2526. You sell them to retail dealers, so that you have only one price, for your goods going south?-Yes.
2527. You heard Mr. Laurenson state that there was sometimes it difference in the price which he charged, according as the sale was one to dealer, or to a dealer who sold retail?-I understood Mr. Laurenson to mean that he made a difference when he sold a shawl to a private customer, and when he sold a dozen or two to a retail dealer; and so do we.
2528. Is that the only difference you make in selling your goods?-Yes; and we think that is only fair the trade.
2529. I interrupted you when you were putting the case of a shawl worth 20s. What did you wish to say about that?-We fix our lowest rate of profits, and we give the people goods the same as if they had cash to lay down for them; and I can bring evidence to that effect if you want it.
2530. Do you mean that you fix your lowest rate of profit upon the hosiery goods you buy?-No; our lowest rate of profit on the goods we sell. A third way of explaining it is, that we treat as cash the goods which we buy. A shawl worth 20s. is reckoned by us as a £1 note would be reckoned,-with this difference, that if a man is laying down a £l note we would give him 5 per cent. discount when he bought our goods. We consider that the trouble we have with the shawls, and the time we lie out of our money, is worth 5 per cent.
2531. Then what you say comes to this: that upon your hosiery goods you make no profit at all?-Not when they are once sold; that is to say, when they are once bought, the profit lies in the profit we have upon the goods. That is the only profit we have in the matter.
2532. But upon the hosiery, looked at by itself, you do not make any profit at all?-No; I say that I make none, and I swear to that most emphatically.
2533. In other words, the profit you make upon your purchases of hosiery is only the profit you make upon your sales of goods, which are given in return for the hosiery?-Yes; in short, it is two sales for one profit.
2534. That is to say, you are obliged to take the hosiery at the market price in the south, in order to get payment for your drapery and other goods?-With regard to that, I am not obliged to take them, further than that is the only thing in the country that reckoned as a kind of payment.
2535. It is the only thing which your purchasers have to give you for your goods?-That is my meaning exactly.