STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19700, 29 January 1926, Page 13

STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY

EFFECTS OF THE STRIKE. ATTACK ON SHIPPING. RESERVE CAPITALISATION. (Pnou Ocb Owx Correspondent.) LONDON. December 18. t Sir Kenneth S. Anderson, Bt., K.C.M.G., presiding at the twenty-sixth ordinary general meeting of the Orient Steam. Navigation Company (Limited) . said that after providing for depreciation and contingencies, the profits on the past year’s working was £320,790, as compared with £295,576 the previous year. The managers recommended that £200,000 be transferred to general reserve account, and that a dividend on the deferred shares at the rate of 12j per cent., free of income tax, be paid. The company had carried more passengers, both outwards and homewards, and the earnings under these headings were bigger. There were indications that travel for business reasons was on tli increase, but they were still i a long way from carrying the number of saloon passengers which they carried in 1912-13. Increased enquiry for round-the-world fares promised a reviving interest in pleasure travel, but here again they had much leeway to make up before they approached their pre-war figures. Migration traffic showed no signs of expansion; indeed, it was difficult to say that any advance whatever had been made, despite all the spade work which, during the last live years, had been done in this country for its promotion. Shippers of outward cargo continued to give the company good support, and they had derived some slight benefit from the aggregate increase in berth cargo shipped from the East Coast ports of the United Kingdom during the year. The volume of berth tonnage offering was still, however, on the , average, 100 per cent, in excess of the cargo available. But for the conservative policy pursued by the managers in the past, it. would hate been difficult, if not impossible, to build up the fine fleet they now possessed, and for that reason, as well as to meet other contingencies, foreseen or unforeseen, they must continue to add to their reserves. Those reserves had already been translated in part into fixed capital employed in the form of steamships or otherwise in the company’s business, and this process would continue. That being so. the managers were considering whether it would not bo desirable to make the capital account reflect more accurately than it did the amount or money which the shareholders had at risk in the business, and the rate of return which they received upon that money. Whatever adjustment Ihoy might recommend in the capital account, they would not contemplate the capitalisation of more than some portion of the reserves, though they were all represented by net assets which stood in the books at a safe value.ATTEMPT TO PARALYSE BPvITISH SHIPPING. At the end of August a concerted and simultaneous attempt was made to paralyse British shipping in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. In South Africa it collapsed at a relatively early' date, and in t.ho United Kingdom it was from the start a signal failure, although all the usual me mods of violence and intimidation which the present state of the law countenanced, were fully employed. In Australia and New Zealand, with few exceptions, it succeeded in achieving an almost complete holdup of British ships for three whole months. The men who struck, and in many cases whole crews, broke their articles by desertion or refusal of duty. For that reason the strike was foredoomed to failure from the ■ start. It had inflicted enormous losses on the owners, thus diminishing the fund out of which wages were paid, and in so far as these losses were represented by the freight whicn the ships should have carried, it had pro tanto gone to strengthen the position of our foreign competitors, who were paying about half the wages current on British ships. It had brought discredit on the good faith of the British seamen, it had inflicted a blow at trade unionism and tta principle of collective bargaining, and it had. also entailed much inconvenience and loss to producers,, importers, and exporters. But for this deplorable setback, it would have been possible to Ipok forward hopefully to the results of the current year. Shipping in general was still a very black spot, if not the blackest spot of all, but shipowners had never asked for subsidies. What they did ask for was Government economy and lower taxation, a halt in the incessant growth of statutory regulations and abstention on the part of the Government from ratifying and giving effect to international conventions before they had been ratified and given effect to by other maritime nations. ■ The report was unanimously adopted.