The Sun.
London, England, 1867-10-10 00:00:00

GREAT WESTERN OF CANADA.

The half yearly general meeting of this company
was held yesterday at the London Tavern. Mr.
Alderman Dakin, the chairman, presided.
Mr. B. Baker, the secretary, having read the
minutes of the last meeting, which were confirmed,
the report, an abstract of which has appeared in
77te Sun, was taken as read.

The CHAIRMAN, in moving that the report and
statement of accounts be received and adopted, said
he thought the shareholders would consider it very
flourishing, and as the directors were well satisfied
with the result of the operations during the half
year, they would both be of the same mind in that
respect. The receipts on capital account during the
past half year amounted to £13,703 from calls in
arrear, which reduced the arrears of calls at the end
of the half year to between £6,000 and £7,000, and
they had since been reduced to £3,000. The expen-
diture on capital account during the half year was
£18,758. This was for useful and additional works,
and very moderate outlay. It was the object of the
directors to put to expenditure on capital account
as little as possible, and that what they did put to it
should be for useful and productive purposes. In
making any addition of that kind they would al-
ways take the opinion of the shareholders. The
largest item in that expenditure was £5,058, the cost
of new sidings for the narrow gauge or blue line,
and he would presently make a few remarks to jus-
tify that expenditure. They had expended £904 on
the erection of a new heating furnace and two addi-
tional boilers for the rolling mill, which was now in a
perfect state of efficiency, and he believed it was quite
equal to anything they might hereafter require.
They would thus have the means of controlling the
quality of the iron rails by means of the rolling-
mill. They had expended £5Ol for completing
buildings and platform on the Petrolia branch ; the
£lO,OOO voted for making that branch was not yet
quite expended, and he thought they were fully
justified in that outlay when he told them that the
traffic carried over that line during the past half-
year amounted to £8,451. (Hear, hear.) That
was a very wise and prudent expenditure. The
gross traffic receipts in the past half-year were the
largest they ever had in any previous half-year ;
they amounted to £365,704 ; and for the same half
of 1866 they were £343,162; for the same half of
1865, £284,565 ; same half of 1864, £314,940 ;
and for the same half of 1863, £293,067. There
was, therefore, a marked improvement in the gross
traffic receipts of the past half-year, although there
had been a falling off in the local traffic of £15,157,
while in the American, or through traffic, there had
been an increase of £37,436, so that the increased
traffic was entirely due to laying the third rail for
the narrow gauge, or blue line, as it was called, for
accommodating American through traffic. The
working expenses during the half-year amounted to
£182,768, or 4098 per cent., and for the same half
of 1866 to £175,747, or 51.21 per cent. of the re-
ceipts. The interest on the Government bonds was
£51,717, or about the same as last year, but the
loss on conversion of American currency was
£52,820, against £39,806 for the corresponding
half of last year, being an increase of £13,014
against revenue, over which the directors had no
control whatever. The cotton and corn crops being
abundant would perhaps have a tendency to lessen
the loss on the conversion in the current half year.
If things were in a normal state they would be able
to pay as good dividends as any other line he knew
of ; the only thing they eould do was to keep up
the rates as well as they could so as to compensate
them as much as possible for the loss on the cur-
rency. He might state that the total loss on the
conversion of American currency since 1862 was
£584,843, making together with the charges for re-
newals about £1,000,000, all which had been paid out
of their revenue ; and in spite of this they were enabled
to pay a fair average dividend, and so far he thought
their prospects were most satisfactory. With regard
to the laying down the third rail on a portion of
their line to form the narrow gauge through line
£150,000 had been voted by the proprietors for that
object. Some of the shareholders at the time it was
proposed were disinclined to incur that expenditure,
although the advantage of such a line was strongly
recommended to them by the directors who had
visited Canada and America, and had been convinced
of its importance. It was quite clear that it would
not have answered their purpose to take eight days
as formerly in conveying through traffic from Chi-
cago to New York, while the American lines could
do it in five days. They could not have got their
share of the through traffic if they had not laid down
the third rail to accommodate it. One argument
against the third rail was that engineers' estimates
were not reliable, and that it would cost double the
estimated amount ; but he ventured at that time to
say that he had every confidence that Mr. Reid,
their engineer, would not be far out in his estimate,
as he had always been so correct. The fact was that
Mr. Reid's estimate for laying down the third rail
was £152,157, and the expenditure had been
£150,875, leaving £1,282 to be expended on that
undertaking. The Michigan Central and New York
Central Railway Company agreed to guarantee
three-fifths of the interest on the outlay for a certain
time, and had already paid to the Great Western
Company £19,479 on that account, leaving about
X 9,000 to be paid, and those amounts would have to
be deducted from their expenditure. He was bound
to say that there would be some excess on that esti-
mate for additional sidings to complete the enter-
prise. The effect of the third rail had been very bene-
ficial, the increase in through traffic alone being 59
per cent. He might say they carried during the past
half-year the largest amount of through freight ever
carried in the same time him the line was opened.