It will be granted, however, that Mr. William L. Magden was right when he maintained that “no manufacturer about to commence business at the present day would fix upon London as a suitable position. He would choose rather a district in which land was cheap, and in which he could obtain cheap power for his machinery and transport for his goods. He should not in future be limited to the colliery districts or to the main lines of railway. Light railways serving as feeders to the main lines, and the supply of electrical energy over large areas from main power stations, could provide for both these requirements, giving the manufacturer ample assurance that his works could be run cheaply, and that the raw material and manufactured products could be efficiently handled. By such means electrical science is capable of opening up thousands of square miles in England for manufacturing purposes, the native population of which has been languishing under the chronic complaint of agricultural depression.” THE L.C.C.’S TRAMWAY SYSTEM Whether, as regards tramways, the L.C.C. will be the central authority recommended by the Royal Commissioners, time will show; but meanwhile it has already established its tramway system, which can be seen at work in our midst. In order to understand it the more easily, it should be assumed that all the lines, including those of the London United Tramways Company, are in the hands of the Council, that they are more or less linked together, that powers for new lines have been granted, and that electrical traction in some form has been adopted throughout. On studying a tramway map, one is struck by the fact that, starting from the central area of London, all the tram-lines meander towards the Council’s boundaries, where they will eventually no doubt join and interchange through traffic with the vast light railway or rural tramway systems of various companies in the direction of north and south, north-east, south-east, north-west, and south-west; but that “through” (or cross-country) communication from west to east, practically does not exist. In the north-west there are huge areas of brick and mortar as destitute of tram-lines as Central Australia, so that anyone living in the Regent’s Park districts has to “train” it eastward, or, if he be bent on “tramming” it, has to go by an inconvenient and awkward route to Hackney or Bow. Another notable feature of the map is that, although there are almost as many tramways on the south as on the north side of the river, there is no access from one to the other, the bridges being looked upon as sacred thoroughfares, along which tramcars--certainly not as unæsthetic as omnibuses, or waggons laden with vegetables--may not pass, although Westminster is the widest bridge in the world, 85 feet; Blackfriars, 80 feet; and Vauxhall and Lambeth will be equally wide, and broad enough to accommodate the trams without inconvenience.