entioned
as affording a demonstration of provincial municipal enterprise, under
more restricted conditions. On its vegetable market it makes a _profit
of $1,000_, and on its butter market _a profit of $1,500_. The
population of the city is only 25,000. Another midland city,
WOLVERHAMPTON, makes a _profit of nearly $20,000_.

[Illustration: BILLINGSGATE FISH MARKET, LONDON

The Thames Side of the Market, Showing the Steam Carriers Unloading
their Cargoes Direct into the Sale Room.]

LIVERPOOL, the great northern port on the Mersey, has spent $1,242,534
on six municipal markets. The only market to lose money is the cattle
market, which shows a deficit of $8,000. Liverpool has a cold storage
capacity for 2,176,000 carcases. On the whole municipal market
enterprise, in this city of 700,000 people, there is an average annual
_profit of $80,000_.

MANCHESTER serves not only its own area but surrounding industrial
centers, with a total population of nearly 8,000,000. There are twelve
markets and four slaughterhouses. Since 1868 the city has benefited by
their administration to the extent of _$3,250,000 profit_.

Next to that of London, the fish market here is the largest in England.
Its annual profit is well over $10,000, in addition to heavy extension
payments in late years.

DUBLIN, the capital of what is often called 'the distressful isle,'
makes _a profit of $14,000_ on the food market and _$12,000 more_ on
the cattle market, while EDINBURGH, Scotland's chief city, makes about
_$15,000 a year on municipal markets_.

Statistics are available of something like 150 other British towns and
cities, ranging from a population of 5,000 upwards, where there is the
conviction born of experience that municipal markets pay not merely in
profits, but in convenience to the community, and they have a powerful
influence in keeping prices down.

Germany

Perhaps more than any other country in the world Germany places
reliance on municipal markets, because of the peculiar pressure of the
problem of the high cost of living in the cities of the Fatherland. On
several occasions, during the last twelve months, the butchers' stalls
have been raided by women in protest against the ten per cent increase
in one year on the price of meat. And when, to meet the clamor, the
government reduced the hitherto prohibitive import duties on meat by
one-half and the inland railroad charges by one-third, it was on
condition that the m