9423. Can you explain how the current price of the season is ascertained, according to which you settle with your fishermen?- I cannot explain it exactly; but I believe some of the curers may correspond with one another about what they consider to be a fair price.
9424. Did you sell last year at the same price as your neighbours, Spence & Co.?-I don"t know.
9425. If there is a difference in the price obtained by two or three neighbouring firms for their fish, do you strike an average in order to deal with your fishermen, or how is it that the fishermen are settled with?-I am not aware that there is any average struck. I think, as a general rule, the fishermen are paid to the full extent of the highest price realized by the large curers.
9426. Suppose you were selling 10s. or 1 a ton cheaper than your nearest neighbours, in consequence perhaps of having to sell earlier, or when the market was in a depressed state?-Such it thing occurs sometimes.
9427. Would you in that case settle with your fishermen according to the price obtained by the other party?-Certainly.
9428. Is that an invariable rule?-In my experience it has been the rule.
9429. Is that because the fishermen are sure to find out who got the highest price and would be dissatisfied, or is it part of the understanding that it is the highest current price according to which they are to be paid?-I believe the fishermen generally understand that they are to be paid according to the highest price.
9430. Then if a merchant is specially fortunate and gets a price much higher than the ordinary prices of the year, does that regulate the whole prices throughout Shetland so far as the fishermen are concerned?-I should say not; but I think that is a thing that very rarely happens. I think the princ.i.p.al curers, so far as I know, get much about the same price for their fish. There may be a slight variation here and there, but it small.
9431. They will get pretty much the same, I fancy, if they sell in Shetland to one gentleman or two?-Yes; but I am not aware that they all do that.
9432. Do you ever sell any fish for exportation to Spain?-I cannot say that we have ever sold any for that purpose. No doubt some of the fish we have sold may have gone to Spain indirectly.
9433. But you have not sent them there on your own account?- No.
9434. I presume the bulk of the transactions at Greenbank are credit transactions, and enter the ledger?-No. We do a great deal in cash payments.
9435. Is that with fishermen?-In some cases with our own fishermen, and in other cases with other people. We do a considerable business across the counter for ready money. I should say that in our shop business we sell as much goods for cash and b.u.t.ter and eggs, and so forth, as we do for fish.
9436. Are these cash transactions, as they may be called, speaking generally, with the same parties, or with different parties from those whose names appear in the book as having got goods which are set against their fish?-In some cases they would be with the same parties, and in other cases with others. For example, it is generally women that we buy yarn from, and it is very often women who bring us eggs and b.u.t.ter.
9437. Do you settle the whole of these transactions at the time?- Yes, as a general rule.
9438. But these women may have an account which enters the women"s book?-We keep no women"s book.
9439. Then when a woman does deal with you that way, she settles her transactions at once?-Generally at once.
9440. When you sell a quarter lb. of tea, or a lispund of meal, or a bit of cotton over the counter in a ready money transaction, is the same price charged as if it were entering the book?-Exactly the same, in all cases.
9441. Does it not follow from that that your profit upon the transactions which enter the book and are settled for at the end of the year is much less than what you make upon the cash transactions?-If we were to make no bad debts, it would not be much less. It would be much the same.
9442. Would it not be less in this way, that you might turn your money over twice before these accounts were settled, and you would either have the interest for the year or you might make another profit?-True; but the rate of interest is so exceedingly small at present, that the money is worth scarcely anything at all.
9443. I suppose it is a consideration in that matter that if you lose the interest upon the money that is invested in goods, you gain by the interest upon the money that is not paid to the men until the end of the season?-There is not much gain there, because we have often to pay the fishermen their money some months before we receive it.
9444. When are your fish sales made?-Towards the end of September or beginning of October, and they are generally made on a three months bill.
9445. That is on a bill payable in January, and the [Page 228]
men are settled with in December?-In the end of November or 1st of December.
9446. So that the men are paid a month before you receive the proceeds of your fish sales?-Yes, a month or two.
9447. In that way, therefore you do not stand upon an equality with the men in the matter of interest, but on all these credit sales of goods you are losing interest?-Looking at it in that way, that would be so.
9448. I should have thought it not unreasonable that you should have a discount for these cash payments: why have you not?-I believe the reason is, that there is a great difficulty in having two prices for your goods-I mean honestly.
