Aug. 12.
Unuess it be the officials of the company, who have doubtless considerable worries to occupy themselves with, nobody is likely to fall out with the Municipal Council's ultimatum to the Tramways to get on immediately with the work of putting their portion of our roads into decent condition or pay the defaulter's penalty. Rightly or wrongly the average man passing through the Settlement gets the impression that there is never an end to patching and mending along the tram rails, and certainly at particular spots, the junction of Nanking Road and Chekiang "Road for instance, workmen seem to be employed nightly. Admittedly' road construction in a place such as Shanghai presents innumerable difficulties, and much experimentation has had to be done in the past, and up to a point we shall be prepared to sympathize with the Tramway Company in ils struggle against natural obstacles to success. But it has accomplished a considerable amount of running over the present track and substructure since 1908 and has distributed much money in dividends, and there seems no yeason why the general public should not now share some of its prosperity in the form of more comfort on our streets, Tabour can be obtained, although probably the moment the company increases its demand for it the price will go up, but in this respect the company is no worse off than other employers, and must come into line with them.
The Municipal Gazette informs us that the original substructure has given way with disastrous results, hence the present trouble, and that experiments are being being made with a new form of substructure. In the first instance the rails were laid on a bed of concrete, and it appears that the pounding of the metal on the concrete when trams have.' been passing over, has created a space immediately beneath the rail itself. With the first heavy show-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.