HUGE WAR PROFITS

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 18 May 1917, Page 3

HUGE WAR PROFITS

‘ ‘ GET-EICH-QUICK ’ ’ PLUNGERS.

GREAT FORTUNES MADE IN A

FEW MONTHS,

Cardiff’s colossal investment of £30,000,000 in the War Loan, which works out at over £l5O per head of the population, is perhaps the most wonderful of all the contributions that came from the country, says a correspondent of the “Weekly Despatch.” The sum is largely made up of war-created wealth, much of which was accumulated in the first year of the war, when huge fortunes were made in a few months and poor men became merchant princes, and when it seemed as every ship that put in at the docks had a cargo of gold.

Those thirty millions of pounds wbro made out of ships and coal, and they represent only a small proportion of the money which has poured into this one town in Wales. Since those first golden months this has continued to multiply, although the bulk of the income has gone into the national exchequer through the excess of war profits tax. The amazing prosperity of the great industrial centres of the North and the Midlands could no doubt furnish figures that would rival Cardiff’s record, but it is unlikely that in any town in Britain such vast wealth has been earn- | ed so easily and so quickly, and has poured into comparatively so few pockets.

The secret of it all lies, of course, largely in the great shipping boom. At the outbreak of the war, Cardiff had the biggest export trade in the country —if not in the world. But, all the same, the shipowners were having lean times. There was depression, partly du e to the successful competition of the German owners, heavily subsidised by their Government There weri- several owners in Cardiff who were scarcely in a position to pay 20s in the pound, and there was more than one who had arranged a composition with his creditors, and others were just paying their way.

BOLD “PLUNGES.”

And then suddenly without warning came the golden age. The German shipping was swept from the seas. Freights began to increase—slowly at first, but in a little while gigantically and incredibly—and steamers doubled and trebled in value.

But the older, shipowners, I am told, at first sat tight, and were wary of taking risks at a time when the Huns were sweeping apparently irresistible towards the French and Belgian ports. They wanted to see the money safely deposited in their, banks before dispatching cargoes. It was then that some of the younger men plunged.

When the war broke out one owner controlled not more than half a dozen ships; now what with these ho owns and those he has chartered he says he has nearly 50 under his management. He bought neutral ships at a price considerably above their peace time price, and they trebled and quadrupled in value. lie bought for £30,000 a 5500-ton steamer, and that was probably what it cost to build. In a few months that ship was worth £90,000. In another case a tramp steamer 15 years old and worth normally about £20,000 was sold for £120,000, and then after making as much as £40,000 for its new owner in a single voyage was sold again for even a bigger figure. I have heard of the ease of one ship that had been built ten years which actually quintupled its value. It was worth about £50,000 and sold for a quarter of a million.

Included among the bigger investors in Cardiff are several young owners, who, before the war were nothing more than shipping clerks, and had saved at the most only a few hundred pounds capital. The story of how these young men made their fortunes gives a pretty good indication of the extraordinary opportunities that came to men, even without money or property to offer as a security. There is a well-known case of two young clerks, who, seeking their chance and deciding to make a bold plunge, went among their friends and collected a thousand pounds or so .

They wtnt to the bank, explained their plans and secured an advance of something like £30,000 on the strength of their prospects. They then chartered a ship, and made so much money on the first voyages that they were able to secure a further big advance from the bankers, and very soon became the owners of at least four ships.