and the trunk railways, after an arduous struggle to keep abreast of the requirements of local traffic, are now content to provide outlets and inlets for it and to leave private companies in possession of underground London. The success of the Central London, which is now carrying two hundred thousand passengers on its busiest days, insures the rapid development of the underground system. It seems safe to assume that in the course of the next decade over one hundred miles of these electric lines will be in operation, and that the metropolis will be fairly honeycombed with these underground galleries. The East End, with its broad thoroughfares and lateral movement of working population north and south to the docks, may be served with surface electric railways, and the London County Council is already substituting electric power for horse-power in suburban districts; but the rehousing problem will be worked out on a large scale by the extension of the underground electric system.

When statisticians assert that in the course of the next thirty years Greater London will have a population of twelve millions in place of six millions, neither architects nor municipal politicians are moved to propose comprehensive plans for the rebuilding of the metropolis, the construction of broad thoroughfares, and the improvement of transit for the accommodation of the

traffic, which will be thrown inevitably upon streets already suffocated during hours of daylight. The underground electric system in its tentative stage barely enables clear-sighted reformers to perceive how London is to go on for another generation emptying itself into remote suburbs whence millions can be brought into the inner circle of business and traffic and carried back at night to districts where they can be cheaply housed. It does not help them to understand how the central thoroughfares, where congestion is increased by every improvement in metropolitan transit, are to be adapted to the traffic of the future.

Lord Rosebery once described London as an anomalous jumble of disjected provinces, without vitalizing principle, unity of action, or enlightened and progressive policies, such as have raised municipal government in other English cities to the highest level of efficiency. All the great questions connected with its extraordinary growth and the reorganization and unification of its municipal activities have been neglected and thrust aside until they have become unmanageable.

An average estimate of the cost of the deep-level tubes when in full operation is three million dollars a mile. The Central London average is higher and the City and Waterloo lower, but in every instance the cost of underground electric railways is increased by the high rates of interest required

by investors and by the expenses of financial supplies. At current estimates, a system of two hundred miles of deep-level railway will cost as much as the South African War. If it had been a municipal undertaking, as in Paris, the capital would have been obtained at low rates, and there would have been an enormous reduction in the cost of the work, which involves the only practical solution of the greatest social problem in the metropolis -the rehousing of the millions.

The prime factor of the Paris transit problem is the octroi. This is the local tax levied upon all provisions consumed and many materials used in the city. While it increases the cost of living, it is an important source of local revenue, and has enabled the municipal authorities to improve and embellish the city from decade to decade and to convert it into the most beautiful and artistic capital in Europe. In London there has been a constant reswarming of hives of population from center to suburbs. In Paris octroi statesmanship has aimed at preventing the redistribution of the inhabitants of congested centers, and has kept the masses within the city, where they were paying local taxes and swelling the revenues of the treasury. The municipal government has persistently opposed the plans of the railway companies for improving suburban transit and for establishing a central station in the heart of Paris. This policy has finally committed it to a vast undertaking for providing, on strictly urban lines, a system of underground electric transit for the French capital.

When the London District and Metropolitan underground railways were projected, the imagination of French engineers took fire. MM. Brame and Flachat prepared, in 1856, a comprehensive scheme for a metropolitan railway in Paris, and during the next twenty years as many as forty variants of it were discussed by the French Society of Civil Engineers. The railway companies were deeply interested in the general plan, and were prepared to undertake its execution at their own cost, because they perceived the full advantage of an opportunity for improving the transit facilities of the suburbs, for connecting all the main lines, and for concentrating local and through traffic in the heart of the city. The municipal authorities interposed objections, and the scheme was not carried out. When the Exposition of 1889 was projected, the French government and the railway companies revived this transit plan, but local opposition again

blocked it. As the Exposition of 1900 approached, the French government again proposed a solution of the transit problem; and the Municipal Council was forced to take up the work in order to keep the railway companies out of it. Its plan was sanctioned by the law of March 30, 1898. It is exclusively a municipal undertaking. It was originally planned as a network of narrow-gage underground railways. The French government succeeded in altering the gage in conformity with that of the trunk railways; but there will be no connection between the two systems, and the rolling-stock of the main lines cannot be used in the tunnels. Municipal socialism virtually excludes the railway companies from this urban system.

This municipal undertaking is one of vast proportions. It includes six distinct lines. of tunnel, viaduct, and cutting, about seven tenths of the entire work being underground. There will be a circular system, following in the main the outer boulevards of the city. The two great pleasure-grounds, the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes, will be connected by a transverse line from Porte Dauphine and Porte Maillot, in the west, to Porte de Vincennes, in the east. There will be an irregular circuit from Porte de Clignancourt to Porte d'Orléans. The three remaining lines will be either connecting-links within the main circle or extensions on the fringe of it. Only one of the six sections, the transverse line from east to west, has been constructed, with a short segment of the circular line from the Place de l'Étoile to the Trocadéro. The length of the projected system will be about fifty miles. The city of Paris constructs the tunnels and viaducts, orders the open cutting, and leaves the work in condition for the operation of the lines. A concession has been granted to the Compagnie Générale de Traction for supplying superstructure, electric power, and rolling-stock, and for managing daily traffic. The concession runs for thirty-five years, and the entire transit system, by the requirements of law, will be completed by March, 1911.

The section of the Metropolitan Railway now in operation is the transverse line across Paris from Porte de Vincennes to Porte Maillot, with branches from the Place de l'Étoile to Porte Dauphine and the Trocadéro. The circuit with its three spurs from the Arc de Triomphe is eight and three quarter miles in length, and with the exception of the passage of the St. Martin Canal and a small section near the Rue de Reuilly, it is

underground. The railway, with double lines. of track, runs underneath thoroughfares like the Boulevard Diderot, the Rue de Rivoli, and the Champs-Élysées, and there are stations at centers like the Place de la Nation,

The gayest of capitals revels in the open. air, in glimpses of the brightest and most cheerful streets in the world, in the spectacle of throngs of idlers in front of the cafés, and in the bewildering variety, brilliant color,

and fascinating charm of the night life. Underground transit is rendered tolerable only by a glare of electric light, and by the consciousness of rapid flight under favorite thoroughfares

EXIT AT THE PORTE MAILLOT STATION.

the Place de la Bastille, the Hôtel de Ville, the Louvre, the Palais Royal, the Tuileries, the Place de la Concorde, and the Place Victor Hugo. The tunnels, being close to the surface, are more readily approached than the deep-level lines in London. The curved side walls, arch, and invert are coated with cement, and the tunnelsrange from twentyone feet eight inches to twenty-three feet three and a half inches

in width, with a clear height of seventeen feet at the center. The single-line tunnels, used where connections are made with branches of the general system, are larger than the London tubes. The stations are built of white glazed enameled brick, only one of them having an open sky exposure. At the terminal stations there are long loops for avoiding the necessity for reversing trains, and the platforms are connected with arched bridges.

The train service is less comfortable than that of the Central London, for there are two classes of compartments in place of saloon carriages; but there is no discontent when there are as many passengers standing as sitting, and when there is detention at the stations in the hurly-burly of emptying and filling the cars. It is cheap transit. The fare is five cents for the first class, and three for the second; and before nine o'clock in the morning a return coupon, second class, good