TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 11504, 10 February 1903, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

An Interesting, account His Majesty of the King's private life at at Sandringham is given Bandringham. "by special permission , ' in th* "Pall Mall Magazine" for December. He writer, Mr Ernest M. Jeesop, with pardonable «ntha■itsm, describes his Majesty as "the hard-est-working man in hie dominwn*." Tne King and the Queen each' breakfast alone «nd early. Affaire of State occupy the Xing'* attention after breakfast, aod when thaw are disposed of the' bwineee of hie Sandringham estate claims hk attention. His Majesty farms about 2000 acre* of to* estate, whWJi is 10,000 acre* in extent, and he* .'twfces'. the keenest personal interest in ever}* detail of management. He know* every face on the estate, and everyone's bmrln*M, says Mr Jeisop. Kb farm-hands are better paid, or more comfortably housed, than his; the stock Iβ of the best, and tne surrounding* era all that could be desired. It ii, from Mr Jessop'e account, quite a model form, thanks mainly to the personal supervision and control exercised by tne King in its Administration. The children of his Sandringham employees are edu-' cated on the estate, in a school maintained by bis Majeaty. For the workmen on the estate the King 'has established dubs, where one pint of beer per d*y only is supplied to any one person—no wine or spirit*. His Majesty's consideration for his employees was illustrated on the occasion i of .his Coronation, when one hundred and forty of the old servants of the estate were conveyed to Buckingham Palace by special train to see the procession. The. King is very fond of shooting, and -his shootingpartiee, which start at 10 *.m. and end at 4 p.m.,' are a feature of his life at Sandringhmm. He is not very partial to big drives, preferring to stcoU through the coverts with only a retriever and a couple of attendants. All the game shot on the •state is given away—to th* hospitals, to the King's personal friends, to the tenants, railway offioials, police, and the labourers. His Majesty's sporting proclivities extend from racehorses to racing pi§eon«,' of which he has sixty, and in the kennel* at SandrfogTinm are from sixty to seventy dog*, of widely different breed*.

Sir John Wolfe Barry, an cmiCongested aent engineer, has London, that the habitual\ congestion of traffic at Oheapside, the Strand, Piccadilly, and Tottenham Court road alone costs the community of London over two millions sterling every year. It will be recognieed, therefore, that'the ajr- | pointment of a Royal Commission to nuke enquiry into the street locomotion of London is b, step of no small importance, and one which lias been taken nose too soon. The Commission, of which Sir David Bar* bour Ins been appointed chairman, w<3l probably consider the widening «nd improvemeat of streets, the tramway System, underground railways, and 1 all existing and possible methods of transit in the metropolis. The tangle of London locomotion has been caused by the rapid growth of the city in recent years. Seventy years ago there was a population of only a million and a half. Now the County of London has over six million inhabitant*, outer London oae two miltone more, and in addition there «i large "floating population" from all parts of the world. London has, in fact, outgrown the methods of locomotion which answered requirements a generation or so ago, but the street*, for the most part, remain as narrow ac before, and the oxbmnistrative machinery has not been adapted to the changed conditions of transit. The underrailway estatiLiehed thirty years ago seemed to have solved <3*a transit problem successfully, but the relief has only proved a temporary one. The days of the underground steam railway are over. The opening of the deep level or tube railway— the 'Twopenny Tube"—in 1900 marked the commencement of the eta of electrio traction, and a number of new underground electric ralways have since been jMumed. This is. oae dktcuoa in which the congestion of

Lite eurf ac* tttJßo hay be to a large extent relieved. Mr Sidney Lew, dealing with the subject ia the M Nineteeat4i Century," , •uggeetc. that all the metropolitan trains and tamme should be pet Wow the attrface, and that above ground great boulevards 125 to ISO feet brood Aould be conetructed, down the centre of which a strip 40 feefc wide ehould be set apart for fart mechanioal tcaction. The improvement of London transit is mainly a question of cost. Fifty mCtioQS would go but part of tho way, and to incur this expenditure would double the total dtbt of London.

The fact that MancbesUr lias Business resolved to follow the example Colleges, of dimningham, referred to ia our lending colmnsts on Saturday, in the eafAblawhment of a faculty of commeroa at the City University, shows plainly that the advantages of a thorough, college training in busioess theory are becoming more and more appreciated in Great Britain. In America the old order gave place to the new much more readily. "There it became a tradition for men to enter shops and business houses at the bottom, end rise by steps to power, learning as they went- Bat tradftiaa baa hpd to giv« way to improvement, Tho heads of the leading oonoerns there now engage the graduates of the technical college*, vudb. as Cornell, before are through? their course. The great electrical houses are willing to take «x>y man who has dune well in the college olecJ trlcal faculties. Far two or three years - they then give-theso men hard, practical work, shifting them from 'branch to branch, and trying them in all ways. Then from them ore picked the veal heads of the concerns." The American railroads, which only five years ago had an undisguised contempt for college men, look confidently for their beet officers to-day to the universities, and the banks ore beginning ta do the some. Attached "to the University of Chicago Is a branch of commence and administration where training is given in banking, traneportatkm, trade and industry, end journalism. During ih& first half of the oourae, which takes four years altogether, the subject* taught are (he same as at ordinary colleges, except that, those of economics, languages, and! commercial geography n< ceive special attention. For the last two. yean the work is divided into four groups, of which the student selects one. "Heads of railroads, bankere, and credit egente of large (Btowe," according to a, writer ixt the London "Daily Mail/ , "a«J even the heads of gnat advertising concerns, com* and instruct the undergraduate on their methods." Business men and others on the oilier side of the Atiantb an waking up to the advantages of such training, if ithey are not already feeling ite results, and tbe question of a faculty of commerce for London is at present under consideration.