hem, a good
part of the difficulty of locomotion would soon settle itself. It is
the enormous daily flow of population toward the centre that chokes the
channels of locomotion, and the wisest method of checking this flow is
to make it unnecessary, by establishing manufacturing colonies, on the
pattern of Mr. Ellis Lever's and Mr. Cadbury's colonies at Port
Sunlight and Bourneville. There would still remain the difficulty of
locomotion in the central districts, but with proper enterprise,
organisation, and control, this difficulty is not insuperable. In a
few years we shall look back with wonder and pity to the days when the
infrequent 'bus, the slow and tedious horse-tram, and the exorbitant
cab were the means of locomotion in which a city of six million people
put its trust. The electric tram, clean, frequent, and rapid, will be
everywhere; the electric cab will run at a normal fare of threepence a
mile; perhaps also there will be electric overhead railways,
constructed upon a system which does not interfere with the perspective
of the main thoroughfares, for the overhead electric railway, whatever
may be its defects, is a means of locomotion vastly preferable to the
unventilated tubes on which we now pride ourselves. May we not also
hope that the general application of electric force will do much to
cleanse our atmosphere? With houses lit and warmed by electricity,
factories run by electric force, cooking done in electric ovens, the
vile smoke which darkens and destroys the city would disappear. The
skies of London would be as pure as the sky of the Orkneys, and a
hundred trees and plants, which now perish at the first touch of the
fog-fiend, would grow in our city parks and gardens as freely as they
grow in Epping Forest. With a fleet of electric boats upon the Thames,
running at one minute intervals, the Thames would once more become the
river of pleasure, and a highway of popular traffic. There is no
reason why these things should not be. All that is needed is that
London, through its chosen representatives, should assume the full
control of its own life; working out the scheme of its improvement by
deliberate methods and upon a settled plan; compelling the obedience of
all its citizens to a central authority, and intrusting to that
authority the complete management of its affairs, not as a means of
personal profit, but for the profit and the welfare of the whole
community.

In the meantime much may be d