THE PACIFIC CABLE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9490, 20 April 1894, Page 5

THE PACIFIC CABLE.

INTERVIEW WITH MR. WARD. [BY TKLUQKAPH.— PRESS ASSOCIATION.} '.Wellington, Thursday. Interviewed by the Press Association with regard to Sir John Pender's letter re the Pacific cable, Mr. Ward said he had not. had time to go into the figures seb forth therein, but he differed from Sir John very strongly in the conclusions he had arrived at. He was of opinion thab Sir John had greatly magnified the amount of guarantee that was necessary, and ho had in his opinion entirely ignored any increase of bustness that would result from the reduced tariff, such as that proposed at the sitting of the Postal Conference at Auckland. While suggesting that £105,000 per annum would bo required for 14 years for the proSosed Pacific cable, Sir J. Pender had eviently overlooked the fact that an amortization fund, which the Eastern Extension Cable Company had set aside for the replacing of their cables, had nob been used during the last 14 years to anything like the above proportions, thus showing that the amount was set extravagantly high, and he (Mr. Ward) was afraid that Sir J. Pender was nob doing justice to the vast expansion of business that necessarily would take place in these colonies when he asked those interested in the project to believe 'that the Pacific cable would earn only £89,530 per annum. It would, in Mr. Ward's opinion, have only been reasonable for Sir John to have given the average yearly increase in revenue thab had taken place in the Eastern Extension Company's existing lines during the last fourteen years, and to have accepted thab as a fair criterion of the yearly increase of revenue of a company owning a cable such as that proposed to be laid across the Pacific. It was but natural for Sir J. Pender to desire to protect the shareholders of his company from the opposition that would necessarily be created by the establishment of the Pacific cable, bub he (Mr. Ward) held that th§ colonies could not take cognisance of the interests of shareholders in what is and had been an ordinary commercial undertaking. Mr. Ward held that among other things the business of the statesmen of Australasia was to provide the best means of transit by cable between the colonies and Europe, and thab if in the establishment of the Pacific cable it meant interference with what had up to the present been a lucrative investment for the shareholders of the Eastern Extension Cable Company, and while shareholders were to be sympathised with, this was no reason why a great work of this kind should bo dropped by the colonies. Sir J. Ponder did riot seem to attach importance to the fact that a cable across the Pacific would oonnecb Fiji, Samoa, the Sandwich Islands, and other Pacific islands, with the outside world, and tend to greatly expand trade relations with those places, which in Mr. Ward's opinion was very desirable. Mr. Ward firmly believed that the delegates at the Canadian Conference would snow that- they were strongly impressed with the great advantages, both of a national and commercial character that establishment of the Pacific cable. He did nob care by whom the work was carried out so long as the colonies and the mother country in return for their guarantee gob rates lower than those that at present existed.