REMARKABLE INVESTMENTS

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 126, 25 February 1928, Page 24

REMARKABLE INVESTMENTS

Thera is a romance of trade in the announcement that the shareholders of Carreras, Ltd., will receive a dividend of 50 per cent., in spite of the fact that their capital has recently been increased by one half (says the London correspondent of tlie “Age”). Carreras, Ltd., is the tobacco firm controlled by Mr. Bernard Baron, who began life as a boy in a New York tobacconist’s shop, earning 16s. a week. The invention of a cigarette-making machine enabled Mr. Baron to buy Carreras for a small sum. Seven years ago the annual profits of the company were £19,000; now they are £1,250,000, and £1,200,000 more has been carried forward, the equivalent of 100 per cen. more upon the capita! of the company. Large profits, especially in companies which turn over their money daily because they cater for the material needs of tlie people, are common, but it is rare that a million pounds arcearned so quickly. If Mr. Bernard Baron is a royal earner he is also a royal spender. In 1925 he gave £150,000 to charity, and lie celebrated his 75th birthday by further charitable gifts amounting to £50,000.

Another investment which will have a place in economic history is the “Golden Mile” of Viscount Tredegar. This is the railway, a mile long, between Basselcy and Newport, which has carried mineral traffic amounting to at least 4,000,000 tons a year for the last 50 years. The mile of railway cost £40,000, but it produce! an income of £19,000 a year. The history of the “Golden Mile” goes back to 1802, when Parliament authorised an ancestor of Lord Tredegar to lav a tramway through his park and collect the revenue therefrom. Exemption from rating was granted by the Bill. When horse traffic was succeeded by locomotives the tramway was converted into a railway, and drew a dole of so much a ton upon all the coal carriel to Newport. Thanks to the Act of Parliament the Tredegar family did not even have to pay rates, though as an act of grace Lord Tredegar contributed £2OO annually to the county and police rate. Tn 1921 this payment of £2OO sudden!' ceased, and on inquiry it was learnt that Lord Tredegar had sold tlie “Golden Mile” to the Great Western Railway The Monmouthshire Counts Council now claim that the sale has made the exemption from local rates of no avail; tbev are asking (is in the £1 from the railway companv upon all profits from the “Golden Mile.’t