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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

سلئر

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C.O. 882

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

Mr. I'.

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MINUTES OF EVIDENCE:

203. Where does it circulate?-Right down through 4. Gulland. the Archipelago.

13 Nov. 1902.

204. (fr. Adamson.) I dare say you would find it in the islands that are nearest to New Guinea ?—I think you agree with me.

205. Yes, I do. I think Mr. Johnson will be of the same opinion 7-The Hong Kong and Straits Govern- ments have male a profit out of this subsidiary coinage in the past, and put as much out as possible, but people thought it would give trouble some day. A few pieces may have been made into buttons, but the bulk I expect is intact

206. (Chairman.) If there is a subsidiary coinage issued by the Straits Settlements in circulation out- side Malays and the Straits Settlements, and you in trofure a gold standard, it will all come back 7-It will all come back, certainly,

207-8. (Mr. Main.) Unless it is in the hands of Chinamen -They will bring it back.

(Chairman.) It will be worth more than formerly. The half-dollar subsidiary coin will be worth half the new dollar, and it will certainly tend to come back to the Straite Bettlements.

(Mr. Blain.) I should think they would value more nilver 7

209. (Chairman.) No; but it will be worth 20 per cent, more as coin, and it will certainly tend to come back-And being all on the seaboard, is not like up- country, where they do not get news, the Chinamen would go round and pick it all up, and we should be deluged with it.

210. If there is a subsidiary coin outside the Straits Bettlements it would tend to come back. I think I have asked all I need ask now?—Very well, sir,

211. (Mr. Adamson.) There are one or two ques tions that arise out of your evidence. In regard to the advance in wages, do you consider that there has been no marked advance since 1897 in the wages of coolies, both in Singapore and the Native States!-- I personally think there has been. I was very much surprised to see that table at the end of the 1897 book.

212. Since 18977-Since 1897 I should think there has been. The plague regulations stopped the supply for a time.

213. Since 1897. But now, has there been no marked advance in the wages of coolies; for instance, at your large wharves -I should think there has been.

214. And in the tin mining districts is it not the fact that a very important advance has taken place since 18977-Well, these are questions I cannot answer. I have no knowledge personally of them. Mr. Thom- son is an employer of this labour, and he can tell you about it, I cannot.

215. Then I wanted to ask whether it was not the fact that the import trade of Singapore was mostly done by sales on credit, of one, two, and three months? -Yes.

216. If, then, you had a silver dollar of a higher value than its intrinsic value, would not the man who sends his goods to the different parts of the Archi pelago where there is a silver coinage, when his money came back to him in either produce or goods, be the loser by any fall that happened to silver in the mean- time Certainly not.

217. But you simply throw, do you not, on the Chinaman the fall of exchange which the European has been bearing up to the present? No, not at all. The Chinaman has to pay for his goods the gold value of them, as we have to pay in Calcutta for opium and gunnies, and when he sends them out of Singapore he will run no more risk of silver dropping than he does now; at least at his base in Singapore, he will have a stendier market than he has now.

218. But would he not when he sends to Calcutta draw bills? But can he draw bills if he sends his few bales to places like Palenbang or Borneo- When he sends down to Palembang he sends a few bales, but the bulk of his remittance is in guilders.

219. I am coming to that, and it is in reference to the statement which you make on the first page as regards the different values of imports and exports to silver and gold countries. Is it not a fact that the volume of transactions, the number of transactions when represented in silver in Singapore, is very much

greater than the transactions to gold countries?— How can it possibly be?

220. I will put it in this way: You sell 50 tons of pepper; you draw for that, we will say, £3,000. That 18 one operation. Now how many operations did it require the Chinaman till he collected that 50 tons of pepper 1-1 do not know; I should say perhaps fifteen or twenty-fivo.

221. Therefore, is it not rather misleading to make a comparison as regards the trades of the Straits? Is it not rather misleading to make a comparison of total values without taking that important fact into con- It sideration --Well, what else are you to take? does not matter whether you buy in little quantities or big you must look at the total. We cannot deal with retail lots; we must look at the whole volume of the trade as likely to affect the colony.

222. I am thinking of what would be the effect of a Chinaman having to deal in all these transactions if he had a dollar which he could not use? But he could use the dollar.

223. Well, I must go back then to this: If you put the dollar at 2s., that is a fictitious value?-Not if it has got a gold bark; it ceases to be a silver coin; it is like the half-crown in this country.

