The fire avenol general meeting of the Bate Plantations, Ld., was held on Friday at the offices of the company, 2 Kiokiang Road. The directors present were Messrs. A. W. Bark'll (Chairman), presiding, G. H. Potts Thoresen, and H. E. Cha Pao-ta The attendance of shareholders repres-
As the Report nin your bands for some days, I will with your permis-0 take them as read. -The Report issued in January and the one accompanying the accounts give yon fall information about the working of the Company, which, when it joo all the t regards the area of the Est encroachments mentioned the roads which the Government -|bave echedaled through var property, bot as they have oct been made this land is still counted in the area of the:
Estate, We have however encroached in one or two places on Guveroment nnd sloog the road that is made oj bat the ares in unimportant and matter will be easily settled. You will see that a great deal of clearing has been done, the total aren being about 854 acres, bat owing to the drought our planting scheme was interfered with and very little could be done'
i Of the 854 acres cleared, a will probably be aban the reason being 2 accidental burn before the land bad been properly cleared, and consequently this acreage is not as clean as we could wish. Year Directors have to carefully consider the question of cost of bringing this land into bearing, and we think yon will agree wi them that it is hetter to proceed tions ly and only adopt the programme they consider can cent by the: Company. The first idea was to clear and plant up 1000 acres, but the great rise in the cost of all kind of labour and general exponees. has made 8 more modest programme desir. able, and we think 750 acroa the we can hope to bring into ig. A start you ace has been in tapping, but few trees at first and the iit penses were heavy, hence the rabber shows small loss for the short period it was made. The Gambier and Pepper question has been very troublesome the Estate was taken over from Chinese who worked it on the Tribute System, and whilst we took over their staff it was very difficalt to get any informa tion about the working of these products in the past, acd we got no help from them when we went into the question of the proper percentage payable, As soon as things were working properly on the Estate these head men were changed, and a new man engaged who seems to be working very aod also hae the advantage of knowing both Gambier and Pepper well, Oar troubles, of course, woold have been comparatively small bat for Tribaters big inthe Isboar question, which affected the
crease in wages and a gradual {all io Gambier you can understand that it was impossible fur os to get 40 per cent, on the gross proceeds, payable as it is sometimes done—20 per cent in kind and 20 per cent of the A.-Sales io cash. We have jost beard [rom our Mao cent inbier, and at fally into the
today's rate of $8 the Tribaters are out of pocket after paying ax our 20 per Apart from the question of Tribate, we have had a great deal of trod is with the Tribaters to keep the Gambier aod Pepper gardens clean, and where rabber is ioterplanted we are weeding ourselves. After full disoascal Agents, we have decided to plant the rubber 14° x 24" and inter lant Gambier. Your Direc-tore understand that thie will not retard the growth of the rabber very much and it is expected that the revenue to hich shows "a. profit. ud Pepper workin tora account, 9 after only charging 20 por question of whether these accounts should be charged with proportion of all the working expenses of the Estate as a whole was a difficult one to decide, bat eventually Gambier and Pepper were charged between them with 1-3 of the running expenses of the Estate, Ae regards Profit and Loss Account, been debited with 1-3 of the Shanghai expenses. We hope to get back part of the Tis, 631,20 written off as advances irrecoverable; these were wade to Contractors who bolted, bat before our present Agents took up their daties. Imay mention that the Ger Managers' remuneration is Tls. 250 per month, and the Directors fees Tls. 100 each. The other items under this headioy are License Fees in Hongkong, rent of registered offices there, legal fees, &e. The net profit is Tls. 16,634.84 which we propose to carry forward to next year.
As regards the Balance Sheet, the chief items are Sandry Credito Shanghai they agers' remuneration and the Directors and Anditor's fees, in Singapore and the Estate the bulk of theamouat owing is to the Tribnters and wages on the Estate, Tarning to the Assets, we
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.