of a small state. The Gas Light and Coke Company's authorized capital is nearly £12,000,000; its revenue account shows an annual expenditure of £2,899,000, and income of £3,673,100, leaving about three-quarters of a million net profit; it employs 11,000 men; supplies gas to 220,000 private consumers, 682 churches and chapels, 530 railway stations and signal-boxes, 297 hotels, 261 Government and municipal offices, 260 banks and branches, 175 hospitals, and any number of prisons, barracks, theatres, palaces, clubs, markets, etc.; its street lamps number 50,351; its length of mains is, roughly speaking, 2,000 miles; and its district is about nine-tenths of London north of the Thames, and a considerable area south of it.
Its chief works are at Beckton, in Essex, where nearly half its gas is made. Beckton is capable of turning out 56¼ million cubic feet a day, has carbonized 31,000 tons of coal in a week, and can store 200,000 tons on its grounds. Here are the largest gas-works in the world, and Beckon is obviously the place to make for if we would see all there is to be seen of the process of gas manufacture.
The first impression at these works is one of bewilderment. Beckton looks a jumble of huge plain brick buildings, of gasholders, of pipes, of railways, and of heaps of coal, coke, and a dust known as breeze. For the concentrated essence of the ugly and unprepossessing, commend us to an extensive gas-works. However, we are here to seek not fine effects but information, and the initial question that we have to put to our kindly guide is inspired by the sight of a small engine, dragging a train of trucks on an elevated railway. It comes along snorting and puffing, and dives into one of the huge plain brick houses just mentioned, through a hole in the wall some 25ft. above the level of the ground.
A minute later another train moves along the rails at our feet, and we are peremptorily warned to look out. "Beware of the trains" is an inscription to be found on walls high and low throughout the Beckton Works, and the injunction is not unneeded. The place is simply a network of rails, and trains at times pass over one's head and under one's feet with startling frequency. The former are bringing coal from the pier at the Thames side, and the latter are removing the coke which has recently been taken from the retorts. Let us go to the pier and follow the whole business throughout its various stages.
