MEGAdigital. Online-Angebot der historisch-kritischen Gesamtausgabe von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels

January 11, 1868.

Railways und State Control.

„Economist“ The Money Market Review: at length
Schließen at last reluctantly admits: „sole remedy for the present discredit in the railway market is an independent audit of the accounts of railway Cos by official auditors appointed by the State.“ „The Govt is the only uniform authenticator possible.“ Zusatz von Marx.
Schließen Review bemerkt: the audit ought not to be optional Zusatz von Marx.
Schließen (wie Economist will) but compulsory upon every Railway Co.

Caledonian Railway. Zusatz von Marx.
Schließen (Report of Committ. of Investigation)

Ihre accounts enthalten all frauds possible. Directors gentlemen without business experience. Rely only upon their officials, 17 of whom were paid salaries in proportion to the dividend declared. The dividend declared July 1867 was nearly 6% p.a. Then erschien challenging statement, daß sie nur etwas über 4%. Committee now states it (noch zu hoch) etwas unter 3%. In den 2 last financial years expenditure of capital £1,982,765, dividends for same period in ordinary stock £556,726, little more than 1/4 of the sum borrowed.

Contract Corporation (Lim.) Zusatz von Marx.
Schließen (Chancery in(?))

Shares 100£. Haben nun ganz to be paid. Shareholders ruined. Mit alle dem erhalten Creditors nur 2s. 6d. in the pound.

Insurance Cos. Their Getting up and Winding up Zusatz von Marx.
Schließen (Workingmen beschissen).

Failure of Insurance Cos. very calamitous for those immediately interested in them. Strangely got up and launched. Illustration: One concern (Insurance Co) started about 2 years ago, with a capital of £500,000; but only £150,000, or less than 1/3 of this capital, was subscribed for. for £10,000, payable under the articles of association for promotion money, was, in fact, payable to the manager, he having assumed another name for the occasion. This, we suppose, was money advanced to purchase the directors, for, by means of this same purchase money the interest of nearly every director in the Co. was made to appear as fully paid up. In 18 months, which was the utmost extent of its career, the Co. did much mischief. First, it became the focus of 5 several amalgamations mit other Cos; and thus acquired nearly 400 shareholders, now liable as contributories, but prepared to contest it. None of the directors in any of these amalgamating concerns took any share or interest in the Co. to which they thus handed over their own shareholders. And these projects, we may presume, had been got up upon the same liberal and philanthropical principles, and pure und disinterested motives, as the Co. in question. In one instance there were special provisions for annuities in favour of such of the directors as were not to receive any of the emoluments to be distributed amongst the members of the new board, and of their widows after them! They were evidently prudent, farseeing man, these directors of the amalgamating Cos Zusatz von Marx.
Schließen ! Zweitens, the directors of the Co in question had granted insurances to some 150,000 insurers, most of whom were making weekly or monthly payments, in accordance mit den terms of their policies, also workingmen in victims. Drittens: They had appointed, before the scheme collapsed, about 700 agents in the U. Kingd., from whom balances appear to be due upwards of £25,000; but all or almost all of these agents repudiate their liability. Court has, therefore, resorted to the extraordinary expedient of appointing a special commission to take evidence in relation to them in London, in Manchester, and 3 other principal towns. Trotzdem, not more than 1% has still been recovered. Sobald dieß Co. nicht länger could go on, shareholders’ meeting held mit view to wind it up voluntarily. Resolution to this effect carried und liquidator appointed – Niemand anders als Mr. Manager who had got up the Co Zusatz von Marx.
Schließen ! The object of such winding up and such Liquidator, of course, to avoid the disclosures of an official liquidator Zusatz von Marx.
Schließen ! Aber mißlang. Da voluntary liquidator superseded durch official one who makes these preliminary revelations. Up to the time at which he wrote, the official liquidator had received upwards of 1000 claims upon the Co. Amongst these claims one for £1,600 on the part of the manager and previous liquidator, und, of this claim, £600 made upon an unpaid cheque on account of salary. Drawn when there were cheques already issued to £1,300 more than the balance at the Co’s bankers. The remainder was for an alleged deposit by the manager, who, through his assignee, claimed £2,600 for unpaid salary. This gent, not content with the £10,000 he obtained for getting up the Co., wants £2,600 for bringing it to ruin in the Winding-up Court. The Co which this manager mismanaged never issued but one balance-sheet, and that was entirely false and fraudulent. Two balance sheets were prepared, „both of the same date, but materially differing in nearly every line; one corresponding with the books, the other corresponding with them in scarcely |22 very single item“; the one was suppressed, the false one issued. During the 18 months’ existence of the Co. this manager managed to bring into use some 850 books, exclusive of those at the 700 agencies, and exclusive of those handed over by the amalgamated Cos, making probably more than 2000 books; and, although some 30 clerks were employed by the Co., their salaries were all in arrear, and there was a gap in the account books for 4 months out of the 18, which can only be filled up from a heap of loose and disorderly papers.

Silk in 1867. (Annual Circular of Durant et Co.[)]

Total importation scarcely 10% in excess of 1866, deliveries almost identical. Prices for all, but the best classes (always small proportion of the whole) so to 20 to 25 P.Ct. below those of the commencement of the year. Manufacturers have kept their stocks at the lowest possible point, thus escaping serious mischief.

Agricultural Implements. 1867. (Annual Circular of Burgess and Key.)

Great increase in the demand for agricultural implements, besonders for reaping and mowing machines. Mainly from the necessity for machinery which the increasing deficiency of agricultural labourers creates, besonders in all that relates to the securing of crops.

January 18. 1868.
Mr. Fawcett on „Freetrade in Land.“

All free trade would do for him (the wealthy buyer of land) would be indefinitely to increase the security of his investment, by removing all difficulties about title; by enabling him to grant any kind of lease he pleased, whether wasteful or not; and by facilitating sale whenever he wanted his money, or part of his money, back again. … Land might be raised in price, doubtless would be, but the richest would get, just as in open market they get everything else. The poor might as well compete with them for coals. Even with perfect freetrade, the dealer always prefers „a large order“, and a visibly solvent customer … It is conceivable, that if the labourers desired the land energetically, a class of land pawnbrokers would spring up as in India and Southern France, who would buy for the labourers, and exact, in the form of interest on mortgages, an excessive rental from the cultivator … In Yorkshire agricultural labourers are greatly in advance of wages in the South, owing to the competition of other modes of livelihood.