79

H.—3o

We have done our best to get both you and the Allotment Committee to get a full load, and, while giving you both credit that you have done your best to do this, the Allotment Committee has clearly failed to give us a load, and we would have been extremely grateful to them and to your Board if you had been able to do so. We gave the Allotment Committee an opportunity of allotting our space in the boat in strict terms of the contract, and we had the boat lying here ready to load and could get no finality regarding a full load. Outside of our own bookings, the Allotment Committee were only able to allot a total of 24,000 freight carcases, including 3,000 from South Otago, which of course, as you know, it would not pay lis to go to the expense of going there to lift. The portion of the contract referring to our company is dealt with in paragraph 9, where it reads, " It is agreed the insulated space in the steamer ' Admiral Codrington ' shall be first allotted by the Allottment Committee to the Poverty Bay Farmers' Meat Company (Limited), and then allotted to the other frozen-meat companies in the same way and at the same rate of freight as steamers of the shipping companies are allotted." From this it is in no way meant that if the Allottment Committee do not allot our space we ourselves cannot make our own arrangements to fill it, for it would be a fatal thing to us, and a position I am sure your Board would not wish to place us in, if when the Allotment Committee could not fill our space we ourselves were not to do so on the best terms on which we could secure a full load. In justification of our action your Board has no better, illustration than the fact that the Allotment Committee, without reference to ourselves, decided to reduce the freight on beef as fixed by the contract by Jd. We have no protest against this, but at once acquiesced when notified by the representatives of the shipping companies and yourselves of this. We recognize that the reason we' could not get a full load for the " Codrington " was the fact that the market at Home at the present time was bad for New Zealand meat; consequently the owners of the meat decided to store it here and hold it for shipping later on. This was a perfectly legitimate and sound business reason, and our directors considered the matter, and, in view of the fact that the Allotment Committee could not fill the boat, decided to offer an inducement which was something towards providing storage at the other end instead of the meat being held here. If we had not clone something to meet the position we would not have been able to half fill the boat, which would have been a disastrous loss to us ; and I am quite sure that your Board should not look at the matter so harshly as to suggest that we should send our boat half loaded at such a loss to ourselves, when we could help the industry and the owners of the meat by making concessions or providing storage at the other end. We cannot believe that your Board would be party to deliberately stopping freight concessions where special circumstances such as we have quoted to you exist. You must appreciate the fact that naturally we would not in our own interests reduce the freights one penny if we could avoid doing so, but it was certainly better to do this than to send the boat back half empty and at a direct loss to our company, whereas now she goes Home with a substantial profit to the company. We can assure you that we have had a very anxious time, and it has been an extremely difficult task to secure a full load. Even now at the present moment we are not quite sure whether we are going to get a full load or not, as only yesterday some of the bookings of the Allotment Committee were cancelled. We are appealing to the owners of this meat to allow us to carry it, and at the moment of writing whether this will bo successful or not we cannot say. We therefore trust, with the explanation we have given you, that your Board will not consider we have broken the contract any more than the Allotment Committee has itself done. In plain fact, they failed to comply with the contract by failing to fill the whole of the space as contemplated by the contract-. Consequently, this loft us free and untrammelled by the contract to fill it ourselves in the best way we could, which is the only thing we could do under the circumstances. Yours, &c., S. McLennan, Managing Secretary. Enclosure 86. The Chairman, Meat Producers' Board, Wellington. Dear Sir, — Wellington, 25th June, 1923. Referring to the conversation I had with you recently in Wellington regarding the recent loading of the " Admiral Codrington," and your intimation to me that notwithstanding my company's explanation you still considered our company had broken the contract : 1 thought the best way to clear the matter up would be to take counsel's advice as to the legal position of the matter. I consequently submitted the question to Mr. C. H. Treadwell, senior member of the firm of Messrs. Treadwell and Sons, solicitors, Wellington, and for your Board's and your own information I am enclosing you his signed opinion, from which you will see he holds that we have not broken the contract in any way. I trust that, in view of this opinion, your Board will not continue to consider that we broke the contract either in its letter or spirit, for my Board would be extremely sorry to think that they had intentionally departed from their strict legal or equitable position in regard to the contract. I would like also to put on record what I told you verbally —namely, that before my directors did anything in the matter they took the precaution to arrange to send myself and one of the other directors to Wellington to see your manager and ascertain the actual position, as we had then only definite information of a comparatively small amount of cargo being available through the Allotment Committee. This was a few days before the expected arrival of the " Codrington "in the Dominion. Mr. Witters, one of our company's directors, and myself came to Wellington and saw Mr. Fraser in the