Financial District of London

“ Several defendants, Malony, Anthony, Richardson, Stark and London, allegedly used the conspiracy as a means for financial gain. (Am.Compl. ¶ 4.) Over a seven year period, defendants allegedly conspired to attempt to obstruct justice in several court proceedings by improperly influencing those proceedings, obstructing justice, deceiving judges, committing wire, mail and common law fraud, acting negligently, and defaming plaintiffs so as to foreseeably injure them. ”

“ In these days, too, when the tendency is strong for amalgamation, the local banks are dwarfed by their gigantic competitors, with their branches in many counties and head offices in London, with the result that London each year controls more of the banking in England and the provincial clearings cease more and more to be under local control, but are controlled by their London head offices. ”

“ It is probably nearer the truth that banking competition in the provinces is still so keen that the London management is very careful not to allow anything like bureaucratic stiffness to get into the methods by which their business is managed. By the appointment of local committees they are careful to do all they can to see that the local interests get all the credit that is good for them. ”

“ Is that government sufficient to lend well and keep safe so many millions? They are governed, as every one knows, by a board of directors, assisted by a general manager, and there are in London unrivalled materials for composing good boards of directors. There are very many men of good means, of great sagacity, and great experience in business, who are obliged to be in the City every day, and to remain there during the day, but who have very much time on their hands. A merchant employing solely or principally his own capital has often a great deal of leisure. ”

“ In considering, therefore, the question whether £50,000 is a sufficient revenue, it must be remembered that in no case has any cost of municipal sites to be first deducted from that amount.
Another item in which a great economy will be effected will be found in a comparison between Garden City and any old city like London. London wishes to breathe a fuller municipal spirit, and so proceeds to construct schools, to pull down slums, to erect libraries, swimming baths, etc. ”

“ No great work is done and no enterprise attempted but the fact is known to some one in London. In spite of the great growth and wealth of America, the industry and success of Germany, the thrift and saving of France, the financial center of the world is in London, and other bourses and boards of trade follow the lead or are in fact only branches of the English concern. Every active financial institution in the United States or elsewhere has its London connection [240] through which it draws when it engages in international business or when it goes out of the local sphere of influence. ”

“ London financial institutions have a degree of expertness, growing out of specialization, in large part, which makes all manner of paper fluid in the London money market which would lack fluidity in New York. ”

“ Wall Street, the centre of the financial system of the United States, was as sound on the currency question as the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, and the advocates of Free Silver confounded New York and London alike beneath their savage anathema. Community of interest begets community of ideas, and the Western men angrily declare that New York is no more a typical American city than London or Liverpool. This is an exaggeration, no doubt. But neighbourhood counts for something, and New York is a thousand miles nearer to London than to Chicago. ”

“ A very large sum is annually expended in street improvements, besides a contribution of nearly 12,000 pounds a year to a metropolitan fund for objects not comprised within the liberties of the City. The Corporation also pays 11,000 pounds per annum towards the maintenance of the police force, though in other metropolitan districts this proportion of the expenses is debited to the Consolidated Fund. ”

“ If all the coal-wharves on the river were taken over by the Home Office, or all the private banks bought up by the Exchequer, or all the bakeries by the Local Government Board, it may be clearly shown that the stupid and brutish inhabitants of London would be benefited by a dead saving of two shillings and a penny a chaldron, half a farthing a loaf, and a sixteenth per cent, gain on discount or deposit. ”

“ Moreover, the check imposed upon our banking community by the need for an appeal to the Treasury before it can extend its note issue beyond a certain point often acts with, a salutary effect, and the view has even been expressed that if that check were taken away from our system it might be difficult, if not impossible, to maintain the gold standard which has been of such enormous value in building up the prestige of London as a financial centre. ”

“ The city of London was, as we have seen, known in earliest times as the king's "Chamber," and the Chamberlain was the king's officer. The City in fact served as the purse of the nation, until such time as the establishment of the Bank of England did away with the necessity of direct applications to the Corporation for loans, to enable the government of the kingdom to be carried on. Like the nation itself, the City has had its times of pecuniary distress, and nothing but the most careful nursing of its estate has enabled it to tide over its difficulties. ”

“ The majority of the banks are members of the Clearing House, Post Office Court, where a daily exchange of drafts representing millions of pounds sterling is effected. The Royal Mint is on Tower Hill. The Stock Exchange is in Capel Court, and numbers of brokers have their offices in the vicinity of the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England.
Manufactures and Retail Trade.—No part of London can be pointed out as essentially a manufacturing quarter, and there is a strong tendency for manufacturing firms to establish their factories outside the metropolis. ”

“ Of the streets most frequented on account of their fashionable shops Bond Street, Regent Street, Oxford Street, Sloane Street and High Street, Kensington, may be selected. In the East End and other poor quarters a large trade in second-hand clothing, flowers and vegetables, and many other commodities is carried on in the streets on movable stalls by costermongers and hawkers.
Markets.—The City Corporation exercises a control over the majority of the London markets, which dates from the close of the 14th century, when dealers were placed under the governance of the mayor and aldermen. ”

“ It has a dense population, said to number 180,000 souls; and is beyond measure commercial, the merchants of the entire kingdom flocking thither, as, by a privilege conceded to the citizens of London, from them alone can they purchase merchandise, so they soon became very wealthy; and the same privileges placed in their hands the government of the city of London, which is divided into 24 trades or crafts, each of which elects a certain individual, styled alderman, the election being made solely in the persons of those who are considered the most wealthy, and the office is for life ”

