AUSTRALIAN MAILS.
Received February 28, 9.54 a.m. MELBOURNE, February 28.
A critical situation has arisen in connection with the£ new mail contract, which is embarrassing the mail syndicate, and is placing the Federal Government in a quandary. Mr Clark, representative of the syndicate, has asked "the 'Commonwealth to guarantee a million and a quarter of debentures, to be issued in London.
The strenuous opposition which has been shown in London towards the new"syndicate has apparently resulted in its inability to secure all the capital required to carry out the scheme, therefore the syndicate |must either forfeit its £25,000 deposit, or secure the Commonwealth guarantee. The Federal Government does not wish to see the contract collapse, nor dees it like pledging the credit of the Commonwealth for such a large sum to help a private corporation, nor does it care to fall back on shipping lines whose tenders it rejected
A leading member of the Labour Party says that the syndicate has been blocked by a ring, and suggests that the Government, rather than enter upon a guarantee, should go a step further, embark on a nationalisation scheme, and build its own line of steamers. He is certain that the Labour caucus would not consent to the Government giving a guarantee as an executive act. Received Last Night, 9.25 o'elock. LONDON, February 28. The Globe denies Mr Chapman's charges of conspiracy in connection with the mail contract. Shipping circles consider the syndicate has failed on its merits, and the poor results obtained by existing companies. The . Secretary of the Orient Company, in a letter to the newspapers reagrding Mr Chapman's allusion to the syndicate being opposed by a shipping ring, says that the nearest approach to a ring is the ordinary Freight Conference. The attitude of th's Conference towards the venture is entirely impassive. The one real difficulty facing the Laing syndicate was the impression that the contract would entail heavy commercial loss.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WAG19070301.2.15.2
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8370, 1 March 1907, Page 5
Word count
Tapeke kupu
322AUSTRALIAN MAILS. Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8370, 1 March 1907, Page 5
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Wairarapa Age. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Log in