The handling of a cheque requires certain manual dexterity. The handling of a ton of goods will require far less human effort, and far less dexterity, as, in the latter case, all that will be needed is the pushing of one or more electric buttons to set the necessary machinery in motion.

As an illustration of this, it may be pointed out that the effort of releasing the steam power from a heavy locomotive drawing 1,000 tons is not more than the effort on the part of the engine driver in releasing the steam power of a light locomotive drawing 100 tons.

The idea of the tubes which are to link up the Goods Clearing House with the railways would appear to have startled some railway officials to whom the scheme has been submitted. Vague, quite vague, objections have been raised. As a matter of fact the tubes will be by no means the most expensive item, nor will they be at all difficult to construct. The whole of the land has already been penetrated by a variety of tubes, and by the Metropolitan Railway. The gradients are easy, and there is no curve of less than 700 feet radius. Out of a capital expenditure of £14,000,000 Mr. Edgar Harper puts the cost of tubes at £855,000; but it may be put in round figures at £1,000,000, especially as emergency tubes have been added in order to silence all objections and captious

criticism.

It has been said that London would starve if a railway accident were to occur blocking the tubes approaching the Clearing House. As there are ten of these tubes, all independent of each other, this objection may be dismissed as wildly impossible; and it may be pointed out that the Clearing House would have its highly disciplined fleet of motor-cars at its disposal, even if it were possible for ten independent railway accidents to occur simultaneously. This objection seems frivolous.

The following quotation is from a letter received in answer to the request that the writer, a London Goods

Manager, would formulate some definite objection to the Clearing House.

This gentleman wrote:

"I would ask you to look at the depots in the district adjoining the Battersea Depot, viz., Wandsworth Road, Falcon Lane, and Chelsea. I cannot think it is seriously put forward that all traffic dealt with at these depots should be taken out of its course, into a place near Smithfield, and thence carted for miles along the street, especially bearing in mind that the bulk of the traffic never touches London until it reaches the depots."

The depots in question had been very carefully examined, and were the painful object-lessons from which the present scheme has been evolved.

It is necessary to contradict the writer of this letter, and to say that goods cannot reach these depots without going through London.

The goods, however, would not be taken out of their economic course, which would be through the Clearing House.

In answer to the second part, it is sufficient to say that it is very seriously put forward that goods should not go to Wandsworth Road, Falcon Lane, and Chelsea." These depots should in the name of common sense and economy be scrapped.

And for this reason: they are part and parcel of the shunting system. It is impossible to congregate goods into these yards without shunting, and very often a great deal of shunting for days together.

The reader may be left to judge whether goods for Chelsea arriving straight from York into the Goods Clearing House, and being transferred in a few minutes to a lorry, are not likely to arrive quicker, and in a better condition, at their destination, than if they had been shunted round London for hours, days, or perhaps weeks.

Tabulation will show clearly the overwhelming advantage of the Clearing House System.

January 1st

Goods arrive at King's Cross at noon

The train is split up and shunted. A pilot trip to Battersea
will leave King's Cross at (say)

(Or some indefinite time the next day or the day after-
wards, and would probably not have arrived at Batter-
sea until the evening of the next day).

On the following day, the 3rd of January, the goods might
be carted to their destination, arriving at (say)

Time occupied, forty-eight hours.

January 1st

Goods arrive at King's Cross at noon

Leave for Clearing House at

Arrive Clearing House

Unloaded into lorry

12.0 A.M.

6.0 P.M.

12.0 A.M.

Arrive at destination at Battersea, 4 miles from Clearing
House

Time occupied, one hour.

12.20 A.M.

I.O P.M.

As a matter of fact, the public will regard the forty-eight hours estimated by the author as a generous concession to railways, but the comparison is stupendous enough.

It may be further pointed out that in the first place the journey from York to London would be accelerated, by the relief to the congestion now caused by the use of unnecessary wagons.

It must be remembered that, with the organisation of cartage, this extra work will be done with 20 per cent. of the number of vans now used. This London Goods Manager writes as if the existence of these depots eliminated cartage. It does not. The further journey by rail from King's Cross to Wandsworth would not obviate the carting necessary to take the load from Wandsworth Road to its destination. At Wandsworth Road the archaic system of handling, which is the main factor of expense, would and must persist. What the writer apparently means is, that the

difference in distance between carting goods to a destination in Wandsworth from the Wandsworth Road depot, and the carting of the same goods from the Clearing House, is a set-off against the vast expense of the goods yards and the shunting system.

There are other conditions which render the objection unsound.

One point, however, will demonstrate this. The controlling factor is time; wages and wear and tear go on, though work is at a standstill. The vans at Battersea, and the other stations mentioned, will normally wait for hours before getting a load, which even then may not be a full load, and they will probably make the return journey empty.

The Clearing House lorry, on the contrary, will normally leave the Clearing House with a full load and return with a full load, and will be detained nowhere on its journey. It is conceivable that a Clearing House lorry will deliver goods twice or three times at the imaginary address in Battersea while the handtruck laden van at the Battersea depot is making one journey, or less than one, although that journey may be a mile or two shorter.

But the argument of this gentleman is decisively destroyed by the following fact:

It is estimated by Mr. Edgar Harper that onetwentieth of the vans now employed will be able to do the cartage of London. It is therefore a matter of simple arithmetic to prove that the cartage work of this Battersea depot will be done from the Clearing House at one-twentieth of the cost and in onetwentieth of the time.

Even if goods for the same destination arrived from the south of England, and passed through Battersea, it would be incomparably cheaper and quicker to take them on to the Clearing House, unload, sort, and reload them on to a lorry, and deliver them in Battersea.

It is, therefore, more clear than ever that, so far from seventy-four goods stations assisting London's cartage, they are an enormous hindrance.

It has been urged that it is undesirable to conduct the whole of the goods traffic of the London district under one roof.

There is very little in this objection. The size of the Clearing House, the materials of which it is composed, and the more than adequate provision against fire, will render anything more than a small local conflagration an impossibility.

It would be easier to burn down London than to burn down the Goods Clearing House.

The Atlas Insurance Company has stated that the provision made will remove all fear of London being starved by the burning of the Goods Clearing House.

In case of air raids it would be wise for as many people as possible to take shelter in the Clearing House. Its bomb-proof roof would make it the only absolutely safe place in London.

With regard to accidents, it is probable that nowhere in the world will machinery lead to so few casualties. He will have to be a very ingenious workman to get hurt in the Clearing House. On the railway platforms, below-the only possible places where containers might have been lowered on to the heads of the portersthis has been rendered impossible. Each railway platform has a steel overhead guard. In addition, it will be impossible to fall on the rail beneath, as the construction has involved a taffrail three feet high at the edges of the platform, in which counter-sunk electric buttons are placed, so that the workman can signal to either end of the train that his section of the work is complete, and that, as far as he is concerned, the guard can carry on.

A few words as to the economic objections that have been raised.