ROMANCE OF COMMERCE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 318, 6 July 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

ROMANCE OF COMMERCE

There is no more remarkable romance in commerce than the story of the prodigious development of the great thread

combine of Messrs J. and P. Coats, which has just lost its chief controller by the deatii of .Mr. Archibald Coats. He was chairman of the concern when the amalgamation was effected, and did much to .secure the astonishing prosperity which the undertaking has enjoyed all along the line, lie was the second son of Sir Peter Coats, of Auchendraue, and had been associated with the business all his life. This great international combination, who-.e annual profits now exceed £3.000.000. had its origin in a small thread manufactory started by a soldier at Paisley almost sixty years ago. The real beginning of the combination was in lfiiH), when the present company was started with a capital of £5.70(1,000. During the previous- seven years the profits had averager! £42(1,000 a. year. For the next four years the dividend was eight per cent. Then it mounted to ten per cent. The following year, 1800, it was twenty per cent., and two years later thirty per cent., when for the first time the profits exceeded seven figures, fir 1000 the profits were C2.011,f)40, and a thirty per cent, divided was accompanied by a twenty per cent, bonus. In 1007 the profits' exceeded C 3,000,000. For the last three years the dividends have been thirtv-live per cent., and the profits regularly over £3.(100,000. Meanwhile the paid-up capital has reached ten and a-half millions, and the reserves eight and a-quarter millions. Yet when tlic sweated operators plead for an increase in the weekly pittance they receive, the world is assured that to concede would spell ruin.