The Great Valentine Company.

Opunake Times, Volume I, Issue 48, 14 December 1894, Page 4

The Great Valentine Company.

We have been patiently waitiug for the developments of the great Valentine New Zealand Produce Agency and Distributing Company, of London, and according to cable news received tbey are beginning to unfold themselves in a very interesting way. The public will remember that Mr Valentine recently came to this country under special engagement to the New Zealand Government as a dairy expert. His salary was liberal, and his. travelling allowances were not stinted. He travelled through the country, and in much voluble speech satisfied the farmers that he knew more of the European markets for butter than he did of its manufacture. Recently it was announced that he had left for England to specially advise the Government from London as a Resident Agent there. Persons who were familiar with the subject knew the excellent work was being done for this country in that capacity by Mr Lowe —his reports are in evidence—for the modest consideration of £IOO per annum. Why, then, was Mr Valentine, with his family, franked in hot haste to London ostensibly to take up this office at (quadrupled cost to the country? But we are anticipating. After his arrival in London we find him lending all the weight of his official position to the promotion of a huge public company to handle the produce of New Zealand. Nay, more, the influence and status of the Agent General is thrown into the scale to assist the floating of the concern. And to-day we know its principal primary object—to purchase the London business, warehouse, plant, branches, agencies of Nelson Brothers, Limited, for a consideration in paid-up shares of £250,000 and 80,000 in cash. Now, it has long been an open secret that a Minister of the Crown has had most intimate business relations, involving large investment of capital, with Nelson Brothers. It is farther be iug freely stated among leading commercial men in Dunedin that general agency for New Zealand of tills projected London company is to be bestowed upon the J. G. Ward Company of Southland. Under ordinary circumstances there is no warrant for the invasion by a newspaper of the domain of any man's business affairs. But here the circumstances are extraordinary, and the motives of the Government are now so justly opened to distrust and suspicion as to make it our clear duty to direct public attention to a transaction that seems to point to the fact that the Government is using its power and influence to promote a public company in London, the success of which will apparently result in personal advantage to a Minister of the Crown.—Wellington Post.