Features of London's Municipal Administration

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MANSION HOUSE AT THK LEFT, WHERE LORD MAYOR OF LONDON LIVES. CRACK OFFICIALS OF LONDON'S FIRE BRIUADii. (Copyright, 1902, by Frank O. Carpenter.) ' ONDON, England, Aug. 28. (Spe-- I. cers of the council receive from $4,000 to plied by the Thame and Lea rivers, but It clal Correspondence ot The Bee.) $10,000 per year. The clerk, engineer and already uses 205,000,000 gallons a day, and London la rapidly changing. architect each get $10,000; the assessor, it is estimated that the demand will soon ' I i - Jk The old city la oft Us $7,600, and the head of the street car de- be such as to Impair the navigation of putting old i I the ' clothes and buying new. Its partment, $5,000. Thames. Birmingham is getting Its water streets are being widened, many of the old Tiie officers of the city corporation are from Wales and so are other cities, and buildings have been torn down, and there i still better paid. The recorder has $20,000 London will in all probability have to do Is a fair possibility that the day of the per annum, the town clerk $17,000, or just likewise. The water works are now in the American skyscraper may come, for flats i as much as we pay Minister Choatc, and hands of private companies whose gross in- are going up In the fashionable section. the controller and remembrancer $10,000 come last year amounted to something like An army of workmen Is now busy on the each. In addition there are other salaries $10,000,000, and whose profits were over Strand. As I saw the street ten years ago - ranging from $11,000 down. $5,000,000. The London county council pro- It was so narrow that two omnibuses could ) s Tir --VT ;- - i Perhaps the best paid mayor of the whole poses to buy out these parties and run the hardly pass. Today 11 Is being changed Into i 7 fr- world Is the lord mayor of London. He has water works as. a city institution. a wide avenue, which shall run from Tra- a salary of $50,000 a year and his house This would undoubtedly be better for falgar Square to Holborn, not far from St. rent is free. He lives in the Mansion House London In a sanitary way and also for Its I'aul'a. Where the two streets come to- j.jSP'i across the way from the bank of London, Are department. This cltyi has ten fires gether about three acres ot buildings are to within a short distance of the Tower and every day the year through. - It has more be torn away, and this space will be leased rfr London bridge. I have met him at his than 3,600 flies a ear, and the Are brigade by new f ' palace during my stay, and he has room very out the city for business houses. L vt is a important part of the metropolis. In tearing down the Strand the owners nf .. and to spare. Tais now consists of 1,200 men, and it is the various properties have had to be ... The lord mayor does not control, how- equipped " with seventy steam engines, of bought out. In many places the buildings ever, any part ot the metropolis except which eight are river engines to protect the have been replaced. The Qalety theater, ." that known as the city or the part that shipping of the Thames. In most of the for Instance, had a new structure erected forms the chief commercial and money-makin- g towns of England the Are departments are for. It below and back of where the old center. It lies east ot the temple not as well organized as in our own, and theater stood, and the aaiue Is true ot other J and embrace the port, the docks, the cus- the machinery here is far behind the times. Institutions. This work is going on In the tom bouse, the bank, the exchange and the They very heart ot London on some of the most hundreds of great wholesale establishments, Have Better Halls. costly ground ot the world. The city L,K " banks and other corporations which make There is one thing, however, which I And fathers have had to plate the aoll with gold ...... London the financial center ot the world. much better hero than In the United States. to get It, and when the Improvement Is This is the city proper, and it is a city 1 refer to the postal and telegraph services. completed It will, It Is estimated, cost at of the day. It has a population of 300,000 These are under the general government, least $25,000,000. and through it every day more than a mil- and are excellently well managed. If I re- Invasion Above and Heiow. lion go in and out while it is light, but at member correctly our postal service Is run American night it is almost as deserted ss a city at a loss. The English postal service makes I have already written something about of the dead. Its thousands of capitalists a proAt of about $18,000,000 a year, and the American Invasion of underground Lon- and clerka then leave it and It is handed gives better malls at lower rates. You can don. I have told you of the Tuppenny Tube o.er to the watchmen and policemen, the send a letter weighing four ounce to any line, which Is now carrying millions from lord mayor. In fact, being about the only part of the united kingdom for a penny or one part of the city to another at 4 cents prominent citizen to remain all night 2 cents, and overweight costs a penny, with half per trip. It U a mighty iron tube through. or 1 cent for two ounces. You can send railroad tracks in it, running far below the parcels which weigh as more London's Dig Dock. much as eleven city under the streets. It cost than pounds for 6 cents for the first pound 13,000,000 construct, and the elec- I have spent much time about the a mile to docks and 2 cent for each additional pound, and put by Oeneral watching the great steamers load un- trical equipment was in the and the book post is about the same as ours. Electric company of New York. I have load goods for and from America and all The -- telegraphic service is great schemes which j parts of the world. I don't know one lower than in spoken ot Mr. Yerkes' ' '. where America. The cost of a dispatch to any approaching completion. can get a better idea of the immensity of are now fast part of Great Britain and 1 honeycomb the soli under the this city. You might live about Hyde Ireland is cent These will Park a word the lowest charge being 12 cents, tubes, and the Westing-hous- e for years and hardly know London was a city with similar and both adlress and signature being paid company will build the machinery. port. Still London is the greatest port of i for. In the general postofflce in East Other scheme are now proposed for the wor:d. It surpasses Liverpool and all London the there is a tele eranh rnnm wVtora American enterprise above ground. Amer- others. The whole river Thames from 600 men emnlnvpri are - ronnivin .nBUI .an goods are already sold In all parts here to the sea Is Its harbor, so MiB U RCUU ican that the lng dispatches, while in the basement of the Strand. The American flag and tho port is really sixty-nin- e mile long, and it there ranges are iour steam engines which supply the Union Jack are painted on many ot tho A LONDON POSTMAN. in width with the width of the pneumatic river. tubes by which the telegrams shop windows and American drugs, Amer- are