CO882-(6-8) — Page 467

PUBLIC

། ༣། ཟ། [

RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

C.O. 882

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with on his first engagement in London,-was, that he would find the Singapore Chairman (ie., myself) much opposed to improvement and efficiency and the progression of this Company. We are, of course, quite well aware here that an aim and policy of some members of the London Consulting Committee is to reduce the dignity and the independence and the value of the Board of Directors in Singapore, and of the Chairman in particular, but we had hardly expected that to attain this some of these men would lay themselves out to make statements of that kind. These are the men who would wish to control and direct the business and affairs of this Company, and who would also desire the confidence and respect of members of

this Board,

LONDON COMMITTEE MUST GO.

The London Consulting Committee will have to go; it is only a question of time, and the earlier it goes the better in the long run for Shareholders in general; for, until dual control, and any possibility of it, is absolutely eliminated, no directorate or management can possibly work with confidence, or with satisfactory results. (Applause.)

I think I have given you conclusive evidence that it is not the Board in Singapore nor its Chairman who have stood in the way of this Company being in the position that it should by now have been in to satisfactorily cope with the increased and growing requirements of the port. I affirm in the most emphatic manner that it is the existence of the London Consulting Committee that is responsible for our not being better equipped and further on than we are. I lay no claim to possessing any engineering knowledge, but I do claim to know in principle what the Tanjong-Pagar Dock Company requires, and I also believe that I quite know my own mind in regard to what I would have effected for the Company.

SINGAPORE CAN DO THE WORK.

No "FIGUREHEAD CHAIRMAN."

With an insight into the Company's working and requirements that one could hardly help acquiring from close study of its affairs during twenty years over which I have been associated with its Directorate, I should feel myself incompetent if that experience had not given me an exceptional knowledge of its workings, ita shortcomings, and its requirements. And I think, too, it will be recognised as quite natural that the Chairman of this Company, unless he be of the mere "figurehead" kind, cannot but learn and know behind the scenes and below the surface a great deal more than even that which his colleagues on the Board are able to come into knowledge of or touch with on the surface. This, indeed, is part of the training and duty necessary to competently fit a Chairman of this Company for his office. I admit that I am indeed very far short of the qualifications and the very exceptional knowledge and experience in this respect possessed by my predecessor in this chair, the late Mr. Thomas Scott, but I had the advantage, an incalculable one, of knowing his work and his policy well, and knew, too, that it possessed such soundness, wisdom, and foresight, and was governed by motives ao high and so single-minded in the true and best interests of the Company, that no better course could be taken by his successor than to attempt to follow him.

And in this connection I want to tell the Shareholders something that it is fair to this Board and to myself as its recent Chairman they should know, viz., that there is not one single scheme now before the Company for the improvement of its premises, the principle of which had not been ventilated and proposed at this Board table before the days of professional engineers as Managing Directors.

I am not in any sense making deprecatory reference to or reflections on the personality or abilities of these officers, but I am desirous of laying stress on the fact that we never were allowed by the London Consulting Committee to go ahead on our own judgment or initiative, or on our own representations. As I think I have already shown you there has been no failure on my part to put forward to London in detail our many and various wants, nor has there, I think, been any room for misinterpreting or misunderstanding the language in which these requirements have been vigorously urged and reiterated, and yet from the London Committee's side not one single word can I ever remember receiving of approval of what I had urged, or encouragement to go ahead"!

Is it for one moment believed or thought possible by anyone that we cannot here get made plans and specifications of what we know is needed, and then get the work done? Cannot Singapore of itself construct docks, wharves and buildings? Yes; and given the necessary nooney can build them well, too. Most assuredly we can. Who, pray, has done all the planning and designing and building in the past in respect to which, according to the money at our disposal, and the times, there has never been anything to be ashamed of?

In this respect there are some servants in this Company's employ who may not have professional initials to their names, but whose experience and abilities and thoroughness at our work and whose knowledge of and close practical acquaintance with what we need I would not place in value to us below those of some men more favoured in academic advantages.

THE NEW DOCK SCHEME.

ATTEMPT TO WHITTLE Down.

I want to refer particularly to our need for the new big graving dock, for permission to build which we have been hammering at the London Committee ever since 1899. It is not built yet, but I will say this, that if there had been no Consulting Committee that dock would now have been constructed and in use. As it is, we shall have to wait at least three years longer at the earliest before it can be ready. We have at last got sanction to build this big dock, but it has been like drawing teeth to obtain that sanction from London. Latterly they haggled with us over the estimated cost. We wanted sanction to an estimate for this dock of $2,000,000. It is hardly to be believed, but their response to this was Bauction for $1,800,000

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(loud laughter), and it was only with, in a sense, a pistol at their heads, that we ultimately got sanction for what we wanted. These are the people that claim that they are helping the Tanjong Pagar Dock Company along, and that it is the Board and the Chairman in Singapore (myself) who are standing in the way of progression.