224. Would you limit the amount of the dollars issued at 2s. I do not know that I should, because if we have got gold at the back of them I do not know that there is any object in limiting them. We

do not want to limit anything, if possible.

225. But would not those dollars be sent in if they are only worth is. Bl., and you call them 2s. ?—No. Why would they not be sent in? The object in having bank-noter is to save the dollars. You might as well say a bank-note would come in. The half-crowns do not come in here, and the half-crowns are not worth one-fourth of what their nominal value is.

226. But the half-crown is limited. You can only pay a debt in silver in this country up to the extent of £21-Of course, you can limit the amount of the dollars, as they do in France, or you can limit the amount of payment to which they are legal tender, which we do here, but I do not know that it would be necessary to do either of these in the Straits. Wo want, as you see the Governor says, 20,000,000 of cur- rency, and as long as you have got the sovereigu at the back of it. I do not see that it matters how much it goes out. I should have an account at the Bank of England, and if you wanted to get £10,000 worth of dollars in Singapore you would pay the money in in London; they would telegraph it out, and you would get the money in Singapore, and if you returned the notes to the Government they would give you the gold for them in London in the same way.

227. (Chairman.) There is one question I would like to ask you. You do not like to limit the number of silver dollars ?-No.

228. You would like as many dollars as possible? -Yes.

229. The cheaper silver gets the more dollars you get is not that so? It is that which makes them cheap, the abundance of silver ?—Yes.

230. Yes-Certainly.

231. But what makes them cheap-The drop in the price of silver.

232. The more silver is produced, the cheaper it is? The cheaper it is, yes.

233. Therefore, the cheaper the silver is, the more dollars you get; it is easier to get dollars?-Well, we do not always get more.

234. Just confine yourself to what I say. The more silver is produced, the more dollars you get; the more dollars there would be in the world?-Certainly.

235. Therefore, if you object to limiting the number of dollars, if you have got a strong objection to limit- ing the number of dollars, you ought not to propose a gold standard, because with the silver standard you will get more dollars than you will get with a gold standard 7-But we want fixity of value.

236. Then you are prepared to limit the number of dollars for the sake of getting fixity of value? Is it necessary —We want to put gold in the place of silver.

237. But what you say is this, that you want as many dollars as possible 7-Yes.

COMMITTEE ON STRAITS SETTLEMENTS CURRENCY.

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besides the one that Sir David Barbour alluded to, was that they become so fearfully dirty, and they might G. Julland. even become the source of spreading disease; have

13 Nov. 1902 you heard of that I have heard that.

Mr. B'.

238. Now, the cheaper silver gets, the more dollare you get; therefore, if your object is to get more dol- lars, you ought to adhere to the silver standard?— Yes, we might go on to cowrie shells, and get more still

239. I do not agree with your argument, but it is You say the more dollars, your argument, not mine. the better 7-We do not want to have any tightness of money, and have to pay 10 per cent. interest for it.

That is 240. Quite so; that is what you want. what I want to got out. You do not object to the limitation of the number of dollars provided it does not make money tight?--I'rovided it does not make money tight.

241. (Mr. Blain.) You said, as regards going on to the yen, that it had been done before in the Straits Settlements, and that the objection would not be very great? I said by the natives, that they would take the yen as readily as any other coin.

242. Would there not be a great difference be- tween accepting the yen as your standard now and accepting it, as you did before, when it was a standard silver coin; now it is only a token coin? -Well, it would still go the same if the Government make it legal tender. We do not care, and the China- men do not care; nobody cares what the coin is so long as it is good for its value. What we object to now is that our dollar is not good for what it represents ; it is always slipping away from us.

243. If you take the yen now, it would not be the Government of the Straits Settlements that would keep it at its value, but the Government of Japan-Yes, Japan; I think it would be possible to work in part witli rupees, so as to ease the demand for gold. Of course, I do not know that the Indian Govern- ment would approve of our so doing.

244. (Chairman.) Of course, you could do it whether they liked it or not. You could make the rupes the legal tender for 1s. 4d., without asking the permission of the Indian Government? We would have to do it that a rupee and a half, or something of that sort, was worth a dollar.

245. You could say a rupee and a half was worth » dollar; you could do that in spite of the Government of India?-Yes, I should legalise rupees; anything that will make the acquisition of coin easy, and give the banks as free play as possible.

246. (Mr. Johnson.) A moment or two back you were speaking about capital invested in the Straits Settle- ments; can you tell us whether in the tin mines in the Malay Peninsula the capital is in the main Englisb or mainly Chinese Mainly Chinese. There is a little of it English, but it is mainly Chinese.

