12,788. Do you not get enough money at settling time to carry you on for two or three months?-Yes.
12,789. After that could you not get credit from any other shop where you could get your goods cheaper?-I have no doubt I could if I knew that I could pay my account at the twelvemonth's end.
12,790. But if you had credit at another shop where you could get your supplies cheaper, and if you got no credit from him, you could get all your money from him at settlement, instead of having part of it in supplies?-I could, but we have our rent to pay to him annually. In the meantime we might have a good fishing or a bad fishing, as Providence sends it. If we had a good fishing, we might have enough money to pay the men from whom we had got credit; but if not, we would not have plenty of money and then how could we pay our accounts?
12,791. Does not Mr. Adie take the same chance with you?-Yes.
12,792. You might have no money to pay him for the credit he has given you?-That is quite true.
12,793. Therefore he has to wait for payment just as another merchant would have to wait for payment, if you get your goods on credit from him?-Yes.
12,794. Then why do you think that another merchant would not give you credit?-There is no doubt we would get plenty of credit.
12,795. Have you ever compared the prices of goods at Skerries with what you could get them for at any other place?-Yes; and everything is dearer there than it is in Lerwick. For instance, cotton is always from 2d. to 21/2d. a yard dearer at Skerries than at Lerwick. I have bought cotton of the same quality at both places for oiling, and I found there was that difference in the price. Then last year I bought a sack of meal in Lerwick for 42s., and we were paying 46s. in Skerries for it at that time. It was in February last year that I bought it in Lerwick, from Mr. Charles Robertson, and I bought some in Skerries in April or May. I think the freight to Skerries is 8d. a sack. We generally get it conveyed by Mr. John Robertson's packet when we buy it in Lerwick, and I think his charge for it is 8d.
12,796. Were these two purchases of meal of the same quality?- Just about the same.
Lerwick, January 24, 1872, ALEXANDER HUMPHRAY, examined.