the surplus $1,700,000. The bank now has a branch office or agency in New York City, and the management expects to soon open an office in Chicago. The remaining $500,000 of unissued authorized capital stock will be offered to the shareholders pro rata, presumably at an early date.

The Royal Bank of Canada was, until about two years ago, known as the Merchants Bank of Halifax. The name was then changed to prevent confusion with the Merchants Bank of Canada, which has its head office in Montreal.

HALIFAX, December 11, 1902.

JOHN G. Foster,

Consul-General.

BEET-SUGAR MANUFACTURE IN ONTARIO.

The first sugar from sugar beets grown in Canada was turned out last week by the Ontario Sugar Company, Limited, at the company's plant in Berlin, Ontario. This company was established in 1901 for the purpose of making sugar from sugar beets, and started the erection of a plant about six months ago. The factory cost about $600,000 and has a daily capacity of 600 tons of beets. When in operation, 100 tons of coal and 40 tons of limestone are used every twenty-four hours. The factory will employ from 250 to 300 men. The main building is of five stories, 323 feet long, with cooperage and machine shops and seed and engine houses. There is also a pump house on the Grand River, 2,200 feet away, with a capacity of 5,000,000 gallons daily. There are three wagon and two railway There are now 7,000 tons of beets stored. this new plant, the first of its kind in

shops, each 350 feet long. Great interest is taken in Canada.

In addition to the production of beet sugar, the industry is giving rise to factories for the working up of by-products. Recently, letters patent were granted incorporating the General Distilling Company, Limited, composed of well-known capitalists of Toronto and Walkerville, Ontario, for the purpose of working up the sirup which is a by-product of beet-sugar manufacture into an alcohol for use for mechanical and art purposes. The factory will, it is stated, be built in Toronto. The company is capitalized at $600,000. E. N. GUNSAULUS,

TORONTO, November 11, 1902.

Consul.

POWER WORKS FOR VANCOUVER.

Consul L. E. Dudley, of Vancouver, November 25, 1902, says:

The following description of the work being done to furnish electric power for this city and the city of New Westminster, 12 miles distant, may prove of interest. The article is from the World, a daily paper published in this city:

The object of the company is to join the waters of lakes Coquitlam and Beautiful by a tunnel 2 miles long, and provide a permanent source of electrical production. The power will be supplied to Vancouver and New Westminster for all purposes to which electricity is applicable. The dam is 405 feet above the sea level and it will be 300 feet long, 50 feet high, 35 feet at the base, and taper to 8 feet on top. In seeking for a location where the dam could be set on solid rock, several preliminary shafts were sunk. When the proper locality was found, tunnels were run under the stream and the site thoroughly prospected over the bed rock. In doing this alone, 500 feet of tunnel were run. This is only one sample of the thoroughness with which the company is doing everything. At present, a temporary dam is being put in, so as to enable the company to carry off the water by flume while the permanent dam is in course of construction. The work of this new dam is in itself interesting to watch. Huge trees, veritable veterans of the forest, are picked up like toothpicks and dropped just where wanted. It is expected that this dam will be completed in a couple of weeks. Besides this work, the company has a gang of men employed cutting a terrace out of the face of the rock to form a site for the power house. It will be so situated that even if the big dam did give way, the rush of the waters would not affect it.

Outside of the company's fifty-odd men, there are about 150 employed by the contractors in clearing the portion that is to be submerged, which will make the lake surface 500 acres. The intention is to keep the water always 20 feet above the outlet pipe from the big dam. From the dam down to the power house is a drop of 400 feet in 1,600, so that no one need be an expert hydrostatist to figure out that the water will not come down sluggishly. Other men are working on the tunnel which will bring the waters of Coquitlam Lake down to Lake Beautiful. In this tunnel, the men are in 150 feet and are now boring through solid granite. It is understood that the men at the Coquitlam end are in about the same distance. The tunnel, when completed, will be 2.5 miles long, and will have in that distance a drop of 32 feet.

At present, all the hauling is done on the tramway by a cable line, but an electric locomotive has been ordered and is due to be delivered here on December 15. This will not be used on the first section of the road from the inlet up, which is a 58 per cent grade, but will be employed above, to haul the rock out from the tunnel. The transmission line, for which two big gangs of men are now cutting a road through the forest, will cross the inlet at Barnet. A steel cable will cross the inlet, copper being too ductile. On one side there will be a steel tower to receive the cable. The distance across is nearly half a mile.

EXPORT OF TIMBER FROM BRITISH COLUMBIA PROHIBITED. 215

SARDINES IN BRITISH COLUMBIA.

