for paragraphs. The final corrected text should be output in HTML format, using
tags for paragraphs and
only when necessary.
The final answer is:
(2)
Behind the action of Her Majesty's Government in sanctioning, without reference to the Chambers of Commerce in the Far East, a Convention which gives an absolute monopoly to the Eastern Extension and Great Northern Telegraph Companies." Is an interview which Her Majesty's Minister in China, Sir Nicholas O'Conor, granted this Chamber in November, 1892, their mouthpiece said:
In common fairness to those who have to pay for telegrams, and to whom the Companies are very largely indebted for their financial success hitherto, they were entitled to be heard before any monopoly was conceded, but, doubtless fearing the consequences which might arise from our being heard, Lord Salisbury's sanction would appear to have been previously and stealthily obtained.
On the subject of the Telegraphic Convention recently signed by the Russian Minister and Sheng Tuotai, the Director-General of the Imperial Chinese Telegraphs, we would like to say a few words to your Excellency. The mercantile community, long saddled with a $2 per word rate between China and Europe, a rate imposed and kept up by an agreement between the Great Northern and the Eastern Extension Telegraph Companies, have been waiting impatiently for the day when the Chinese, connecting their lines with the Russian land lines, would be able to give us a much cheaper word rate. They could do it easily and profitably.
The new Convention rivets our fetters for ten years to come. It is a term of the Convention, especially introduced into the instrument by Russia, that no messages from the ports for Europe shall be taken by the overland lines under $2 a word. We hand to your Excellency a copy of a memorial and petition presented by this Chamber in 1890 to Her Majesty the Queen on this subject, and the reply, in which we are promised that no such Convention shall be ratified.
The memorial embodies our whole case, and we pray you to study it and to oppose with all your power the ratification of this Convention, which is also injurious to China herself.
Clause 3 of the memorial in question reads:
...
The Foreign Trade of China and Japan with your Majesty's dominions and with your Majesty's subjects is carried on under and is regulated by the provisions of certain Treaties made between Your Most Gracious Majesty and the Emperors of China and Japan respectively, and by these Treaties certain well-defined rights are secured to the subjects of your Majesty trading in and to China and Japan.
Clause 4 reads:--
Of these rights the most valuable are those which secure to your Majesty's subjects all the benefits and advantages of any privilege or concession which may be, at any time, granted by China or Japan to the subjects of any other nation, and those which forbid the creation by China or Japan of any monopoly or exclusive privilege in favour either of their own subjects or of any foreign nation to the prejudice of the rights and privileges granted to your Majesty's subjects.
Clause 14 reads:-
Your Petitioners most humbly thank your Majesty for having refused your assent to the Convention and to any modification of it, and for your Majesty's most gracious assurance, through your Ministers in the Commons House of Parliament, that no consent will be given to the Convention without full consideration of all the interests involved and without consultation with the representatives of British commerce;
and Clause 16 reads:--
to 31st July this year was unnecessarily high and could have been modified, which would undoubtedly have been followed by a greatly increased traffic, high rates necessarily restricting telegraphic communication.
The competition of the Chinese Telegraph Administration up to the 1st of last month had kept the rate to Europe at $2 per word, but the Chinese Government having been forced into the new Agreement by the European Powers, the Telegraph Companies--England having ratified the Convention which gives them an absolute monopoly--are now thereby enabled, at one day's notice, to raise the rates from the Far East to Europe 37 1/2 per cent., to America 120 per cent., and for local telegrams 100 per cent.
As the Editor of the North China Herald, in his issue of the 21st ult., very pertinently remarks:
The influence which the Cable Companies can bring to bear has been too much for our Home Government, and they have approved the new Convention. It is a disgrace in foreigners that they should have coerced the Chinese into this retrograde step.
In China, monopolies are provided against in the treaties made by Foreign Powers; and here we have two of the same Powers, Great Britain and Russia, forcing a monopoly in China to the disadvantage of the mercantile community.
Our hope lies in a Pacific cable. That one will be laid before long is certain, and the desire of the existing Cable Companies to raise the rates has been stimulated by the wish to collect large reserve funds to help them in fighting this future competitor.
In fact, the merchants in China are being squeezed now to enable their telegraphic masters to fight the Company which promises to liberate trade from its fetters.
