HIGH COMMISSIONER'S OFFICE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2914, 19 January 1910, Page 72

HIGH COMMISSIONER'S OFFICE.

(Daily Times.) Our Christchurch contemporary the Press expresses the opinion in its issue of yesterday that the public should be enlightened as to the circumstances which surrounded the bestowal by the Government upon a firm trading in London under the name of “E. A. Smith” of a considerable quantity of shipping business, that should have been transacted in the ordinary course of affairs by the High Commissioner’s Office and as to the identity of the persons forming the firm. The information which our contemporary seeks for the benefit of the public would, there is good reason to suppose, prove particularly interesting. The entire understanding under which “E. A. Smith ” enjoyed the patronage of the High Commissioner’s Office can only be regarded a.s peculiar. In accordance with it this firm seems to have had the good fortune to have acted as an intermediary, where the reason for the existence of any was by no means apparent, between the High Commissioner’s Office and the shipping companies with which negotiations had to be made for the passages of assisted emigrants tot New Zealand, and necessarily, of course, as the services “E. A. Smith ” performed in this connection were rendered in the way of business, the firm charged and received its commission. This was, if the reports that are current in Anglo-colonial circles at Home and that have reached us are to be relied upon, not the only monopoly which “E. A. Smith ” enjoyed by favour of the High Commissioner’s Office. It is asserted that another agency in connection with the business of the Government of the Dominion in England—an agency that was, we should think, even more remunerative than that relating to the emigration of assisted passengers—was confined exclusively to this firm. The business of “E. A. Smith,” which was conducted in offices in the same building as that wherein the offices of the High Commissioner are, was from all accounts a distinctly profitable one, as in the circumstances we can fully realise it was, and it is stated that the firm was able to employ a considerable staff of clerks. It was announced last session by the Prime Minister that, as a result of the reorganisation in the High Commissioner’s Office, the Government will be able to save the amount that has been paid to outsiders as commission for doing business for it. This is interpreted, no doubt correctly, to mean that the arrangement between the High Commissioner’s Office and “ E. A. Smith ” has been terminated, and this, so far, is satisfactory. But the public will be curious to know, as it has a right to know, how the firm ever came to secure such a valuable monopoly as it enjoyed and also how the firm was composed that was so fortunate as to receive the patronage, in the way it did, of the High Commissioner’s Office.