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236
GEO. FENWICK & CO., LIMITED.
The following is the report of the General Manager for presentation to the general meeting to be held on the 19th March :---
The General Manager begs to submit to the share holders a statement of accciunts showing the result of the Company's working for the seventh year ending 31st December, 1895.
From this
The net profit for the past year amounts to $23,745.28, to which has to be added $12,194.73 brought forward from last year's account. amount it is proposed to pay a dividend of ten per cent.; or $15,000, to shareholders, auditor's fee $150, consulting committee $300, place $4,000 to reserve, and carry forward the balance of $16,490.1 to next year's account.
CONBULTING COMMITTEE.
Mesars Parlane and Rodger are eligible for re- election.
AUDITOR.
The accounts have been audited by Mr. T. Arnold, who offers himself for re-election.
GEO. FENWICK, General Manager.
Hougkong, 12th March, 1896.
DECEMBER 31st, 1895.
ASSETS.
Value of land and buildings there-
on as per last statement Added during the year (new
building)
Less amount written off for depro-
ciation
Value of plant and office furniture
as per last statement
Added during the year
•
$92,867.50
1,826.99
294,694.49
694.49
94,000.00
£26,320.78 2,855.11
$29,175.89
Loss amount transferred
to stock account Amount written off for
depreciation
$4,000,00
2,247.34
6,247.34
Value of stock in trade.
22,928.55 41.625,98
Work in progress
8,004.21
Unexpired fire insurance
111.23
Shanghai Banking Corporation
Cash in hand
Sundry debtors
Current account with the Hongkong and
LIABILITIES.
Amount of capital, 6,000 shares at $25 cach,
fully paid-up
Amount received in advance on account of
Reserve fund
contracts in hand
Sundry creditors
Balance of profit and loss account
18,508.70 79.75 10,450.78
C.
THE HONGKONG, WEEKLY PRESS AND
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SHANGHAI AND HONGKEW
WHARF COMPANY, “
The directors beg to submit to the shape holders the annual statement of accounts for 1895. After payment of an ad interim dividend of Tls. 8 per share on the 12th August last, the profit and loss acconut shows a credit balance (including Tls. 12,027.30 brought forward from 1894) of Tls. 51,673.28, which it is proposed to divide among the holders of the 8,01 new shares of the Company, representing the ahore men- tioned 2,867 shares-Tls. 18 per old share.
Its
[March 18, 1896.. annnally from March to July, the summer heat being evidently adverse to its progress. severe epidemic violence in 1871-73 was doubt- less accentuated by the misery and privation Accord- attendant on the horror of civil war.
The following is the report of the directors for the year ended 31st December, 1895, to be submitted to the anunal general meeting to being to Mr. Rocher, opinion in Yunnan is divided held at Shanghai on the 18th instant:
as to the origin of the disease, some stating that it reached the province from Burma, while others maintain that it had existed previously in Tali-fu, in the extreme west of the province. In the absence of authentic history as to how long the plague has existed in Yunnan, we may be justified in inferring that the out- break there is traceable to sources further west. The disease prevails in Northern India -under the name of máhámari or pali-and, as we have seen, has prevailed in Persia and the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea; thence it may have found its way to Yunnan through Thibet or Northern Burmah. Of course there aro writers who regard China, as being the original home of the disease, whence it issued forth centuries ago to devastate the world." What their authority may be we cannot say, but probably it is no more reliable than that which has led certain speculators at all times to ascribe to Ching the honour of being the source alike of these diseases and inventions whose early history is involved in obscurity.
The repairs mentioned in last year's report as being necessary to the Pooting Wharf and Tungkadoo Wharf have been completed and paid for out of revenue.
Consequent on the sale of part of the Ningpo Wharf premises Tls. 30,000 of debentures were purchased on the market and cancelled.
At the beginning of November Mr. A. Korff, on the invitation of the directors, joined the Board.
In terms of the resolutions passed at the extraordinary general meeting of the share- bolders held on 11th November, the directors have completed the purchase of Messrs. Jardine, Matheson & Co.'s interest in the Wharves, the revised deed of settlement has been printed and three shares of the face value of Tls. 100 each share previously held have been placed to the credit of shareholders in the register as or 1st January, 1996.
Mr. Burman having gone home, the directors appointed Mr. C. W. Wrightson to andit the books in conjunction with Mr. Wingrove.
The present directors and anditors offer themselves for re-election.
JARDINE, MATHESON & Co.
General Agents.
We can find no reliable evidence to show that the plague has been known in Canton previous to the present outbreak, although, of course, from vagueness of nomenclature, the history of any epidemic in China must always be surrounded with a certain amount of doubt. Making, however, all due allowance for this, we are, after diligent inquiry, obliged to accept the statement-received alike from official, medical, and lay sources-that although from time to time varions epidemics have prevailed in Canton, especially in the spring of the year, the particular disease in question has not hitherto been observed. ·
At the commencement of the outbreak the native doctors with whom we came in contact expressed themselves as quite ignorant of the DR. RENNIE ON THE PLAGUE AT nature of the discase. They held no particular
theory as to its causation or treatment.
