PASSING UNDER A CLOUD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 12, 8 February 1909, Page 4

PASSING UNDER A CLOUD.

BIG DECLINE IX BRITISH TRADE. COST OF MAIL CONTRACTS. London, December IS. •At tho ordinary general meeting of the Peninsular audi Oriental Steam Navigation Company a few days ago, presided over by Sir Thomas Sutherland, the. chairman said that since their meeting last year the trade of the world had been passing under a cloud, and the shipping industry had suffered, and was now suffering, accordingly, (heat fleets of ships had been laid up in various ports of the United Kingdom for some months past, and a vast amount of tonnage had been laid up. The shrinkage of trado had been more or loss universal, but Great Britain, being the principal transport agents, had suffered in greater degree than their foreign competitors. The company's profit for the year was nearly £50,000 less than in the preceding year, but they had been able to set aside their statutory depreciation, if he might call it so, of £374,143, and at tihe same time to recommend the usual dividend and bonus to which thev had been for some years accustomed. Moreover, the earrv-forward was a. sum abnormally large, which would serve them well in the current year.

THE MAIL CONTRACT. Turning to the subject of the mail contract, Sir Thomas said it was of a snore arduous character than any which had yet preceded it, but it would be carried out with the efficiency that was customary on the part of the P. and 0. Company. The subsidy which they formerly received was £340,000, but the new one only gave them £305,000. Since 1870 he had assisted at no fewer than twenty-one mail and postal contracts made with the Imperial Government, the Government of Australia, the Government of Italy, and oven the Government of India, in regard to an important innovation known as the parcel post. In the course of these twenty-one contracts the company had received altogether from the various Governments to which he had referred the large sum of .C 15,000,000 sterling:. That figure mounded almost colossal, but when they began to look at the cost of carrying out these contracts, they would find the figures stood in a different proportion Altogether. He had estimated as closely and as accurately as it was possible what it had cost the company to carry out thesn contracts during the gre.it number of years, and he found that as against the eighteen millions received, they had expended some £10,000,000 sterling. For seventy years the P. and 0. Company had held the Eastern contracts through no favor or indulgence on the part of the 'British Government, hut entirely owing to the fact that they had I evolved for the use of the public the | best: of ship 3 that could possibly be daI 'vised. They had carried during! the ! past year altogether 44,000 officers and j men. and owing to the pressure of com- | petition they had sacrificed under that 1 head £22,000 this year, as compared with the previous year, and thereby had I benefited the Chancellor of the T!x- ---| chequer at the rate of 10s per head. He ! confessed that the responsibility of ; carrying so many officers and men was ; rather great, and that the game was 1 really not worth the candle.

CHINESE PORK. He learned that a new kind of commerce in connection with China was about to be introduced. The food supply of this country was likely, in the course of next tyear, to be assisted largely by the introduction of that valuable product, the Chinese pig, which would be carried in thousands and thousands by menus of tiro refrigerating nvyaTtgemenU which had becu fitted in their vessels and in those of other com•panics'# ITe did not suppose that the commerce in this direction would riwl that of 2se\v Zealand- and Australia in regard tct frozen mutton, but strnnger things Thau t.liat had liapuciiPil. One .if .11m strange things ill that connection, Sir Thomas tlioiifflit, was the fact lliat it was till! possibility of great export of frozen produce tluit raised Now Zealand from a slato almost of partial bankruptcy to the nourishing condition I'll which it now stood. UKCTjIXE IN I'.ASSKNCIE'R, TRAFFIC 1 . Olio of the greatest disappointments tln'.y liad had lo contend with in connection'. with the Australian passenger traffic 'Was the fact that the trade at this present moment; was actually less .11 value tha.ll it was eighteen years ago. Ho must assmne that nowadays their coloniaO friends preferred to sit at their own fir.rsidc than to undertake the journey to England. |