forwarded Ameri- city within a few moments at 4 cents per than the revenues of many a state govern- Standing on for delivery to the various ican notions, American shoes and London bridge you see a part of the city. everywhere. Tho trip, and the shopping possibilities will be ment. The council arranges for the debt forest of masts, not only it- can tobacco are' to be had in the river I like the postal on corner of greatly Increased. I understand that both of the city, which now amounts to more self, but rising high savings bank system Weatinghouse building the above the great whole- which Is In use and Strand Is one of John Wanamaker and Slegel, Cooper A than $239,000,000. It steps little deeper Into sale structures bordering it. all over Great Britain, so Norfolk street the The docks that every little village of part ot London, and there Co. have been considering such an enter debt every year, and it enters upon all are mighty basins cut out of lands along ha its savings the finest this the bank. You can deposit money is now talk of an enormous American de- prise, but aa yet nothing has come to a sorts of public improvements, granting the bank, enormous vats of water covering wherever there is a postofflce and the savings partment store on the crescent-shape- d material head. franchises and permits for all kinds of un- acres surrounded by warehouses. St. Cath- banks are so well patronized they now area which is to be vacated by the Joining From what I have aald about London's dertakings. erine's docks have an area of twenty-thre- e that have more than $600,000,000 on of the Strand and Holborn. city improvements you will see that the It la hard for an American to realize the acres, the London docks and Mlllwall docks deposit. Such an government la something of an institu- powera a each cover 100 institution would be of the greatest good Bis; Department Store. here of such council. That of London acres, while the Surrey to American tion. Thla you know, the capital of the county music halls, tram- docks the United States, and if properly or- is. controls the the and the West Indian docka have each ganized I understand that an application has al- united kingdom, the seat of Parliament ways, the bridges, the waterworks and all 350 acres. would result in our holding every to county cent of our own ready been made the London and the residence of the king and royal public Improvements. I have told you how Even larger than these are the Royal national debt. space. The parties have American-Londo- council for thla family. It has all the chief offlc'als of the It has already spent millions In erecting Victoria and Albert docka, which are almost n Exposition. asked to lease for 999 years, and the Is it government, but its own admlniatration houses to rent to the poor, and how It Is three miles In length, and have an area of Dilring my stay council la considering the advisability of these. is dif- 500 in London I have been to separate and apart from It building several little municipal cities on acrea, and those ot Tilbury, further America's exposition giving them for nlnety-ntn- e years. now at the Crystal Palace. a lease ficult to understand it, for the town has the outskirts of London for that purpose. down the Thames, which are quite as large. It is not a If It does ao the Americans will have on mayors and a maze of you success either In the number of a doien or so other It dots, in fact, a wholesale and retail real If could put a big farm under water, its exhibitors nor of the most valuable locations in London each exercising some sort ot estate business. The tenement bu ldlngs and allow the number of Its vis- authorities, mighty warehouses to rise up itors. Indeed, you can and will erect a store which will be a control, most of these were swal- villi all bring In moderate rents and along the see more American but the borders and through the fields goods In a walk along surprise to the London shopkeepers. lowed up In the London county council. At city officials will collect them. The county and add hundreds ot Plcadilly or the steamers loading and Strand than you can at the Crystal Palace. At present there la no such thing as a present there is a county government, a council will probably hold the fee simple unloading at them, you might Many great department store In London. There a borough govern- hare some of the exhibitors complain that they city government and title to the ground alcng the Strand, and it idea of these docks. They are profitable have been Is a man named Whlteley at Bayswater borough government might ba ground brought here under false pre- ment. The will lease it at rents to builders. It institutions, and the London county council tenses, who calls himself "a universal provider." government, for the city is is the city is and It would have been much better called a ward estimated that will eventually planning to bring them under the control for them He In a small way and twenty-seve- n boroughs, or and for the reputation of the started business divided into receive something like $20,000,000 In rents of the city. They now belong to private United added to bis establishment until be has own mayor, its source, If States if there had been no exposi- wards, each of which has Its from this and it does as Birming- companies, but the city propose to buy tion at what the London people consider some- own a class ot officials. ham is doing, Is, provides out all. As far as I can see, the whole council and certain that that at the present owners and to manage the docks show thing great. Peter RoblLSon has a smaller the end of the lease the buildings by a consists of a fair display of Amor can London Connty Connell. revert to public board, under the direction of typewriters, establishment on Oxford street, but neither the city, London will become the richest Parliament. a few machinery exhibits, an Is the This will probably be done at American soda of these can compare with the mammoth The general government, however. corporation on earth. aome time in water fountain, a carprt comprising 13T mem- the future. sweeper or so department stores of New York and Chi- London county council, Illah Official Salaries. from Grand Rapids, a lawn cago. So far London has had no good bers, of whom nineteen are aldermen. Th's Water from Wales. mower from New York, a patent beer bot- have tle rapid transit system, and H may be that council practically governs London. It I looked somewhat Into the matter Another thing which the county washer from Philadelphia, a kodak or spends the money, and of salaries here in London. The county is planning council o and a half that has retarded the day of such stores. Axes the taxes and 3 the bringing of water for dozen spectacle sellers. The By royally, too. Last year its ex- council spends about $32,000,000 a year, and London spectacle seller have the new underground electric routes that right clear across England from the boxes of spctacli one will be able to go to any part of the penses amounted to tSO.000,000. or to mora much of this goes out for labor. The offi Welsh lakes. At present London is sup. (Continued on Seventh Pae.)