SATURDAY, MAY 26, 1900.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume II, Issue 154, 26 May 1900, Page 2

SATURDAY, MAY 26, 1900.

' The general manager of the Westport. Company, Mr Joachim, I was recently interviewed by a representative of the Otago Daily Times, when he took the opportunity of explaining why the retail price of coat exceeds by three or four times the cost of the fuel at the pit's mouth. It is generally considered by the public that the Westport Coal Company and the Union Steamship Coinj pany are making exhorbitant profits out of the trade, and that those consuming the coal are paying more than they should. Mr Joachim asserts that neither the Coal Company nor the owners of the steamers are making more than a fair margin of profit on tne.ir transactions. He asserts that it is the consumer's prejudice -against small coal that compels the retailer to charge such a huge advance upon the price paid at the mine. After deducting the lailage to port, the Westport Coal Company gets only 7s 61 a ton for coal at the pit's mouth, and of this sum it gives 4s 6d to the miner, and Is 6d is spent in various other expenses leaving only Is 6d per ton as profit to the company. This ife the whole of the coal, but before it can be offered to householders it has to be very carefully selected. On this phase of the question Mr Joachim says :—": — " If the public were supplied with coal as it comes from the mine, they simply wouldn't burn it. We have tried over and over again to bring this coal into the market, and have failed. The public will judge of co 4 by its size ; they will have it large, and as we depend on them for our custom we have to supply that kind of coal. Now, to obtain this kind of coal which tLe public will buy, we have to make a selection from the output ; that selected coal has to be screened and 40 per cent of alack taken out of it, which slack has to be sold for steam purposes for what we can get. The class of coal which the public demand for household purposes, only amounts to 25 per cent of t le whole output, \nd when that has been selected the Value of the remainder has been considerably , reduced, and has to be sold to j steamer lines and jotjier large eon- ! sumers at very much' reduced rates. We cannot afford to sell household coal such as the public will buy at less than 16s to If s per ton f.o.b. at Westporfc, anft wmn we get that price it only! brinft! the price t>f the whole out-* put ujko 10a peV £on»" If consumers%ould ftuy Westport coal at a prica to 16s or 17b per per tonVlt Westport, or that is 25 oW 26» in Waimate, they would not have much catise to grumble, but after the coal has been placed iv the hands of retailers it has again to undergo the process of screening Mr

Joachim declares his ignorance of what the retailers' profits really are, but says that the experience of his company in the retail branch of the trade proves that, after carting,- rescreening, bagging the coal and delivering it, and selling the slack at a loss, margin to pay interest on capital, wear and tear of plant and the chance of bad debts, was only 6d per ton. If this is all the profits there are, it seems strange that anyone can keep going, but other retailers must manage their business better than the company did theirs. However, facts lately disclosed, prove conclusively that there is too wide a difference between the price paid to the miner and the price charged to consumers. It would be a, very good thing for thousands if the new Parliament were to appoint another committee to enquire into everything tending to bring about this very unsatisfactory result.

I A DISCUSSION has been revived in England as to who was really' ! the author of the National Anthem i which is now so widely sung throughout the Empire. The honours lie between Henry Carey and Dr John Bull, and the general opinion seems to be that they slionld bo awarded to the former. The Graphic, at any rate, is strongly in favour of Careys claims, and it gives an interesting sketch of the composer's career. Comparatively little is known of the kind of life Carey led, but it is st\ted that he was born into the world a child of misfortune, and ultimately found a suicide's grave. The reputed son of George Savilie, Marquis of H ilifax, young Henry Carey appears, somewhero about the end of the seventeenth century, to have been left to his own resources in London. He had some capacity for composition and contributed both the words and the' music of several songs that obtained a good deal of ; popularity. By these efforts he i acquired'a theatrical connection, and was encouraged to "vrite a few burlesques and farces. In 1743 he published his writings in | a volume entitled " A Musical Century of English Ballads on | Various Subjects and Occasions." Of. these hundred ballads, the bestknown, and, indeed, the only one j that survives, is the still popular " Silly in our Alley." But the j effort of his life was his manipulation of the words of the National Anthem, and his adaptation of the air with which all ! sections of the British nation are j now familiar. It is supposed the j original words, commencing " God i Save the King," were written i sixty or seventy years before his i time, in praise of Charles I. But whatever may be said abeut the words, it seems pretty clear that the music was the work of Carey, and not- of Anthony Young, a ■■contemporary composer, whose claims to the authorship have lat'elyibeen urged. Young was a relative of the famous Mrs Gibber, who was the first person to sing he National Anthem before thepublic jfroni the stage of the Drury fLane theatre, an# it is is .proba^ )ly|' qwing to the relationship : name is sometimes associated -with the anthem. Be that It may^the Graphic considers that Careys claim to the authorship is by far the strongest ; fthat there is, indeed, no reasonable ground for doubt upon the subject, and that the unfortunate author ought to be left in undisputed'possession of his famer A* biographer states that Careys kind coayivial disposition often t involved him in pecuniary difficulties, and that his thoughtlessness and extravagance at last

reduced him to such a terrible state of destitution that on October 4, 1743. he put an end to his life. His fate was sad and tragic enough, without robbing him of the one monument by which his name and memory may be preserved.