NorwirasraxpixG continued complaints of unfavourable trade and hard there can be no questi Shanghai people on the average cent to save money and to need depositories for their economies, 'I'he share-lists of our local companies prove this by the somewhat dangerous altitude to which all of them of any rebate have attained and man who has succeeded in amassing Inboriously " few hundred taels has great difficulty in discovering any stocks that lo can bay with a ronsuunble probability of getting auything like "China interest" for his tment, In former days he would perhaps have pat his savings into a shipment of produce, and the receipt of the account-sale would generally relieve him of any farther trouble about his nest-egg. This occurred so often that cautions people began to tire of it, and then came the era of local companies, which for a long time gave small investors a chance of putting their dollars wh and could, i ante of " fair dividend. Bat of late years the creation of companies has Stopped in Shanghai, shareholders being more apprehensive of th i. lity of limiting the liability of a Shanghai company than they used to be, and the needs of investors have forced the shares of most of our institutions almost too high for safety. Mandarins in the interior have taken tow, of late, to sending their money to Shanghai for investment in land, and they are contented, it would appear, with 60 moderato n return, that in the last few months the price of land has been driven up to a level that begins to remind old residents of the "boom" in the rebel days.
If there is a want in Shanghai of openings for the investment of savings remunerative rates, the required opportunities have, in the last few months, been presented by hundreds in London. Scarcely a number of the Times appears without.the prospects of some new company, till one wonders that it can be possible that there can be so many " fresh woods and pastures new" in the industrial and mineral worlds waiting to be tilled by the British shareholder. Let us take one number of the Times as an example. We flyd in it prospectuses more or less detailed of some ton companies, with capitals ranging from £5,000 to one million pounds The smallest is dairy-farm company which seems hardly worthy of place in the great sheet; for of its very small capital only half is paid-up, and some of that is still unappropriated so that when the directors point with pride to their first dividend at the rate of fifteen per cent, per annam, that only means that they made a net profit in the balf-yoar—of-some-£800,-—The~ company which pays for most space in the sheet before us is the East Wheal Rose (Limited), This prettily-sounding name belongs to a lead mino in Cornwall which has been stopped apparently for some forty years, but whose £50 shares were once worth £1,800. A new company has bought it and offers its shares at £1 promium, the only ranson for the stoppage of the mino being that it is full of water, which, as the directors show, imply due to the pumps not being big enough. As soon as the pumps to be paid for by the now shareholders are at work the mine will again return fabulous dividends, We have heard of Cornish lead mines ranning under the sea and being drowned out; we do not suppose for a moment that this is the case with Hast Wheal Rose, but there is something suspicions in a statement of the engineer's that it is intended to effect a great economy in the boilers by using fresh water, that from the mine being prejudicial, A Colorado mine comes next with capital of £205,000. For this sum, the (£1) shareholders got a going mine, mills and all, which is now earning £200 a day: but why vendors sell a property worth £200 a day for £205,000 is not apparent. We thought mine-owners in Colorado, everywhere else, were more meroouary and less philanthropic. This mine, like the celebrated "Emma," is to pay quarterly dividends at once; and with all these attractions, only 100,000 half-crowns, or less than £12,500, have been so far provided by a sceptical public, and these include the shares taken by the vendors in part payment.
Atkin's Water-softening Company follows, and asks for £100,000 from the public, also in £1 shares. This Company softens water and makes filters, and its operations sre of little general interest, but may possibly pay. The interest taken by the aristocracy
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.