607
though I suspected that the Corporation would have to follow its own bad precedent in the Shanghai Nanking case and abandon their Profit Certificates to the bondholders.
As for the public, I said that none of us were really in a position to forecast what the respective proportions of the local traffic would be: for my part I anticipated a considerable suburban traffic for Kowloon and any high-class prospectus-writer would quite honestly dress up as attractive a prospectus on either side and Macrae had to admit that this was so.
I insisted once more that Macrae was not giving us proper credit for what we were bringing into the pool - the cooperation of the Colonial and Imperial Governments and that these would be of more weight with the investor than the question of how local receipts were to be divided.
But apart from this I said my main difficulty was that this new proposal upset the balance of my scheme as a whole. The case of 2 associated lines in England was not analogous, for there each was master in his own house. Here the Colonial Government could be outvoted by the Chinese plus the Corporation, and it might be to the interest of the latter to foster the local traffic on the Chinese section at the expense of ours. To protect ourselves we should have to constitute a fresh board for the control of our local section and to alter the arrangement for a common ownership of the rolling stock. Thus the simplicity of my plan would be gone; the more one looked into it, the more changes seemed inevitable if the Corporation's view
607
though I suspected that the Corporation would have to
follow its own bad precedent in the Shanghai Nanking
case and abandon their Profit Certificates to the
bondholders.
As for the public. I said that none of us
were really in a position to forecast what the respec- tive proportions of the local traffic would be: for my part I anticipated a considerable suburban traffic
for Kowloon andany high-class prospectus-writer would
quite honestly dress up as attractive a prospectus on
oither side and Macrae had to adidit that this was so.
I insisted once more that Macrae was not
giving us proper credit for what we were bringing into the pool - the cooperation of the Colonial and Imperial
Governments and that these would be of more weight
with the investor than the question of how local re-
ceipts were to be divided.
M
But apart from this I said my main difficul- ty was that this new proposal upset the balance of my
scheme as a whole. The case of 2 associated lines in
England was not analogous, for there each was master in
his own house. Here the Colonial Government could be
outroted by the Chinese plus the Corporation, and it
might be to the interest of the latter to foster the
local traffic on the Chinese section at the expense of
ours. To protect ourselves we should have to consti-
tute a fresh board for the control of our local seo-
tion and to alter the arrangement for a common owner-
ship of the rolling stook. Thus the simplicity of my plan would be gone; the more one looked into it, the more changes seemed inevitable if the Corporation's
view
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