THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1907. LONDON'S RIVALS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8356, 11 February 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1907. LONDON'S RIVALS.

Is ths supremacy of London as the largest city in the world likely to be threatened? According to American statisticians it is merely a question of time when New York will be the largest city. The assistant chief engineer of. the New York Telephone Company, whose duty it is to look ahead in order that the company may know how to provide for its coming needs, calculated that the, city, within a radius of eighteen' miles from the City Hall, will have a population of 9,000,000 in 1920. This calculation is partly based on the following figures of population: —IB7O, lv 880,000; 1880, 2,400,000; 1890, 3,278,000; 1900, '4,538,000. An officialooff f the Department of; Health'estimates that within the next thirty-four years, possibly sooner, the population of Greater New York will be three times what it is to-day, anci that in twenty years it will be doubled. The population of the greater city in 1905 was 4,014,034, and in 1910 it should have increased to 4,700,000. The natural and healthful growth at this ratio should give New York a population of more than 8,000,000 in £,1927, an<L-more than 12,000,000 in 1940. These figures are taken from the New York Sun, which does not'seem to consider the question of London increasing equally fast. The telephone engineer quoted above is good enough to express the opinion that in ip2o London will still have-a slight lead over New York. Then there will probably be disputes —as there are in New Zealand today—as to how much territory "a city is justified in including in its bound- | aries. Just as Auckland suggests the inclusion of Otahuhu in its confines, New York may claim Phila-

delphia. If that is done, London will doubtless claim Birmingham. How 7 ever, New York is not London's only rival. Herr Olumke, a noted statistician, declares that Berlin will, fifty years from now, be the largest city in the world. He calculates that its population will be nearly 14,000,000, and that it will 'have no seridus rival except New York. In a pamphlet he has written to set forth this theory Herr Olumke says that the population of Berlin is increasing faster than any other city except Buda Pest, Hungary. To-day Greater Berlin I contains more than 3,000, boo in--1 habitants.