FEEDING MILLIONS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 205, 19 August 1908, Page 4

FEEDING MILLIONS

KOMANCE OF LONDON'S FOOD. (English paper). Never in tlie world's history before has there been a huge community ol between six and seven millions of people living crowded together upon a small area and entirely dependent for their food upon supplies from outside that area (says the London Daily Mail). London, which with its outer rings, and including also the enormous number of visitors now among us, has a present total of close on seven millions of inhabitants, produces nothing in th? way of foodstuffs itself. If it were possible for Loudon to be besieged as Paris in 1871, and cut oil' from free communication ivdth tllie outside world; starvation would begin to make its pains felt at once. Everything that London eats has to be brought into the Metropolis. Millions of people all over the world are engaged ill growing the grain, and raising the cattle, and catching lisli, and looking after the poultry, and tending the fruit and vegetables which we consume day by day. Yet most, of us never give a thought to the tremendously complicated business of getting it into our kitchens, and so on to our breakfast and dinner and luncheon tables.

We do not even know, most of us, that the lluur lor our hot rolls at breakfast was made from corn which last year made golden the rich prairies of Western Canada; and the milk and cream came up yesterday from Somerset; that the rolled oats for our porridge were imported from the United States. The bacon is Dutch, the eggs Danish, the butler Xornnui. The lisli were caught in the North Sea. The coll'ee ripened, in un Indian plantation. The oranges l'or the marmalade grew under the burning snu of Spain.

Sometimes as you drive home late from cupping after Iho phiy you have seen ill Piccadilly or along Kensington (.lore huge carls, towering high with their burden of baskets, pacing slowly, their drivers probably snoring, toward* town. You sleepily recognise these for market-gardeners' carts, laden with cabbages and potatoes, spinach, strawberries, or salad. But have you ever seen with yuur mind's eye their real significance? if you told your driver to turn the horses' heads and to go to Covent Oarden, you would find it already busy at 3 a.m. The carts you saw are coming in one after another, aud their drivers, still hair asleep, are getting down 10 put on the horses 5 nose-bags. Ihit these are only a small proportion of London'* daily requirements. Most of the produce now comes by train. The market gardens around London have long ceased to be able to supply a tenth part ol the needs of the seven millions.

Of tlii' amount of produce which passes through Covent ( jardcii then; tire, unfortunately, no records kept. The market is the property o£ the Duke of Bedford, and although the London County Council have asked several times for particulars, none eau he supplied. But it has been calculated that London eats between two and three thousand tons of potatoes a day, three quarters of a million cabbages, and in the season ten thousand pecks of peas and beans. As to the quantity of milk which London drinks, 110 one will risk giving even flu estiinati. All the railways have thousands of milk cans. Most of them run special milk trains, But there is no central market for milk. It is consigned direct to the retailers; their carts meet the cans at the stations, and take it straight awav to the shops, A quarter of a million gallons at least must be poured daily down London's immeasurable throat.

Milk is handled all day long, hut bread, which must he equally fresh, ,s a dark-hour trade. Through the uig'it ill thousands of bakehouses, some vast and mechanical, others small and worked entirely by hand, London's bread is kneaded and moulded and baked. What would you guess the daily output of loaves to lie? Between three and four millions is a big baker's calculation. This is probably rather below the mark.