Enclosure."
Chamber of Commerce,
held on
the 19th ultimo, to protest against the recent action of the Joint Telegraph Companies in raising their rates to Europe, America and China.
I have the honour to be,
Sir, Your most obedient
humble servant,
Wittain Robingsy
C. O.
23034 Rec2
Recd NOV 36
6
HONGKONG GENERAL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE,
Reprinted from the "Hongkong Daily Press."
PROTEST AGAINST THE INCREASE IN TELEGRAPH RATES.
On Saturday, the 19th September, 1896, a special meeting at the Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce was held in their Rooms, at the City Hall, for the purpose of protesting against the recent increase in telegraph rates, and also for the purpose of nominating a member for appointment to the Legislative Council. Mr. A. McConachie, Chairman of the Chamber, presided, and there were also present Hon. T. H. Whitehead, Hon. J. J. Bell Irving, Mr. T. Jackson, Mr. N. A. Siebs, Mr. G. B. Dodwell, Mr. N. J. Ede, Mr. St. C. Michaelson (members of the Committee), Mr. R. C. Wilcox (Secretary), Hon. E. R. Belilios, C.M.G., Hon. C. P. Chater, Messrs. G. H. Potts, P. C. Sethua, G. L. Tomlin, A. J. David, T. Arnold, Hart Back, O. Wegener, F. Maitland, G. de Champeaux, M. Lacase, J. H. Garrels, H. N. Mody, Geo. W. F. Playfair, D. R. Sassoon, M. J. Ezekiel, W. Whiley, H. Stolterfoht, W. H. Ray, W. Poate, J. H. Cox, A. Coxon, M. S. Bassoon, H. J. Holmes, W. Danby, H. L. Dennys, E. H. Joseph, W. R. Loxley, Granville Sharp, G. Stewart, I. Wicking, D. B. Crawford, B. Jones Hughes, H. R. Kinnear, R. L. Richardson, J. W. R. Taylor, H. Jessen, T. F. Hough, and M. M. Mehta.
The SECRETARY read the notice calling the meeting.
The CHAIRMAN -- I think I need hardly detain you by going at length into the question before us. We have met today to protest against the sudden and very heavy increase in their rates which the Joint Telegraph Companies, having first concluded a convention with the Chinese Telegraph Administration, thus paving the way by securing a monopoly, saw fit on the 1st ult. to spring upon us after only a single day's notice. Well, gentlemen, I can only hope that our protest will be emphatic and that it may prove effective. You have all of you no doubt read the correspondence, and can readily form your own judgment on the case. I will now call upon Mr. Jackson to move the first resolution.
Mr. T. JACKSON - I preface my remarks by stating that the Telegraph Companies have ever done their work well, and that a more obliging and more painstaking set of public servants I have never met. That is the rose colour of the affair. Now, I come to the subject of the meeting of to-day, and I must say that it came upon me as a very great surprise indeed to find them raising their rates the way they did. I have read their side of the case very carefully. Their contention is that they are only putting the rates homewards on the same basis as the rates outwards. That would be all very well if the rates outwards were at a reasonable figure; but surely at this period, at the end of the nineteenth century, 7s. a word from London to Hongkong is an excessive rate. (Hear, hear.) Every person must admit that. (Applause.) I thoroughly believe that in the course of a very few years people will say, "I remember when in Hongkong the telegraph rate from London to Hongkong was 8s. per word." It is a monstrous charge. Therefore I say that instead of raising the homeward rates the Telegraph Companies might have met their constituents with a reasonable reduction of the outward rates, corresponding with the sterling value of the amount homeward. The question that arises is -- Can they afford to do it? I say, Yes, (Applause), emphatically. The Chinese Administration, I believe, returned something like twenty-four per cent. to their shareholders. At a recent meeting of the Great Northern Company held in Copenhagen they reported a reserve fund of nearly a million sterling; and as for the Eastern Extension Company I should say happy are the shareholders in that concern. They have gone on increasing their lines, and, as their position is a splendid one, they can afford to be just to their shareholders and generous to the public. There is another matter which no doubt some of the subsequent speakers may refer to, and that is the convention with the Chinese Administration. In connection with that it has come out that Chinese messages go over the lines at half-price. The circular sent round by the Joint Telegraph Companies was to my mind wholly unsatisfactory. It seems to me as if they were handicapping us, and we are not receiving that consideration that we ought to under the most-favoured-nation clause. People like ourselves who contribute very considerably to the existence of the Telegraph Companies should be very good friends with the Joint Telegraph Companies, with whom our relations in the past have been of a most friendly and favourable description, will reconsider their action. Now I have formally to move the first resolution: "That this Chamber is of opinion that the action of the Eastern Extension and Great Northern Telegraph Companies in having, after only one day's notice, on the 1st August last, raised their rates 37.4 per cent. and 43.26 per cent. for telegrams to Europe and America respectively, and 100 per cent for telegrams between Hongkong and Shanghai, is utterly unjustifiable and that their reasons for so doing are inadmissible and wholly insufficient."
Hon. J. J. BELL-IRVING said - Gentlemen, I have listened with much interest to Mr. Jackson's remarks, with which I entirely concur. This Chamber, representing as it does the commercial interests of the colony, is called upon to strongly protest against any circumstance which may arise tending to hamper our trade. The recent action of the Telegraph Companies will hamper commercial intercourse, and the increase of the telegraph charges is not warranted, as Mr. Jackson has pointed out, by the handsome results which the published reports of the Eastern Extension and the Great Northern Telegraph Companies have shown during recent years. I think the mercantile community here, who have supported these companies for so many years, have good reason to now feel aggrieved. I am sure you will all heartily concur with the resolution proposed by Mr. Jackson, which I have much pleasure in seconding. (Applause).
The resolution was carried.
Hon. T. H. WHITEHEAD - Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I rise to move "That this Chamber views with the greatest anxiety and
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