The need for a system to save labour, time, etc., such as yours, is evident every day, and the need grows.

The receipts of Railway Companies have increased enormously, but have the dividends kept pace with them?

The delays to traffic in transit, mostly through congestion, are very serious (and do not seem to improve), especially to the business houses, and anything that will put these delays on one side is certainly deserving of every consideration and trial— siding accommodation will in the future be a much greater hardship than at present, and now the Railway Companies must be hard-pressed in large cities to find sufficient stabling for vehicles-rates, never low, will certainly go up, and the whole outlook is certainly one which Managers of Railway Companies cannot view with equanimity, and, as I said before, your system should be their salvation.

I must say I went to your Works in Battersea, very sceptical, but I came away in an entirely different frame of mind, and as a practical man of over thirty years' experience in the carrying trade in this country and the colonies, I have no doubt a very great saving would be made, if only in labour, by adopting some such system as yours; and as yours is fully protected, yours is the only one at present to the fore.

The great difficulty in getting your ideas taken up must, and will necessarily be, the long and uphill job owing to the hide-bound ideas and methods of Railway Companies. George Stephenson found that out, but he got there, and I sincerely trust you will do the same.

What struck me most was the distribution of the goods, and I think your system is the acme of mechanical skill in the handling of goods.

I wish you every success, and am,

Dear Sir,

Yours faithfully,

(Sd.) E. H. FARR

(Late L. & N.W. Ry. and other Companies).

A. W. GATTIE, Esq.

In considering any scheme it is always of the greatest advantage to take stock of all possible objections, and it will be well to examine the technical reasons for

opposing the obvious advantages to be derived by the entire community from this great reform.

To begin with, it has been asked whether the machinery will get out of order.

The answer is: "Yes, every day."

It will not matter, however, for it will never stop working.

The conveyor, crane, or shuttle, as the case may be, will simply be removed from action and replaced by a spare unit lowered from the workshop.

The whole mechanical system of the Clearing House is based on the use of interchangeable units.

It may, however, be stated that the most delicate part of the machinery, viz., the control gear, has now been in existence for two years. It has been installed in extremely damp workshops, and has been exposed to the most onerous tests by experts. No breakdown has ever occurred, and the instruments are in as good order as when they left the makers' hands. No repairs have been necessary.

Speaking of the heavy machinery, this has been exposed to very trying conditions. In the Clearing House the truckers would travel at a uniform speed, and in the same direction, but the trial machines have, for lack of space, been called upon to run up and down a straight track in the workshop, automatically to stop and to reverse themselves. So much for the objection that the sorting machinery will break down.

It has been put forward that the container system would lead to light loading. On the contrary it would prevent it.

For the benefit of the reader it may be as well to explain that light loading means that a truck is carrying far below its capacity.

In the container system, such a ridiculous waste of space as is shown in the accompanying picture would be obviated.

An example of light loading which leads to very great loss of space and money. This loss would be reduced to a minimum under Clearing House conditions.

gives a very much greater degree of fluidity to traffic. The detention of vehicles, both on the road and the rail, is mainly at depots where a load is changed from one vehicle to another.

It borders on the absurd to contend that seventyfour goods stations, scattered all over London, could at each of them produce so highly concentrated a load for any particular destination as would inevitably be concentrated at the Clearing House.

It is mathematically true that at all times, and any time of the day or night, the Clearing House could assemble seventy-four times as much goods for any given destination as the average amount assembled by any one of the seventy-four goods stations.

It is true that a container, being common to the road and rail vehicle, cannot conveniently carry so much as a railway wagon.

This would, to a certain extent, be a valid objection, if the goods wagon could under the present system carry anything like its full load. On rare occasions it does carry its full load, but on the average it is

1

impossible it should do so, and as a matter of fact its average load is seventeen cwt., as proved by analysis of Board of Trade returns.

Where containers have been used by railways, the efficiency of the wagons has been multiplied eighty-six times.

The tendency of the Clearing House will be to provide full loads every time. The traffic will, therefore, only need a fraction of the number of wagons now used.

The further objection has been raised that the Goods Clearing House is necessarily in the nature of an experiment. This is not the case. It would be experimental in no direction whatsoever. Considered as a Principle, it proposes to apply effectively that which has been amply proved in the case of the Bankers' Clearing House.

The Bankers' Clearing House was no invention of the bankers; it was bitterly opposed, actually vetoed, and condemned by them.

This is the tradition in the Bank of England as to its genesis.

An obscure and convivial clerk in a Lombard Street bank was wont, as was the custom, to set forth every morning on a series of visits to the other City banks. He carried with him a cargo of cheques for distribution. At each bank visited he presented the bundle of cheques drawn on that bank.

Having left the bundles of cheques at from thirty to forty banks, he started his return journey, and, making a second visit at each bank, would collect payment for each bundle of cheques in the shape of a draft on the Bank of England.

This convivial creature was in the habit of fortifying himself for this journey by visiting the Bay Tree, one of the famous old City taverns, now rebuilt. Here, for it must have happened in this way, he would

1 See page 28.

exchange glasses with another of these clerks. Reform was far from their minds, and there is therefore little doubt that the inspiration of likewise exchanging cheques must have been more or less a matter of accident.

At any rate, the seed of the great idea sprang from a convivial moment. It grew and spread even like a bay tree, and the Bay Tree was the first Bankers' Clearing House.

Much unwritten history attaches, no doubt, to the

matter.

How it grew, and became the only possible way of doing the constantly increasing amount of work-how officialism found out this secret,' agreeable, and improved method-how it indignantly put a stop to it and had to revert to it-would no doubt be a long story. The upshot of the story was, however, that the Bankers' Clearing House became a monumental fact in the history of our country's commerce, and that somebody got a peerage, but it was not one of the boon companions of the Bay Tree Tavern.

It is thus seen that the principle of the Bankers' Clearing House has ceased to be an experiment. An experiment is that which tests a theory.

This theory has been tested.

The fact that, in one case, tons of cheques are collected, sorted, and redistributed, and that in the other case tons of goods are collected, sorted, and redistributed, involves a difference in the size of the items handled; it does not destroy the analogy. The principle remains the same.

Granted that pieces of paper can be sorted by hand, and goods in bulk cannot be sorted by hand, this throws on the author of the Goods Clearing House the obligation of providing means to sort this bulk. This is precisely what has been done. It is therefore no longer an experiment. It is all designed on principles which do not admit of doubt.