26 
Midlands and London, and receives from London, Manchester, 
Liverpool and Newcastle. Liverpool's heaviest railages are to 
London, the North-East Coast, the Midlands, the Eastern Counties 
south of the Humber, Scotland and North Wales, in addition 
to Lancashire and Cheshire towns, including Manchester; 
Manchester supplies are railed to the same destinations. Both 
Liverpool and Manchester receive supplies from all the other 
ports. The Bristol Channel ports serve principally the South 
Wales area, which, however, also receives supplies by rail from 
Liverpool and London. Southampton sends to London, and 
also receives from that port. Thus, from London, supplies are 
railed to all the other ports and, indeed, to almost every part 
of the country and to Scotland (Glasgow and Edinburgh). 
In an ideal system of distribution much of this despatching 
oy rail would be avoided, for the supplies for each area would 
be shipped to its own port, and the apparent waste of railing 
meat, say, from Liverpool to London, at the same time that 
meat of exactly the same kind was being railed from London 
to Liverpool, would not occur. The persistence of the present 
system is, however, due in the main to two factors. In the first 
place, each firm distributes its own meat without reference to 
the others, and meets its orders from any supplies which it may 
have available. It is natural, therefore, that cross-railings 
should occur where so many firms have organisations serving 
the same area. Secondly, there is the difficulty of arranging 
regular freight to any but the two chief ports; a shipping 
company may insist upon a minimum tonnage before a ship is 
sent to an out-port, and such a minimum may be beyond the 
local requirements of the importer. It may, therefore, in practice, 
be cheaper to bring meat to London or Liverpool and then to 
rail exact requirements to out-port districts than to ship supplies 
Jirect at the cost of excessive freight. In any event, the perish- 
able nature of the goods and the uncertain nature of the trade 
would, at times, dislocate even the most carefully-planned 
system, though it is difficult to believe that a more efficient and, 
therefore, economical system of wholesale distribution, based on 
the various ports, could not be devised to the advantage of all 
concerned. 
(¢c) The London Trade—*‘ The wholesale meat trade of 
London is a trade unto itself and has no counterpart, even for 
comparative purposes, in this or any other country.”* The 
trade is grouped around Smithfield Market, which is not only 
the centre of the imported meat trade in this country, but is the 
greatest dead-meat market in the world. Table IV, p. 61, 
shows the quantities of meat of all kinds handled at the market, 
during 1924, from various sources of supply, including Great 
Britain and Ireland. The market is the property of the Cor- 
poration of the City of London, from which the stallholders hold 
# Appendix I., “Report of Departmental Committee on Wholesale 
Food Markets of London.” Cmd. 1341. 1921