HONGKONG, January 6th, 1900.
Enclosure.
BRITISH shipowners going out of business!
A large and valuable overseas carrying trade for sale on easy terms to foreigners, in lots to suit purchasers!! Is this quite as it ought to be? In the last annual Consular report (1898) from Bangkok Mr. CARLISLE says:- "By far the most interesting though not the most pleasant event of recent years to British shipping at this port has occurred during the present year 1899, and although, therefore, not strictly within the limits of this summary, it must perforce be referred to here. Messrs. ALFRED HOLT AND Co., of Liverpool, have sold their East Indian Ocean Steamship Line, numbering eleven steamers, and including all those running between Singapore and Bangkok, and Singapore and Borneo, to a German syndicate, said to be composed of the North German Lloyd Steamship Company, Messrs. BEHN MEYER, of Singapore, and Messrs. WINDSOR AND Co., of Bangkok, though the exact composition of it has not been published authoritatively.
This will make a reduction of nearly 33 per cent. in the British shipping at this port, and the figures for British and German shipping entered will, ceteris paribus, stand at 266 and 161 respectively instead of 396 and 31 at present. British residents at both ports are naturally somewhat taken aback by this sweeping change, and feel rather disappointed that the only regular line between Siam and Singapore should no longer be under the British flag." The Scottish Oriental Line, running between Hongkong and Bangkok, has now gone the way of the Singapore and Bangkok steamers and the respective positions of British and German shipping at Bangkok will be completely reversed, German shipping standing at the head with British a very bad second.
Consider what this means. Politically the influence of Great Britain in Siam will be proportionately diminished and that of Germany increased, with a corresponding loss of prestige to Great Britain. Commercially it means not only that the immediate profit of the steamers will be diverted from British to foreign accounts, but that a large number of British employés will, after a brief interval, be replaced by foreigners, the stores will be obtained from German instead of British sources, and when new steamers are required for the line their construction will afford employment to foreign instead of to British artisans. And what has already happened to a couple of British shipping concerns is not unlikely to happen to others.
Under the insidious influence of the Shipping Conference foreign competition is fostered until it is in a position to buy up the British branch lines; and if British concerns are willing to sell - it will pay our foreign competitors, politically and commercially, to pay the price asked. If the process goes on we may see the main lines also transferred, and in the course of years, when the shipping entering the port of Hongkong has increased perhaps tenfold, the British red ensign may be as rare a sight in our harbour as it is at Sandakan, which is now entirely dependent on German shipping for its communications.
No one expects to find patriotism in trade. As has been well said, trade follows the price list rather than the flag; and pounds, shillings and pence being the only consideration recognised, no one can blame any individual British shipowner who sells his business to foreigners when he finds it to his interest to do so. The public may well ask, however, whether there must not be something wrong with a system which fosters such transfers. Is it our shipping laws that are at fault or the law of conspiracy as applied to such combinations as the Shipping Conference? Is it right that capitalists who for the time being happen to control important national interests should be allowed to sacrifice them in order to put a profit of a few thousand pounds into their own pockets?
No one can deny that our shipping trade is a great national interest. If we allow ourselves to be bought out of it and the British flag disappears from the seas, what permanent recompense could the nation find in the immediate profit realised? Political economy may tell us that there must be no interference with free trade, and that shipowners must be allowed to sell their business if they find it to their personal interest to do so, but political economy gives us only the result of past experience and supplies no exact principles upon which new conditions can be dealt with. This buying out of Britishers from the shipping trade in which they have hitherto been pre-eminent is an entirely new condition and calls for earnest consideration with a view to preventing its further spread.
The transfers of British lines of steamers to a foreign flag that have already taken place in the Far East constitute a much more serious though less sensational reverse to the British nation than the recent military checks in South Africa that have so thrilled the nation. They mean that we are being whipped in trade and have been permanently ousted from positions we formerly held unchallenged.
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your most obedient
humble servant,
Henry Aslake,
Governor.