If the shareholders in the Cable Companies had been carrying on business for years at a loss, we might sympathise with them; but they have made, as we showed recently, very handsome profits.
Mr. Alford, Chairman of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce, wrote to the Cable Companies on the 11th:--
Your directors are apparently ignorant or have ignored the fact that though the volume of trade may be increasing, the margins of profit have narrowed to an extent which often causes telegraphic expenses to check business, and your action therefore means that messages will be restricted in every possible manner both in number and in length.
Thus, whilst your revenue will probably derive little or no advantage, you will have turned satisfaction into dissatisfaction among those to whom you are almost entirely indebted for your success in the East.
I notice from the proceedings of the third Congress of Chambers of Commerce held in London last June that a resolution was adopted in favour of a Canadian-Australian cable as a step towards a competitive route to India.
This, if carried into effect, would be a move forward in the direction we are aiming at.
There is no doubt that a cable across the Pacific would in any case in time prove a successful enterprise, and if we could guarantee in the main, if not the entire business of the Far East, I think the inducement to lay such a cable will be very great.
I would, moreover, complete the telegraphic girdle round the world, and that is much to be desired as tending to further economy of time in means of communication.
Of course, if the Telegraph Companies meantime agree to reduce the rates they have recently increased so heavily, the Pacific Cable may be deferred for some time, though there is little doubt that it will be laid before the next century gets into its teens.
Let us hope, however, that the Telegraph Companies will see the sweet reasonableness of making a timely concession to those who have been such excellent constituents to them in the past.
With these remarks, gentlemen, I beg to propose the third resolution, as follows:- That the members of this Chamber, in the event of the Eastern Extension and Great Northern Telegraph Companies refusing to reduce to a reasonable level the high rates now levied by them, pledge themselves to give their fullest assistance and support to any Company that, while providing an efficient service, will agree to charge moderate telegraphic rates between the Far East and Europe and America.
(Applause).
Mr. ST. C. MICHAELSEN-I have great pleasure in seconding this resolution.
This resolution, in my opinion, is the most important one, and I am sure that every one in this room will heartily and fully support it, and thus show the two Cable Companies how the feeling is running amongst the commercial community and their supporters.
The Committee of this Chamber, I am quite sure, will do its utmost to make this resolution known as widely as possible all over the world, so that any parties who may have a special interest in this question shall become aware of it.
I have also no doubt that not only the members of this Chamber but everyone in the Far East will heartily welcome and support any competition that may be established which has for its purpose opposition to the two cable companies.
(Loud applause).
Mr. GRANVILLE SHARP- Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, we shall all feel the truth of the remarks made by Mr. Jackson about the unfailing courtesy, from generation to generation, of the managers of the United Telegraph Companies.
The time having passed, which Mr. D. R. SASSOON-I have much pleasure in seconding the motion.
Mr. Whitehead has put the case so clearly before us that I do not think I can say anything to make matters clearer.
I think we are all fully persuaded that the action of the Telegraph Companies is not at all right and that they have placed restrictions where restrictions ought to have been taken off.
I have much pleasure in seconding.
(Applause).
Carried unanimously.
The CHAIRMAN-Gentlemen, I have been asked to move the third resolution, and do so with pleasure, believing that, in order to render our protest effective, we must make the Telegraph Companies understand that we are in earnest.
This is not a mere formal protest, and we do not intend, if we can help it, to let the matter rest here, with a mere expression of indignation.
The resolution I have to propose pledges the members of this Chamber to assist and support any company that may lay a cable hither either from Vancouver or San Francisco, and that, while guaranteeing an efficient service, will agree to charge reasonable rates for telegrams.
I hope we all regard this seriously, and it will become our interest and duty to do our best to encourage the projectors of these Pacific cables to push their schemes into accomplishment.
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the volume of business between the Chinese Empire and the home countries in order that those who have in the past profited by the liberal margins which existed in business may in the future do as well as formerly--who knows that they may not do better by the increased volume of trade which is done by them.
This, gentlemen, can only be accomplished in one way, and that is by the increase in every possible manner of cheap and rapid steam and electric communication between China, not only the ports of China but the length and breadth of the Chinese Empire, and Western countries.
This is essential. And there is no way out of it. It cannot be done without. We must have constant communication; we must have rapid communication; and we must have cheap communication.
Everyone in the China trade, whether...