crane, the incoming load would be hoisted in its container from the Clearing House lorry on to the warehouse floor, and the outgoing load could then be hoisted from the warehouse on to the lorry, to be

FIG. 17.-Diagram showing 288 sections. Five thousand Clearing House cars would be employed, 12 to each section; 3,456 to work radially, the remaining 1,544 on cross-section work, thus reducing the 100,000 vehicles now on London streets by 95 per cent., and the vehicle miles by 50 per cent.

taken for distribution and despatch to the Clearing House. It will be noticed that the lorry would be carrying a full load both ways over the entire distance. Containers and sub-containers will be of various sizes.

Perhaps it will help the reader to realise the scope of this reform by asking him to visualise the extravagance of employing 800 firms of post-offices to deliver the morning mail at the Bank of England, each postman carrying one or two letters.

This is precisely what is going on in the commercial world with regard to goods cartage. These are precisely "the excellent arrangements" with which Sir Herbert Jekyll is so profoundly satisfied, and which he claims should be allowed to expand in those new, widened streets which will cost hundreds of unremunerative millions of money to the ratepayers.

It is to the reform of this preposterous, wasteful, and childish system that railway managers are so bitterly opposed, an opposition in which they are supported and encouraged by the complacent officials

of the Board of Trade.

It is not unusual to see as many as forty to fifty carts standing at the back of the premises of large traders, such as Messrs. John Barker and Co., Ltd. Ninety per cent. of these carts are superfluous, and only rendered necessary by existing conditions.

The single-horse vans would cost 17s. a day, or £5 2s. per week. Taking fifty as the number used, this means an outlay of £225 a week, or over £11,000 a year for one firm. By eliminating 90 per cent. of these wagons there would be a saving of 202 10s. a week, or roughly £10,000 a year.

These figures will no doubt commend themselves to such excellent business men as Mr. Gordon Selfridge, and others responsible for the conduct of vast trading establishments such as Harrods, Whiteleys, John Barker, Lipton, J. Lyons, Peter Robinson, John Lewis & Co., etc., etc.

All this work could easily be handled much more economically, and much more expeditiously, through the Clearing House.

The justice of this claim may not, perhaps, be

immediately apparent. It is necessary, therefore, to point out that, instead of the van waiting outside the premises while it is being slowly laden with selected goods for one locality, and whilst other vans are similarly waiting, loaded for other localities, one load or perhaps two loads of unselected and unsorted goods would be despatched without any delay to the Clearing House. Here each item of the miscellaneous contents of the lorry or lorries would be rapidly sorted into various lorries, or railway trains, as required, en route for its proper destination.

The sorting, as has been shown, would be done by machinery, and at a speed unthinkable and impossible to any private firm.

There are occasions on which it would be economical for the trader to deliver his load direct to the consignee. It is not advocated under such circumstances that he should send the goods to the Clearing House. The trader would be under no compulsion, and would consequently never send goods to the Clearing House unless there were sound reasons for doing so. There could, however, be no conceivable occasion on which it would not be more economical to use the Clearing House lorry.

In most cases the Clearing House method would make the best time. An example will make this more

clear.

Forty vans wait outside Barker's for an hour and a half to two hours, say from 8.30 a.m. to 10 a.m., when they depart on their journeys of delivery.

By Clearing House methods these vehicles would have started at intervals of a few minutes of each other.

The first two would start, say, at 8.40 a.m., and the remainder in couples at intervals of six minutes, each with a full load.

The first couple would arrive at the Clearing House at 9 a.m. and these goods would leave the Clearing

House for delivery at 9.30 a.m., or half an hour earlier than they would leave Barker's; thus, some of the goods would arrive earlier than they now start, and most of them would make better time than at present. In the matter of despatch by rail, goods despatched in the morning for places like Brighton would reach there by noon. They would arrive at the Clearing House, and be loaded on to the first train leaving.

A railway official, at a debate on the Goods Clearing House scheme, asked the question whether it was proposed to despatch from the Clearing House goods which had arrived there the previous day?

The question was asked in perfect good faith, and shows how ingrained in the mind of the railwayman is the false idea of the necessity for delay. The answer to the question is that the goods would leave the Clearing House by the earliest train available.

It is quite clear that the train service at the Clearing House would be much more frequent than at any of the seventy-four existing goods stations of London.

There would be no delay at the Clearing House and no shunting outside it within its sphere of influence.

To revert to the question of cartage:

The great wholesale drapers are considerable sufferers by the present methods. In one of these establishments the whole of the vast basement is devoted to sorting. Room No. I is set apart for a certain carrier, room No. 2 to another, room No. 3 to goods for delivery by the firm's own vans. Thus we have a number of rooms, or portions of rooms, where goods are grouped awaiting collection by the railway companies. These goods are accumulated as the day proceeds. Towards the end of the day an army an army of empty vans congregates outside in the street, and each "waits his turn,' it is called.

as

Eventually, some carts go away full, some halfempty, and some with half a dozen parcels or less. Concerning an immediate neighbour of this firm, also a wholesale draper, the district goods manager of one of the railways in London states that their pairhorse delivery vans frequently wait for three hours in the morning outside this warehouse, in the public street, blocking up the traffic, "waiting their turn to go in.

That is the present "system."

By the adoption of the Clearing House methods there would be no occasion for a firm to devote an enormous basement to the sorting out and bottling up of quantities of goods. A Clearing House lorry could bring loads of goods to this firm from the Clearing House, on their arrival from the west or the north, or other parts of the country, as the case might be; and having delivered them the Clearing House lorry could collect any goods which might be ready for despatch. This double operation, with the aid of a suitable crane, could be accomplished in about four minutes. A detachable "container," capable of holding three tons, would be hoisted from the vehicle to the building, and another container, loaded with miscellaneous goods for despatch to various destinations, would be hoisted out of the building on to the vehicle, which would then return to the Clearing House. If necessary, a Clearing House official could be permanently posted inside the building to receive, sign for, and load up the deposited "container."

Many economies would result from the adoption of this principle. To begin with, the draper would save all the time, space, and labour now devoted to sorting out his goods for despatch, as they would all go to the Clearing House. This is economy no. I.

Next, there would be saved the time and energies of a dozen carmen who now block the street, while