On Wednesday afternoon the Grst annual general meeting of the Sheridan Cousolidated Mining and Milling Ca., Ld., was.
held at the Shanghai Club. Mr. G. James Morrison, Chairman, presided, and there were present Messrs. A. MeLeod, Duncan Glass, Henry Morriss, G. Galles, E. Jenner Hogg, (Directors), J. Buchanan, J. Danenberg, R Hough, J. Jaques, W. H. Talbot, R. Francis, J.D. Thorburn, A. Tharbarn, A, Cushny, J. A. Taylor, F, B. Aubert, F. Gove, G. W. Noel, W. B. Robertson, E. Bennett, W. A. Gulland, H. R. Kinnear, E. Davis, R. Macgregor, F, J. Marshall, and T. Wood (Secretary), representing 7,662 shares.
Mr. T. Wood having read the notice convening the meeting, The Chairman ssid-—TIt is now my duty to propose the usual resolution, © That the Report and Accounts, as presented, be approved and passed." "The Report and Accounts have been in your hands for some time, and I presume may be taken as read, They are of a most disappointing character. It would be advisable, I think, if I were to explain one or two matters connected with then: which have been alluded to, but which are not fully explained in the Report, When the works were taken over from the old Company, in October 1891, a good deal remained to be done to the boarding house and inclines, but the money that had to be expended was principally for wages, and it seemed to me that the most satisfactory way would be to charge that to Working Account right off instead of charging it to Cupital Account, and then writing off depre-on, and the same remarks apply to such igs as cars. We bought sume care for the mine, and we bought some cars for the inclines. The cost was Tls. 2,575 for the mine, and Tls. 8,898 for the inclines, It has beet: suggested, and the Auditors put this view of the question before us, that it would have been right to charge these to a Plant Account, and then if necessary write off depreciation from that account. As a matter of fact these things get worn out, so that probably the amount of depreciation which we ought to have written off from the Plant Account Wd have been at least as great as the cost of the items which we have charged to it, and therefore us matter of fact there would have been very little difference, But as a matter of priuciple we were somewhat averse to raising the question of depreciation at this moment, for the reason that it is almost impossible to deal with the question of depreciation the Property Account, 'That Account stands at the large figure of Ts, 1,998,000, and if the question of depreciation has ta be raised it is not a matter of Tls. 7,000 or Tls. 8,000, or even Tls. 80,000, and therefore as the amounts were in' themselves mall, and asin the event of the mine paying would certainly have charged these to Working Account, and nobody would have said anything about it, we determined to charge them to Working Account, and having explained the matter to the Auditors they stated they were on this occasion satisfied with the explanation, With regard to the appointment of Mr. Akers, the whole matter has been so fully discussed at the informal meetings of the Company hat I think the paragraph referring to it is sufficient for this occasion. I presume that all the gentlemen who are here present understand the system of dealing with the ore from the mine, The system is this, The ore is sold tothe smelters, who sample it. We have a man who watches the sampling and ses it is done fairly. 'Then the samples are assayed, und the amount of gold and silver in the' total quantity is [calculated from the result of the assay. The smelters then pay us New York price for the silver, and $20 per oz. for gold. They then take 5 per cent. which covers Joss'in smelting, interest during time the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.