247. Then another point. We were speaking about one dollar notɔ8. The Straits Ordinance authorised the use of one dollar notes, but they have not yet been issued, and I understand the chief objection to them,

248. I do not say it is an objection; I wanted to know whether you thought that it was a good objec- tion I think it is a good objection to a certain extent. You can understand if you pay a paper dollar to a Chinese coolie, and he passes it on, it will get very dirty.

249. (Chairman.) Scotch notes and Irish notes are sometimes very dirty, are they not-Yes.

250. (Mr. Johnson.) They are for one pound, and these are for one dollar. I notice there is a very con- siderable export and import of dollars constantly to various countries in the East 7-Yea

251. I suppose that is partly in the payment of trade transaction; and bearing upon what Mr. Adam- son said, is it not a fact that a large number of transactions are paid directly in dollars; mean in actual coin 7-I should doubt that very much.

252. But you were speaking, in one part of your evidence, in favour of having a very large number of dollars. You did not want to cramp business by re- ducing the quantity of coin?—Yes.

253. Well, your coin was, partly, at any rate, re- quired for sending abroad?—I do not know that the new coins would go abroad so very much; they would cir culate in the colony more. Of course, if a man wants to do with Java he has to send down guilders, and if he wants to do with Siam ho sends Mexican or British dollars. I do not think these coins would go much out of the colony, at least, to begin with.

254. (Mr. Adamson.) If there was a fixed coinage, a gold coinage, with token money, would you still con- template that there would be a great movement of Mexican or other dollars?—Of bullion, cortaiuly,

255. That is what I understood P-Certainly, and I should not wish to do anything to hamper it.

256. (Chairman.) What do you think is likely to be the future of silver-is it going much lower, or not?— Well, I have always thought, sir, that it would go lower, and I have tried to find out all I could, so have had inquiries made in America. They tell me there they know nothing about it beyond its valuo from day to day in London; that it is impossible to gaugo the average cost of production. They know that certain mines can produce at a certain price, but they say that has nothing to do with it, so much of it comes now as & bye-product from copper, lead, and other metals, and that as it must be extracted from those metals, any- thing they get for it is gain.

257. Practically your evidence then, as regards that point, is that you are not prepared to give any opinion about the future of silver at all ?—No, sir, he would be a bold man that did.

Mr. P. D. THOMSON, called; and Examined.

I am the Managing Director of the Borneo Company, Limited, of London, Singapore, Sarawak, Bangkok, Chieng Mai, Batavia, and Sourabaya.

In Singapore our business is mainly with the im port of European goods and the export of Eastern produce. We are also agents for steamers, and we are interested in the coaling business of the port.

The effect of the fall in the value of silver has, of course, been a question of serious moment to us. As regards our fixed capital in the Straits, which is re- presented in our books here in gold, there has been a steady and heavy loss, which is still going on. Thore has been a loss on our remittances to this country as returns for our sales of imports. Those who have invested money in silver securities with a fixed rate of interest have suffered, and very severely so in cases where the income has to be remitted to a gold country; but I am of the opinion that those employing their capital in trade have, on the whole, benefited from the fall in silver as far as it has gone. Bingapore is not a producer, and my opinion is founded not only on my knowledge of Singapore business, but on my observation of what has happened in Java, Biam, and Sarawak, where my company has branches.

In Java, where there has always been a currency

tries.

Mr. P.

based on gold, we find no such expansion of trade as has taken place in the neighbouring silver-using coun- D. Thomson.

The import business, which might be supposed to be benefited by a stable orchange, has been for some years, and is now, in a deplorable state. The Losses by bad debts have been very heavy. All the causes for this I cannot attempt to judge, but it is the fact. We are now closing our branch at Soura- baya, because of the rotten state of the bazaar.

Sarawak and Lower Siam are on a silver basis. In Sarawak we are not only merchants, but have gold and antimony mines, and we are interested in pepper and gambier planting. In both mining and planting the low exchange has, up till now, benefited us to s large extent and assisted the development, especially in planting, to an important degree. The whole of the exports, except some timber shipped to Hong- kong, and practically all the imports go to and come from Bingapore.

In Siam, we are also interested in business outside that of the ordinary import and export trade. We

own

a large rice mill and steam saw mills, and in Upper Siam we are the lessees of oxtensive teak forests. Biam has been very prosperous of late: From 1880 to 1888 the rice export averaged 260,000 tons; from 1890