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

[Illustration: London the natural centre of the world's trade.]

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 thes