deposit them there for assortment, and then take them away again to other parts of the earth, and do this more economically than the ships of almost any other port in the world. But a greater reason is to be found in the fact that for centuries the British people have pursued a definite policy of manufacture, trade, and commerce, and have had the good fortune to have had that policy interfered with in a less degree than any other nation in the world by commerce-destroying war, whether internal or external. And whenever Britain has been in external wars her navy has been able to protect her commercial interests. London, being the capital of the kingdom and its chief seat of trade, has naturally derived the principal benefit from these many years of peaceful industry and commerce. Then, again, London is favourably adapted to trade in respect to its own country. It is a seaport, sixty miles inland, and is connected by navigable canals with all the other chief manufacturing and commercial centres of the country. Its railway facilities, too, are so complete that there is not a manufacturing town in the whole island that is not within fifteen hours of freightage from it. Then, too, the peculiar configuration of the coast-line of Great Britain makes every point on the island within an hour or two of carriage from a seaport. Finally, all British seaports are in trade connection with London by a coasting service unequalled in the world for cheapness, completeness, and efficiency. In a word, London stands not only in the centre of the land surface of the globe, but also at the commercial centre of its own home territory—that is to say, within easy reach both by water and by land of all the trading and producing interests of a people that for centuries have been leaders in commercial and manufacturing industry and enterprise.