CONTROL BY CORRESPONDENCE.

REAMS OF USELESS MINUTES.

PRIVATE BACK-DOOR TELEGRAMS.

They hold meetings of the Committee in London every fortnight, and send us quires of far-fetched and useless minutes, for which, in great meastire, they have to keep an unneces sarily expensive staff in London, paid for, of course, by the Company. They demand and get at useless waste of expensive clerical labour on this side, copies of our minutes, copies of all important letters, proceedings, documents and plans, and statements of works in progress. So much do they conceive that they exist to supremely control, direct, and dictate, that they have even recorded in their minutes that are sent out every fortnight for our guidance and instruction, their disapproval of my action as Chairman in enlightening Shareholders in general meeting on what I felt it right they should know. Junior partners on the Board here write budgets to their seniors on the Committee in London, and get back letters that it will be mild to speak of here as pungent. When the representatives on the Board here of those London gentlemen have ventured to exercise on this side their free and unfettered judgment, they are, if this does not accord with London views, immediately faced with private back-door telegrams commanding that they shall reverse their position and support the Committee view. My colleagues have told me of at least three glaring instances of this, in which they have been commanded to reverse votes recorded upon their own free judgment.

Then the Chairman has to steer the Board to avoid these unfortunate gentlemen from getting into trouble. So much have some members of the London Committee grown to look upon themselves as the ordained proprietors and directors of the whole Company, that their official weekly letters and minutes--except for those parts that necessarily deal with business contain little else than evidence of how they criticise, carp, object, restrain, instruct, and direct. The result is inevitably natural.

THE DEADLY UPAS TREE OF LONDON.

CRAMPS AND REPRESSES INITIATIVE.

We have an element on the Singapore Board which is in subjection to and under command of these London gentlemen. That element has not got and never can count on having com- plete freedom of opinion, of freedom to act upon their own judgments. As already pointed out, they are junior partners of, or at any rate under the commanding influence of, seniors at home, who are determined to direct the affairs of the Company from London. Any initiative in these juniors on the Board here is naturally deadened; they hesitate to act lest they get rapped over the knuckles from home; they often have had nasty times for following their own common sense and the lead of a Chairman who to those in London would seem to have been an abomination. As a consequence, the whole Board here has to be steered to a course such as will keep these members of it out of trouble. There thus hangs over the Directorate in Singapore a chronic condition of cramp and repression. These men dare not record, nor can they persist in, their own opinions and judgment, if these hoppen to be in direct opposition to the commands of the London Consulting Committee. It follows that there is an intuitive feeling which tells them "the less we do or say or initiate, the less we are likely to get ourselves into trouble or conflict."

The upper point or question in their mind always is," Oh! but am I likely to get into hot water over this from London ? " That is another way in which the London Committee claims to be helping the progression and advancement of this Company. It is a condition of things that goes a long way towards making effectual the London injunction to our first Managing Director to steer clear of local experience." These gentlemen on the Singapore Board are all, I imagine, considered good and able enough to manage the businesses with which they are associated, but they must not manage the Tanjong-Pagar Dock Company. That must, of course, and only can be done from London.

THE INTERESTS OF THE PORT.

SHOULD THERE BE A PORT TRUST? DISAPPOINTED EXPECTATIONS-$750 A SHARE.

MR. ANDERSON, THOUGH ABSENT, BLAMED.

Now, gentlemen, these London people that I have been speaking about claim that they have the best interests of this Company at heart, and the interests of the port as well, for I think we have got them to believe and recognise that the interests of the two are really one and the same.

But I propose to show you that what they really have at heart is something not exactly the same as the true interests in the long run of this Company as a factor in the well-being of Singapore as a port.

I was in England from May of 1900 to early in 1901, and during that time there was, I believe, a good deal of talk in Singapore in advocacy of the creation here of a Government "Port Trust," which it was suggested should absorb the Tanjong-Pagar Dock Company'a property and business. I may say, parenthetically, that I believe the suggestion cropped up by reason of its being common knowledge in Singapore that the Tanjong-Pagar Dock Company was in reality controlled and directed by people in London, and that the Directors are crippled

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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