“ Wall Street is the financial centre of this country as much so as London is recognized to be the financial centre of the world at the present time. Hence it is really the heart of the nation, through which its financial blood flows to invigorate and impart new life to every section of the land. ”

“ In the present case some three thousand souls of the working population have to be turned out. After some searching of heart, it is decided that most of them are so closely tied to the spot by their employment that it would be a hardship to send them more than a mile away. The result, in cash, is that London must spend in re-housing them about £100 a head—or £300,000 in all. As to those who cannot fairly be asked to go even a mile away—hangers-on to the market, or others tethered to the spot—the cost will be even higher. ”

“ The hard, grasping employer, and the smug financier, who hitherto kept scrupulous accounts, and have been noteworthy on account of their uncharitableness,{537} have now, in the hour of need, come forward and subscribed liberally to the great Mansion House Fund, opened yesterday by the Deputy Lord Mayor of London. The subscription list occupies six columns of the issue of to-morrow’s paper, and this, in itself, speaks well for the open-heartedness of the moneyed classes of Great Britain.
“No movement has yet been made in the financial world. Bankers still remain with closed doors. ”

“ Every local authority has to obtain the sanction of some higher authority before raising a loan, and there are in addition certain statutory limits of borrowing. Metropolitan borough councils have to obtain the sanction of the Local Government Board to loans for baths, washhouses, public libraries, sanitary conveniences and certain other purposes under the Public Health Acts; for cemeteries the sanction of the Treasury is required, and for all other purposes that of the London County Council ”

“ The New York banks, largely through private bankers, branches of foreign banking houses, connect themselves with London, so that each bank in the world is connected indirectly with every other bank in the world, and in London is the final clearing-house of the world. ”

“ Had London been built on municipally-owned land, its rents would not only have easily provided for all current expenditure, without any need for a levy of rates or for incurring loans for long periods, but it would have been enabled to own its own water-supply and many other useful and profit-bearing undertakings, instead of being in its present position with vast debts and small assets. ”

“ Accordingly, many excellent men of business are quite ready to become members of boards of directors, and to attend to the business of companies, a good deal for the employment's sake. To have an interesting occupation which brings dignity and power with it pleases them very much. As the aggregation of commerce in great cities grows, the number of such men augments. A council of grave, careful, and experienced men can, without difficulty, be collected for a great bank in London, such as never could have been collected before, and such as cannot now be collected elsewhere. ”

“ The London and Westminster, the London Joint-Stock, the Union, the City, the Australian, and numerous other Companies, have two or more establishments each, some as many as half-a-dozen—the head bank always being in the busy centre of trade, the ‘City.’ Some of these are elegant structures; and all are planned with great skill in reference to interior arrangements. The private bankers, such as Glyn, Barclays, Lubbocks, Coutts, &c., rival the companies in the architectural character of their banks; and some of their establishments, such as Child’s, near Temple Bar, are curious old places. ”

“ HE Bank of England is the greatest moneyed institution in the world. It is situated in the very heart of the City of London, opposite the Royal Exchange and the Mansion House, and is composed of an insulated mass of stone buildings and courts covering four acres of ground, bounded by Princes's street, west; Lothbury, north; Bartholomew Lane, east; and Threadneedle street, south. Its exterior measurements are 365 feet south, 410 feet north, 245 feet east, and 440 feet west. ”

“ Money was sorely needed. The City consented to advance the sum of £5,000 upon the security of the customs of the Port of London and of certain plate and jewels,623 and when parliament met (13 Oct., 1377) it made a liberal grant of two tenths and two fifteenths, which was to be collected without delay, on the understanding that two treasurers should be appointed to superintend the due application of the money.624 The two treasurers appointed for this purpose were two citizens of note, namely, William Walworth and John Philipot, of whose financial capability mention has already been made. ”

“ No man, it has been said, could ever tell how much money lies hidden away in the vaults of the Bank of England, and it is about as difficult to count up the tons of produce which London exports and imports annually. ”

“ In 1417 an Ordinance of the Mayor and Aldermen was issued forbidding this exclusion, which commences as follows: ‘Whereas heretofore, and now also from day to day, many persons dwelling in the city and the suburbs of London, more consulting and attending to their private profit and advantage than to the common good and convenience, do hold certain wharves and stairs on the bank of the Thames, which are held by encroachment upon, and are situate on, the common soil and the course of the water, without having any licence or paying anything to the community for the same ”

“ The rents now paid by the working population of London, for accommodation most miserable and insufficient, represents each year a larger and larger proportion of income, while the cost of moving to and from work, continually increasing, often represents in time and money a very considerable tax. But imagine the population of London falling, and falling rapidly; the migrating people establishing themselves where rents are extremely low, and where their work is within easy-walking distance of their homes! Obviously, house-property in London will fall in rental value, and fall enormously. ”

“ Easy, comparatively, is it to lay out on virgin soil the plan of a magnificent city, such as represented on our Diagram 5. Of far greater difficulty is the problem—even if all vested interests freely effaced themselves—of rebuilding a new city on an old site, and that site occupied by a huge population. But this, at least, is certain, that the present area of the London County Council ought not (if health and beauty, and that which is too frequently put in the front rank—rapid production of wealth forms—are to be considered) to contain more than, say, one-fifth of its present population ”