The Brussels Post, 1974-07-24, Page 2PITAIILISHED
1173
russels Post
CCNA
PAID
.41,,(1.4•1,410.
Sugar and Spice
By Bill Smiley
Bringing in 'the hay
Last week, faithful readers, if there are
any left, followed the enthralling, if not
appalling, acount of my meteoric career in
the financial world.
I had suggested that I felt I was being
caught in the Middle of a great financial
squeeze when someone offered to buy me
Peel-Elder stock at $13 a share. I smelled
something peculiar and promised I'd try to
get to the bottom of it.
I haven't, but I hate to part with those
twenty-five shares of Peel-Elder I've had
them as long as I've had my wife.
They are all that's left of my second and
final savage attack on the stock market. My
first was rather deflating, as I mentioned
last week.
But the second time around, I didn't take
any chances.lt was only when I trusted
stock-broker told me Eldridge Mines was
going to be the hottest thing on the market,
that I carefully bought 1,000 shares. They
cost me $330. The broker was a former
prisoner-of-war, so could be trusted
implicitly.
The stock held firm, went up about five
cents a share in a week, and this time there
actually was a producing gold mine. I
reckoned I was in Biscuit City, as we say in
these parts.
What nobody told me was that there was
more money in gravel than there was in
'gold, in those days, and for many years to
come. I should have bought a gravel pit.
I have previously related how that 1,000
shares of Eldridge has shrunk to 25 shares
of Peel-Eider, so I won't bore you. But I did
learn one of the inevitable, or so it seems to
me, laws of stocks.
Every time a company gets bigger,1 have
fewer stocks. Eldridge expanded, became
known as Elder, with a lot of new capital
and great prospects in the offing. I was told
that for my 1,000 shares of that cheap tittle
old Eldridge, I would get 120 shares of this
treniendous new Elder.
There was no money in gold mining,
apparently, so Elder became Peel-Elder
and got heavily into real estate: Assets
increased, profits rose, and. Smiley wound
up With something like 121 shares of
Peel. Elder.
There was one halcyon period when
Peel-Elder went up to Molt than 213 a
share. I was tempted to sell. I could have
come out only about $100 in the hole, aft er
twenty y ears. Not bad, that , But 1 hung in
.11e.”e.
i nen, about a year ago g Peel-Eider, with
a flamboyant burst of something or other,
Wonted trie that, as a loyal shareholder, I
could have two shares for every one Iliad.
I don't remember the details. I think you
had to be a white Anglican with some teeth
missing, a bad back, and no more or less
than two children, neither of them
self-supporting. Something like that.
Anyway I qualified.
That's how .1 wound up with 25 shares of
Peel-Elder. And now along corn, -.•.s an
impressive brochure from an outfit called
Hambro Canada Limited with an offer to
buy at $13 a share. In February and March
I could have sold for about $14.
Hambro is a Canadian affiliate of
Hambros Ltd., a London, England, based
international merchant banker, with a good
many fingers in a good many pies.
Hambro Canada Ltd. already owns
almost 50 per cent of Peel-Elder, but wants
to buy the rest.
Most of the directors and officers of
Peel-Eider are also directors or officers of
Hambro Canada Limited.
Are you confused? .Me too. It's pretty
• obviously a takeover of an established
Canadian corporation by a British-based
corporation, with somebody probably
about to make a pot of bullion in the
process.
And here's something else that puzzles
me. After thirty-odd years of watching
Peel-Elder ,grow from a sickly little gold
mine into a husky corporation, and
watching my share of the cake diminish
from a small wedge to a crumb, I suddenly
get two whacking great dividend cheques
from Peel-Elder. One for $2.94,the other
for $1.50.
. Wouldn't you be wary when you'd not
received a dividend for three decades and
suddenly got two in one mail?
The offer to buy me out, from Hambro
Canada Ltd., states rather sternly that the
offer will expire July 23rd.
If I accept the offer, I will receive $325.
The stock cost me $330 thirty years ago.
And Trudeau would probably want a
capital gains tax if i sold.
Well, there we are. I St- arted out in a
quandary and I've ended in a quagniire. I
wish 14 d put that original $330 into a couple
of beach lots which would now be worth
$20,000'. I. wish I'd gone into pig farming. I.
wish I could Win a sweepstake.
However, that's the way it goes with as
chaps who play the market. We accept the
fact that we're compulsive gamblers and
take our tosses with a stiff lower lip.
Out I won't sell that stock, Let theni fight
it but, the corporate bums,
IE
ab
p
Wednesday,' July 24, 1974
Serving Brussels and the surrounding community.
Published each. Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario
by McLean Bros,Publishers, Limited.
Evelyn Kennedy Editor Tom Haley - Advertising
Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and
Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association.
Subscrip0.ons (in advance) Canada $6.00 a year, Others
$8.00 a year, Single Copies 15 cents each.
Second class mail Registration No. 0562,,
Telephone 887-6641.
You and pollution
For what shall it profit a nation if it doubles its
Gross National Product in fifteen years and allows its
physical environment to deteriorate at the same rate
at the same time?
To what extent can we have effectivq pollution
control without seriously slowing down economic
growth and increasing unemployment?
Suppose that in your community there is a plant
manufacturing plorial-rods, but that its processes
put polluting gases into the atmosphere and poisons
into the local river. And suppose that the cost of
controlling such pollution is economically
prohibitive, that it would price those plorial-rods
rignt out or we market. And suppose that the plant
employs 200 persons--your friends and neighbors,
perhaps you. And suppose you own a few shares in
the company. What would you think should be done?
Effective pollution control may require some
quite radical changes in our economic structures and
operations. It is obvious that it will require some
public controls which many industries will not like.
And large sums of public money will be needed for
clean-up programs--and that will touch the purses of
all of us.
It has been said that smog is a deadly mixture of
smoke, fog, and legislative inaction. But we ordinary
voters can have quite a bit to do with the action, and
the inaction, of the legislators we elect. But
politicians are a wily breed, and they know how easy
it is for citizens to make idealistic and compassionate
noises without seriously considering the sacrifices
they may have to make if those noises are to be acted
on.
How much pollution are you willing to tolerate
rather than accept a drop in your standard of living?
Country store smells
Just once more a man would like to open the door
of an old-fashioned general country store and whiff
the distinctive fragrances he remembers.
Wonderful smells hit the nostrils as soon as one
stepped inside the door. Some were blends; some
were individual aromas and'stood forth like the clear
streaks of color in a marble cake. You quickly
recognized the pungent fragrances of the big
cartwheel cheese, of pickled herring and salt Codfish.
When those are Mingled with the satisfying smell of
fresh ground coffee, you' have an aroma no
manufacturer of perfume has been able to equal.
Good, familiar smells came from the wide,
wooden counter heaped high with stiff-starched
overalls and heavy woollen pants, felt leggings and
thick union suits; there was a rich, acrid pungency
from the rubber arctics, leather work shoes and
rubber boots. It was good blended fragrance. from
the hemp rope, harriesSes, leather strapS,'-logging
chains, tobacco, coal oil, oranges, bananas,
molasses, open barrel of common crackerS, buckets
of chocolate and hard candies, keg of dill pickles,
bacon and hare, bolts of gingham, percale and calico,
woollen blankets and hair ribbons.
All fused their aromas pleasantly with the
fragrance from the tall, pot-bellied, coal-burning
stove sitting on its zinc mat.
There are hosts of Canadians who still remember
the general stores of half a century ago and who
know the old-fashioned -places where goods were
kept for sale" were More than, marts of trade,
(Contributed)
BRUSSELS
ONTARIO
• 11..,