CANTON
Dr. Alexander Rennie, who was the Customs Medical Officer at Canton at the time of the $198,712.20 plague, Las written an interesting report upon the epidemic for the Customs Medical Reports, from which we make the following extracts:-
In China little or nothing had been beard of the plague since its prevalence at L'akhoi in 1882, so that its appearance at Canton in March, 1894, was somewhat anexpected: Europeans, 101.30 by the ravages of centuries, were rendered painfully familiar with the disease; but to them all interest ceased on its disappearance $196,712.20 from Europe in 1841, and in 1844 from Egypt
150,000.00 1,000.00
11,670.89
35,940.01
PROFIT AND Loss Account, BIST DECEMBER, 1895. To cost of labour, material, and working ex-
penaca..
To office and manager's salaries
To fire insuFANCE
To Crown rent and taxe-
To amount written off plant account
To amount written off property account
To amount of bad debts written f
To old dividend, previously written off, claimed
To balance to be appropriate, viz. :-
Add to reserve fund
Dividend of 10 per cent. 01:
$150,000.
Auditor's fee
Consulting Committee's fees..
Balance to be carried to new
account
$ 4,000.00
15,000.00
150.00 300.00
16,490.01
By amount brought forward from last year's
account
By gross carnings
By transfer fees...
By interest account
By bonus from insurance company By profit on exchange.
C.
14021
2,217.34 624.49 40.97 17.75
-its home for over twenty centuries. Several years passed, and epidemiologists were begin 21.ning to believe the virus was extinct and the 9,678.50 plague a thing of the past when attention was directed to an outbreak in Assgr. Western 1,081,53 Arabia, 1853; followed by outbreaks in Bengazi, North Afria. 1858; Persian Kurdistan. [1863; the banks of the Euphrates south and west of Hillah, 1867 and 1873; extending as far north as Bagdad, 1876, aud over the country lying between the Tigris and the Syrian desert. It now apkared in south-eastern Persia and gradu. ally extended northwards to the southern shore of the Caspian Sea; and in 1878 broke out in the province of Astrakan, Lower Volga, thus reappearing on European soil after an absence of thirty-seven years. It would thus appear. that, though often seemingly quiescent, the plague has never really been extinet; and now, brought face to face with its presence in Southern China and Hongkong, menacing as 13,194.73 it does commercial intercourse with the West, we must realise that the puthreak is fraught with danger.
35,940.01
$115,707.59
$
C
103,505.68
20.00 70.07 2.11
The presence of the plague in the Chinese 5.00 Empire does not seem to have been brought to notice until the outbreak in 1871, at P'u-érh, $115,797.59 in Yunnan, during the great Mahommedan rebellion. With its subsequent progress in that province we have been made familiar by the notes of Mr. E. Rocher and travellers such as Baber and Bourne, and also by the French missionaries, who have on one or two occasions been attacked by the disease. From the observations of these men we learn that the plague is endemic in Yunnan, prevailing
The Shanghai Mercury of the 9th March Bays: The first fleet of the Chinese Gorern-, ment rice transports, junks, to the number of 89, with a total load 16,468 shih (25,702|| picals) of tribute rice is under despatch for Tientsin and will sail in a few days.
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In Pakhoi the disease has been known för quite thirty years, but little attention was drawn to it until the publication of Dr. Lowry's report on the severe epidemic prevailing in 1882.
Excluding as unscientific the theory that, under certain fostering conditions, the virus has originated de aan, the question arises, How did the disease reach the seaboard of China? The starting point was doubtless Yunnan, and thence it most probably found its way to Pakhdi by one of the usual trade routes. The great high- way of commerces between Yunnan and Kwang- tung is the West River, on which are situated one or two entropots of travle with Pakhoi- and Lien-elu, through which opium and. other products of Yunuan are transmitted to those cities. Inquiry in ‹fficial circles shows, however, that no outbreak of plague has been known at Nau-ning-fu, Wu-chou-fu, or other cities on the West Liver, which we should expect to find if the disse had spread by this chal. We feel, therefore, justified in ex- cluding this route and limiting ourselves to tho mor probable supposition that it reached Lakhoi overland through Kwangsi or borders of Tonkin. Chinese authorities state that it reached Paklui from Toukin, but as it is known sporadically in the borders of Kwangsi, this latter scurce is more probable.
the
From official sources wo learn that in 1891. the disease broke out in Kao-chao, tho prefec- ture adjoining Lien-chou, in which Pakhoi is sitnated, it had evidently, according to the Chinese, spread northwards from the latter city. During the prosent spring the disease prevailed in other places between Kao-chao and "Canton; tho outbreak at Yang-chiang was especially severe, and no doubt other towns and villages suffered equally from the ravages of the plague in its march northwards. An erratic course is characteristic of its progress, an observation which is fully borne out by a glance at Mr. Rocher's map of its spread in Yunnan, where that traveller remarks that, "instead of visiting every village in its course, it would pass some completely by, returning, however, to, those neglected spots months afterwards, when th epidemic would appear to have passed fas
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