9. The New Statesman, June 24, 1916:
Another firm which has apparently benefited by the war is Ruston, Proctor & Co., the well-known Lincoln manufacturers of agricultural implements. A final dividend of 5-1/2 per cent is declared, plus a bonus of 2 per cent, making 10 per cent for the year, which still allows the Company to place £45,000 to reserve and to carry over £16,300. This dividend is 3 per cent more than was paid last year, and is the highest in the twenty-six years' history of the Company. Shipping shares remain firm, and it is almost impossible to purchase any of the best shares. As an illustration of the profits that are being made, the Nitrate Producers' Steamship Company's accounts for the year ended April 30th last show a gross profit of £404,022, as compared with £151,905 and £135,986 in 1914 and 1913 respectively. The dividend is 25 per cent, free of income tax, £100,000 is placed to reserve, £200,000 to a special fund for excess profits tax, income tax, etc., £30,000 is added to the insurance fund, and the carry forward is increased by some £7000. The Company owned a fleet of ten steamers, which has, however, been reduced to five by the sinking of one last September by an enemy submarine and by the sale of four vessels. A new vessel is under construction, and should be ready for delivery in August. The capital of the Company consists of £200,000 in Ordinary Shares and £200,000 in 5 per cent Cumulative Preference Shares.
10. The New Witness, June 15, 1916:
WAR PROFITS AND THE GOVERNMENT
It is essential that a determined effort should be made to rouse the nation to a sense of the gross and scandalous injustice of the huge profits that are at present being "earned" by certain firms piling up wealth which is really amazing to contemplate. This is not mere empty rhetoric; the figures support the description up to the hilt. Let us take the case of five well-known companies, all engaged in "war work," and see to what account they have turned our soldiers' sacrifices:—
| Firms. | Profits. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1913 | 1914 | 1915 | |
| £ | £ | £ | |
| Cammell, Laird | 171,700 | 235,500 | 301,500 |
| Curtis & Harvey | 48,100 | 77,800 | 143,800 |
| Projectile | 14,000 | 40,400 | 192,700 |
| Webley & Scott | 9,500 | 16,400 | 61,300 |
| Thornycroft | 13,000 | 107,640 | 267,333 |
| (6 mos.) | |||
These figures can only be described as staggering—staggering, that is, to anyone who cherishes a faint, lingering belief that "equality of sacrifice" is to be a reality and not merely a bitter jest. Look for a moment at the tale that these profits show! The Projectile Company has multiplied its 1913 profit thirteen times over! Five or six years ago its affairs were in so parlous a state that 19s. had to be written off as lost from each 20s. share. Now, as Mr. Charles Duguid reminds us, "it is paying a first dividend of 50 per cent and is returning to the shareholders 3s. 6d. out of the 19s. they regarded as lost." The return on the shares, according to the same financial authority, is 400 per cent!!!
Look at the case of Thornycrofts. The profits for the first half of 1915 are twenty times as big as the profit for the whole of 1913—an increase, as Mr. Duguid reminds us, of 3800 per cent upon the year, a year that will spell blank financial ruin, impoverishment and destitution to the families of thousands and tens of thousands of our fighting men!
Thornycrofts are by no means peculiarly fortunate; Nobels, for instance, have managed to earn quite a tidy little profit. Their net profit for 1915 comes out, we learn, at over half a million sterling (£529,800), exclusive of £213,900 brought forward out of the large profit of the preceding year, and this makes the total amount available for distribution as much as £743,700. Even after paying a dividend of 10 per cent and a bonus of 5 per cent, making 15 per cent, all free of income tax, the Company has still £424,700 unallocated. In its most prosperous year, 1913-1914, the net profit of the Nobel Dynamite Trust did not amount to more than £381,300. We have, we need hardly say, no feeling against Nobels or Thornycrofts or the Projectile Company. We only want fair play in this matter. If this aggregation of profits is not stopped the wealth of England will be in the hands of men who will regard the triumphant conclusion of the War as spelling ruin to themselves and who will see in victory only the cessation of profits that in normal times they have never dared to contemplate.
The remedy for this is simple. The Government have refused to the workman the right to extort unearned increment out of the country in its dire necessity. The workman may not strike or cease work or even change employment without the permission of the State. Assuredly the State has the right to exact that obedience from him. But it is essential that it should, and at no distant date, lay its restraining hands also upon the employers who are earning these huge dividends, otherwise we shall have enacted in England the tragedy that we have seen in Ireland. We shall have a Government without moral authority, a Government which will, therefore, be perpetually embarrassed in the conduct of war.