SHAVING SECONDS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9992, 12 March 1910, Page 4

SHAVING SECONDS.

It is a healthy sigu of the times that Londoners should hotly resent any suggestion that they are slow-going, leisurely, and even lethargic in their business methods when compared with the traders of Liverpool, - Manchescer, and other provincial cities. Qomprehensive changes of this nature reflecting upon most of the commoner activities of metropolitan daily commercial life were made recently by a Liverpool critic. : These were promptly refuted, the answers returned serving to indicate . that modern London has cultivate! 4 the hustling habit with great sue cess. Among those implicated were the underground railway people, wh were accused of pottering. As i matter of fact, the principal occupation of the traffic adminstration is I "shaving seconds." Stops of on'h | fifteen seconds are allowed at tin ! different stations, and the heads of I several departments were engagec recently upon the problem how to clif a second off the stop on the Piccadillj tube. The assertion that it takes forty minutes to serve a simple chop in a London restaurant was combated just as effectively. A case was cited in which two gentlemen drove up to a restaurant in a taxi-cab, and, leaving the vehicle eating up pence outside the door, with a debit of Is 4d registered on the dial against them, they partook of a satisfying [ lunch consisting of cold consomme, oysters, beef sandwiches, v al and ham pie, and claret cup. They returned to the street to find that the taximeter still registered la 4d, though the mechanism had been running all j the time They had been away just' two and a half minutes Although I what was lost to the taxi-cab would probably be paid for in dyspeptic troubles, the incident goes to show that even America has something to learn from li mdon in the matter of quick lunching. Lonron business men were shown to be readily and prompt-

ly accessible to clients; "crowds lounging Jistlessly along the streets, i stopping' every now and then to' ruminate," were proved to have no existence in the capital; the great hotels prided themselves upon the fact that within two minutes of election results being declared in provincial constituencies all over the country, each guest, whether in a public or private apartment, was furnished with a leaflet giving the lull and exact returns; and the fortyminute chop was demcnstra ted to be a figment of fancy. London has undergone a remarkable speeding up in all departments of enterprise during late years, and although many uf the noisier and more objectionable elements of Yankee hustle find no part in the arrangement of matters there is no room for fear that the Empire's centre is not keeping thooughly abeast with the modern demands for the more expeditious and more effective despatch of business.