There remains, however, the fact that certain Corporation markets and
Covent Garden market serve as great wholesale terminals, connected more
or less unofficially with the numerous local markets in the outlying
districts.
Chief among the Corporation markets is Smithfield, covering about eight
acres, and costing altogether $1,940,000. There are to be found
wholesale meat, poultry and provision markets, with sections for the
sale, wholesale and retail, of vegetables and fish. In the last twenty
years the development of cold storage processes has lowered the
quantity of home-killed meat and remarkably increased the importation
of refrigerated supplies. Last year the wholesale market disposed of
433,723 tons of meat, of which 77.2 per cent came from overseas.
Ten years ago the United States supplied 41 per cent of the Smithfield
meat, but now these supplies have fallen off enormously and the last
report of the Markets Committee says: "The United States, in particular
for domestic needs, is within measurable distance of becoming a
competitor with England for the output of South America." South America
and Australasia are, indeed, the chief producers today for the British
market.
This has developed a great cold storage business in London. All told
London can accommodate 3,032,000 carcases of mutton, reckoning each
carcase at 36 pounds. Over 41 per cent of England's imported meat
passes through Smithfield, and railroad access is arranged to the heart
of the market. The Great Northern Railway Company has a lease from the
corporation on 100,000 feet of basement works under the meat market,
with hydraulic lifts to the level of the market hall, and inclined
roadways for vehicular traffic.
Most of the tenants at Smithfield are commission salesmen, who pay
weekly rents for their shops and stalls at space rates, all the
fittings being supplied. Last year these rents brought in $427,920.
There is a toll of a farthing on every 21 pounds of meat sold, which
together with cold storage, weighing and other charges amounted in the
same period to $241,635. The meat sales are entirely wholesale, except
on Saturday afternoons, when there is a retail "People's Market," where
thousands of the very poor buy cheap joints.
[Illustration: SMITHFIELD IN THE OLDEN DAYS