THE GAS QUESTION.

Press, Volume XLVI, Issue 7362, 15 July 1889, Page 6

THE GAS QUESTION.

TO THB EDITOR OF THK PBKSS.

Sib,—l suppose it would be quite too much to expect that the Lyttelton Times should give fair play to any body of capitalists who may have invested their money in any local venture or business, and to expect so much as fair treatment for the Gas Company would be absurd, but this morning in their leading article they are even more untruthful and unfair than usual. In writing of the Gas Bill recently thrown out of the House the Lyttelton Times says:—"lt is a public measure designed to. give a public body the exercise of a public right which is enjoyed by public bodies all over the world. It is a right which municipalities have been permitted to everywhere enjoy, in spite of the existence of private corporations to whom that right has already been committed." The Editor of the Times ought to know that this statement is absolutely false, and calculated to mislead the public. Throughout Great Britain no City Municipal Council can enter into competition with a Company already in possession of the right to supply the town with gas without first going to the Imperial Parliament, and for many years past the Imperial Parliament has refused to sanction any Bills giving authority for such competition, as in the end it has been found disadvantageous to the ratepayers. Your contemporary says the Company has been a profitable one, but it certainly has not paid its original shareholders nearly so well as many of the English Companies have done. The great London companies pay about 15 per cent., or five times the return obtainable for money lent on best mortgages, while here the dividend is less than twice the return obtainable on best mortgages. I am one of those unfortunate individuals who a short time ago was induced by glowing accounts of your climate, and the facility for investing capital, to sell out my English investments, and bring my family and capital to New Zealand. I continually see the cry in our papers that Englishmen with capital are wanted here, but my experience is that the object of getting them here is to seize their money by some kind of confiscation on arrival. My investment in gas shares pays mc now less than 5 per cent., and if I wanted to realise I should lose some 40 per cent, of my capital. My investments in land are much the same. I cannot get a fair return for my capital, nor can I sell my land without suffering nearly as serious a loss as I should by selling my shares. If I had taken the advice of my friends and the London Standard, I should not have brought my capital to New Zealand, and should have been a much richer man.

If you wish to induce men from Home to bring money out to this country some effort must be made to protect capital, not to destroy it by Government aid as I* being done at present. My friends at Home, to whom I send the Lyttelton Times, can hardly believe that the communistic articles it publishes are really the sentiments of any British community, but they all agree that if they are it is a good place to stay away from, and nothing would induce one of them to risk a single pound of their capital in a colony where such ideas are supposed to represent the views of the people.

Our worthy Mayor, smarting under the annoyance of the failure of his trip to Wellington, has, I think, made some unfounded assertions in his speech to the Council last Monday evening, when he says that the petition presented to the House was signed mainly by shareholders or people under the control of the Gas Company. Oα examining the signatures I see they comprise most of the Banks and leading financial houses in the city, besides many of the oldest and wealthiest of our tradesmen. And this is further shown by the fact that the average number of votes represented by each signature is rather over 4£, and, so far as I can find, there is not one shareholder amongst the signatures. I cannot think our Mayor intended to put an undeserved slight upon so many influential ratepayers. Apotogieing for trespassing on your space.—Yours, &c. Nsw Shareholder.