Wuen Hongkong was booming and. everyone there who had the courage to enter its stock market returned loaded with wealth almost beyond the dreams of avarice, we wrote an article on the New Eldorado, whose slightly Cassandra-like tone gave great' offence to our colonial.contemporaries, who pointed out that it was impossible for a writer in backward and distant Shanghai to even appreciate the energy and enterprise which underlay and justified what seemed to us the wildest speculation. It would be ungenerous for us now to say "I told yon so," and Shanghai, alas! has its share in the misfortunes of its neighbour. But we are reminded of what we wrote about the boom of the past by the receipt from Messrs. Cohen & Georg of Hongkong of a table showing the approximate depreciation in market values on the 19th instant of stocks dealt in in Hongkong as compared with rates ruling on 21st March, 1891. It must be remembered that this is only one year's depreciation, and that already last year a large number of the stocks quoted had had a tremendous fall from the highest point, while some of the companies of which we wrote at. the time of the boom had already disappeared. In March, 1891, reached the lowest "point of depression, eighteen million dollars. In Messrs. Cohen & Georg's list there are fifty-four companies entimerated, beginning with the hongkong Bank, witha capital of ten million' dollars, and tiding with Casnpbell, Moore & Ca., Barbers, with a j capital of $12,000; and of these fifty-four companies only five, less than ten per cent., show an improvement during the year; the total loss during the year being $18,628,000, and the total gain $360,000. Of the five companies, that improved, four are insurance companies, the Straits, the China Fire, the Straits Fire, and the Singapore; and the improvement is only $2 per share in' the case of the three first, and $1 inthe case of the last. The only other company whose shareholders can contemplate the situation with satisfaction is the Jelebu Mining and irading Ca., whose shares have risen during the year from $1} to $6 each, Five companies show a loss of a million dollars each or over, the Hongkong Bank being a long way ahead of the rest, with a decrease of $6,692,000, its shares having fallen from 237 per cent. to 136 per cent. premium. 'The Bank of China, ete., comes next with a decrease of $1,564,000 on its ordinary and of $790,000 on its founders' shares; the Imuris wines next with a loss of $1,200,000; then the China Sugar Refining Ca., with a loss of $1,020,000, and then the Hongkong Laud Invest ment and Agency Ca., with a loss of a round million. The next largest loss is jou the Charbonnages Ca., $960,000, The Daily Press, in commenting the other day on the letter tit appeared in our columns advising investors in Shanghai not to be in too great.a hurry to relieve Hongkong of some of' its depreciated stocks, assured us that' food stocks were to be bought now paying 7, 8, and more per cent. in, dividends, and that investors had better.not wait too long. Messrs. Cohen & Georg's list partially bears out this statement. Of the fifty-four companies on the list, no less than twenty-seven, or exactly half, paid no dividend at all last year, while in addition the Bank of Ching, pays no dividend on its founders' shares. Of those that paid dividends, one, a plant-mig' company, gives investors 14.28 per cent.; Geo. Fenwick & Ca, and the Jelebu mine give 11.66 per cent.; the Straits Fire Insurance Ca. gives 10.30 per cent; the Hongkong Ice Company gives 822 per cent; nine companies give between 7 and 8 per cent; six companies give between 6 and'? per cent; and the remainder give less than 6 per cent.
Messrs. Cohen' and Georg point out in a note that the whole of this loss of 18} million dollars does not fall on China and Japan alone. A large portion of the shares in the Hongkong Bank, the Bank of Chiva, and the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.