9449. You think the people would complain?-Not only would the people complain, but I am afraid your own conscience would cry out sometimes.
9450. Why should your conscience cry out if you are really equalizing the two cla.s.ses of buyers?-The buyer who does not pay until November has the advantage of having his money in hand, and of getting an advance made to him on credit; whereas the buyer who pays you in March or in April for the same goods which the other man does not pay for until November, gives you his money six or eight or ten months sooner, and you have the advantage of having the money in your pocket, and you could make of it, as the case may be: is not that so?-Yes. A discount might be taken off if we could decide upon a certain percentage to take off for cash; but I believe the reason we have never done anything in that way is, that if you once begin to make an alteration, there is a great difficulty in fixing your prices, and a difficulty in sticking to an exact rate. Perhaps you will allow me to ill.u.s.trate what I mean. Suppose I go into a shop and ask for a cloth jacket, and the jacket is brought down. I am well acquainted with the price of these goods, but I have plenty of impudence, and I beat down the price until the seller consents to give me the jacket at 3s. less than he asked at first. Then my brother, who is a quiet man, goes in and asks for jacket exactly the same. Perhaps he gets five per cent. taken off, which would be 1s. 6d., and he pays cash for it. That would be 1s. 6d. of an advantage to me, and I consider that it would be unfair and dishonest to him.
9451. But you get out of that difficulty by raising the price a little to everybody?-We do not. We just price our goods at what we consider to be a living profit, and we do not sell them at less than that to anybody.
9452. Are not your prices fixed, in the first instance, at such a figure as you calculate would cover the risk of bad debts upon your credit transactions, and also the loss of interest upon the money?-I cannot say that they are. We try to make as few bad debts as possible, and I cannot say that the prices are fixed with a view to that at all.
9453. Are the goods invoiced to you at Greenbank from Mossbank?-They are all invoiced from Mossbank.
9454. At the cost price, or at the price at which you are to sell them?-At the retail price.
9455. Have you known many cases of fishermen leaving your employment and going to other merchants?-No; as a general rule, fishermen continue in our employment for a very long time.
No doubt there exceptions.
9456. I suppose there is a difficulty sometimes in man changing because of its disarranging the boat"s crew?-In some cases there is.
9457. Do you know of any cases in which single men have come to you from other employers within the last half-dozen years?-I cannot speak for the last half-dozen years. I can only speak particularly for two years.
9458. Within that time have you got many men coming to you from other merchants?-There have been a few.
9459. Have these men generally been clear of debt to their former employers when they came to you?-So far as I know, they have.
9460. They have not asked you to undertake, their debts, or to advance them money with which to pay their debts to their former employers?-No. I have no case of that kind in my mind at present.
9461. Does any arrangement exist between you and any other fish-merchant, to the effect that a man leaving the one merchant and seeking employment with the other shall have his debt cleared off by the new employer?-There is no such arrangement between us and any other employer.
9462. Do you know of any case in which that has been done?-I cannot say that I do. Such a thing might have occurred, but there is no case of that sort which has come within my own knowledge.
Mid Yell, January 17, 1872, THOMAS WILLIAMSON, examined.
9463. You are a merchant and fish-curer at Seafield?-I am. I have been there for a short time. I commenced with the fishing in 1871, and I commenced for myself there as a merchant on 20th May 1870.
9464. Where had you been before?-I was shopman for one year before to the man who had the place previously-Magnus Mouat.
9465. Before that where had you been?-In 1867 and 1868 I was in Robert Mouat"s shop at Coningsburgh as his shopman, but he took charge of the shop chiefly himself. I was not quite two years there.
9466. I understand the men in that neighbourhood were under an obligation to fish to Mouat, who was the tacksman of the property?-I cannot say about that. I did not know anything about their private matters.
9467. Do you mean to say that you were shopman to Mouat for two years and did not know that?-I did not know their private affairs, whether they were bound or not. I saw the men fishing, but I could not say whether they were under an obligation to fish for him more than for any other one.
9468. Did you not know of any cases in which men were threatened or ejected for not fishing for him, or for selling their fish to other merchants?-I was not aware of that at the time I was there.
9469. Were the men"s accounts with Mouat settled annually in the same way as they are in other places in Shetland?-Yes, during the time I was there.