The Sun.
London, England, 1868-08-28 00:00:00

TUE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, AUGUST 28, 1868.

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SOUTII-EAS7EItN RAILWAY.

The half-yearly general meeting was held yes-
terday at the City Terminus Hotel, Cannon-
street ; Mr. Watkin, M.P., in the chair.
The report having been taken as read,
The CHAIRMAN said—l move that the report
and accounts be received and ador ted ; and I

shall submit a second and separate resolution to
you after this first has been disposed of, in refer-
ence to paragraph 4 of the report. It will, there-
% fore, save you time if I postpone till then what I
have to urge upon that subject. I trust that your
retrospect will be as satisfactory to you as it is to
us. I may briefly sum it up as follows :—A capi-
tal account practically closed. Every shilling of
interest on capital charged against revenue. The
Tunbridge line has been opened throughout.
The terminable mortgage bJu 1 debt at last
provided gail; st by a permanent debenture
stock. Peace with a'.l your neighbours. An
increase of gross revenue of £12,769, s:de by aid
with a reduction of working expen liture of £8,793,
thus giving you £21,561 more net profit than in
the corresponding half of 1857; and a total increase
of net profit on the year ending July 31, 1868, over
1867 of £109,432. Your a lvancel fares are lower
than the fares you charged in 1862; and the limited
advances you have made simply follow in the wake
of your competitors. The advances made divide
themselves into two classes —advances where our
competitors have advanced the needlessly low rates
of the past, and an advance in the scale for return
tickets on portions of the system. As regards return
tickets, we have simply done now what the northern
companies did last year, and in both classes what
the Great Eastern did some months ago. In
doing this the company has during the recent hot
weather been much reviled in a very high quar-
ter. The proposal in the Fusion Bill to reduce
your maximum charges was pronounced " impu-
dent" by a noble lord whose property has
been enhanced by your capital. Doctrines
have been promulgated by the popular instructors
which must be grateful to the disciples of the philan-
thropic Prudhon, and advice given which must tend
to ease the conscience of that benefactor of man-
kind, Mr. Broadhead, of Sheffield. It is a matter
of surprise, therefore, that the suffering sharehol-
ders, who have made everybody's fortune but their
own, should at last have been aroused to ask us no
. longer to postpone a dividend for the sake of giving,
as we are doing, excessive and costly facilities, by
which agricultural land may be sold at building
prices for the profit of their calumniators? Yet we
find men worth a million sterling actually abusing
the accommodation provided for second-class people,
to save 3d. a day between Cannon-street and Char-
ing-cross, and well-dressed people shouldering the
working man out of his train. But we have
had no complaint, I am proud to say,
from the real working man. If the abuse of
the poor man's accommodation by the rich should
ever lead to a reduction of the working man's
privileges of travel, he will know whose fault it is,
depend upon it. You made your railways upon
the faith of certain powers of charge. Now, we
contend that so long as your rates are within your
maximum no one has a right to complain. In f act
gentlemen, you are fair game for everybody, for,
unfortunately, you are a " company," and have
little individuality to protect you. Then as to com-
pensation for accidents, you will remember the great
fog of last autumn. Your Charing-cross line was
kept open all day, while the river and the street
traffic was entirely stopped. A collision of no very
serious character occurred, caused by the fog. You
received £BB that day for local fares on the Charing-
cross branch, and £3OO would cover the mileage of
all that went over it that day. Yet you had claims
sent in for £12,000, and have had to incur about
£5OO in costs and medical fees in connection with
them. The people who made claims had not col-
lectively paid you more than lOs for being carried
on that day by the only means of conveyance kept
open. But beyond business rules and political eco-
nomy, there is the higher obligation which all
should follow, of assisting the less fortunate. And
I say, you, the South-Eastern proprietors, have
done so. I will only allude in passing to your special
working-class train, put on on the Ist of August,
by wLieh the struggling man or woman can go and
come to Cannon-street to work for 4d. I will take
the third-class accommodation you give generally.
Take New-cross. We, in this case, issue third-class
quarterly tickets, available at all our three costly
metropolitan stations, for 30s. Thus, for 2s. 4d.
a week any one can travel that distance of five
miles into the country and back as many times a
day as he likes. Then take the total number of
third-class trains. 'We are legally bound to run
one each way a day, which would give a total of 30
per day. We do run 521 out of a total of 622,
and on the metropolitan district, while we are
bound to run 12, we do run 356. But we are
permission, to do more. Let us
ready, with your
find the wealth of London ready to grapple with
this great evil of the crowding out of the working
man. Let us see capital raised at 5 per cent. to
build working men's houses for 100,000 in any
healthy place down our line, and we shall be ready
to recommend you to contract to carry the people
at times to suit, and at prices not greater than the
difference of rent and taxes bet ween unhealthy
London and the healthy open fields beyond.
In conclusion, let me congratulate you upon your
safe passage through the perils of the past four
years. Is has, indeed, been an anxious time. We
have done our best, and have we hope satisfied you.
In my own case I had, in the dark times of ten per
cent., to find parties to lend you £BO,OOO at an
hour's notice, when money was like drops of blood,
or you might have stopped payment. Some of us
provided a considerable sum, at a large sacrifice, by
sale of securities, which was lent to you at 5 per cent.
when almost any rate could have been obtained for
money ; and others, including Mr. Byng, Mr.
Buckley, Mr. Mellor, Mr. Beattie, Mr. Norton, Mr.
Eborall, and others, cheerfully became personally
responsible for loans to take up debentures which
no one would, at the moment, renew. I hope I may
not be considered as going out of my way to speak
of myself, but in these days, when every man who
strictly does his duty in the administration of these
noble national works is visited by personal attack,
I thought it well to make this statement " to all
whom it concerns."
The lion. J. BTNG seconded the motion.

A long discussion, raised by Mr. FILDES, M.P.,
then ensued with respect to how the cost of the
new Waterloo Station was to be charged —whether
to cipital cr to revenue; the result of which was
that the outlay had been saddled upon revenue, and
the report of the directors was adopted.

The meeting having been made special, it was
resolved, in accordance with the provisions of the
Railway Regulations Act of last session, to divide
the stock of the company into two classes, A and
B—the A stock to bear a fixed dividend, while the
B stock was to fluctuate with the prosperity of the
company. It was also specially resolved to alter
the line and levels of the approaches to Woodside-
bridge, and to establish provident institutions and
savings banks for the benefit of the employes of the
line.

A vote of thanks was then passed to Mr. Watkin,
who, through an attack of illness, felt obliged to
leave before the conclusion of the proceedings ; and
also to the Hon. Mr. Byng, who took his place as
president of the meeting.

GREAT DESTRUCTION OF FARM PRODUCE.-011
Wednesday afternoon a serious fire was discovered on the
property known as Church Farm, Eastchurch, Isle of
Sheppy. A. few minutes after the labourers had gone to
their dinner flames were seen issuing from a heap of straw
that was lying in the yard. The wind being high, the
flames were wafted to some large stacks close by, and in a
very short time eight stacks of wheat, barley, and oats,
and about twenty quarters of beans, besides several
waggons, carts, and other farm implements, wore burned.?
SUICIDES IN SCOTLAND.—In the year 1865, for
which the returns have recently boen issued, there were
133 suicides in Scotland—one in every 23,579 of the esti-
mated population. 58 of these deaths were by hanging, 40
by cut-throat, 17 by poison, 12 by drowning, two by gun-
shot, two by precipitation from a height, two in ways not
stated. The number of suicides in England in the same
gear was 1,390,-or one in every 15,080 of the estimated
population; so that to two suicides in Scotland there were
throe in England in a like number of population.