The attention of a gentleman from the East visiting Puget Sound three years ago was attracted by the large number of small fish that were said to be sardines. He sent for an expert and had a few canned in the regular way. The result was the establishment at Port Townsend of a cannery, the output of which in 1901, its first year, was 60,000 cases. It is estimated that the pack of this year will reach 175,000 cases. It is claimed that these are superior in quality to sardines canned on the Atlantic coast, and equal to the foreign product.

It is said that plans are being considered for the erection of a much larger plant on Puget Sound. The same fish exist in great abundance in waters in the immediate vicinity of this city. The duty imposed upon cotton-seed oil has lately been removed by the Canadian Government, so that sardines may be packed here as cheaply as on Puget Sound, and they would find a ready market in this Province and as far east as Winnipeg. It seems to me that there is an excellent opportunity for the establishment of such an enterprise in this city or vicinity. The country tributary to Vancouver is rapidly filling up, and there will be an increasing demand for such products.

There is a cannery in this city which proposes to run all the year. After the salmon season is over, it intends to can, dry, or salt other fish, and there has been a suggestion that it extend its operations to the canning of sardines, although I believe no action in that direction has yet been taken.

It seems to me this is an opening well worth the attention of some person with moderate capital. L. EDWIN DUDLEY,

VANCOUVER, November 28, 1902.

Consul.

EXPORT OF TIMBER FROM BRITISH COLUMBIA

PROHIBITED.

In ADVANCE SHEETS OF CONSULAR REPORTS No. 1470, issued October 16, 1902,* a report of mine was published regarding the lumber industry in British Columbia, in which I made the statement that an export duty had been placed upon timber cut upon the public lands of this Province. The information upon which I made that

*CONSULAR REPORTS No. 267 (December, 1902).

statement was derived from the newspapers of this city, but my attention has since been called to the fact that it is not an export duty, but an absolute prohibition placed by the Government upon the export of timber cut upon lands owned by the Province.

Timber off all unsurveyed and unpreempted Crown lands can be cut either under 21-year leases or annual licenses. During the session of 1901, an amendment to the then existing land act was passed, reading as follows:

All timber cut from provincial lands must be manufactured within the confines of the Province of British Columbia, otherwise the timber so cut may be seized and forfeited to the Crown and the lease canceled.

The point was raised that the above only applied to leases, not licenses. In July, 1902, an order in council was made to make the above restriction apply to licenses.

L. EDWIN DUDLEY,

VANCOUVER, November 14, 1902.

Consul.

GOVERNMENT IRON FOUNDRY IN JAPAN.

Consul S. S. Lyon transmits from Kobé, October 23, 1902, clipping from the Chronicle, an English journal at that port, as follows:

THE IMPERIAL IRON FOUNDRY TO BE MADE INTO A JOINT-STOCK COMPANY. The official draft of the law which is to govern the transformation of the Imperial Iron Foundry into a joint-stock company has been published. The company will be allowed several special facilities. It is to succeed to all the rights and obligations of the Imperial Iron Foundry, the capital being made up of the 20,000,000 yen ($9,960,000) which has been invested by the Government in the foundry and works connected therewith. This sum will be invested by the Government in the form of shares, while 7,500,000 yen ($3,735,000) will be raised by public subscription, the face value of each share being 100 yen ($19.80). The directors are to be elected from among those shareholders holding fifty or more shares, six candidates to be recommended to the Government, who will duly select three. No dividend will be paid to shareholders without the approval of the Minister for Finance. The approval of the same minister must be obtained in the event of the company wishing to raise a loan or to issue debentures.

The Government is to receive its dividend out of the surplus remaining, after a dividend of 8 per cent has been paid to the shareholders.

* *

*

The Government will guarantee the payment of 6 per cent interest on the capital subscribed by the public for fifteen years from the formation of the company, and, in addition, will advance a sum not exceeding 50,000,000 yen ($24,900,000) free of interest, in case further capital should be required. The money so advanced will be available for eleven years, and will have to be repaid in twenty yearly installments. Moreover, the Government agrees to buy from the company all the iron and steel required for national purposes. The company will be exempted from the imposition of business tax for fifteen years, commencing from the year following that of the flotation.

It is stated that at about the time of the appointment of the present director of the Imperial Foundry, a proposal was made to float the business as a joint-stock company, but it met with strong opposition and was dropped. Subsequently, a committee was appointed to go into the matter. First of all, the committee considered the question as to whether the foundry should be continued as a Government business or be transformed into a private company. The latter course was proposed. It will be seen that the present proposal practically amounts to a transfer of the undertaking free of cost, and the Mitsu Bishi is said to have been the means to this end.

PROGRESS OF JAPANESE RAILWAY ENTER

PRISE.

Al

In 1870, when the Government of Japan decided to construct a railroad connecting the old and the new capital-Kyoto and Tokyoit accepted British assistance for the inauguration of the work. though the project was devised to connect the capitals, the necessity for having railway communication between the present capital and its seaport, Yokohama, and also between the former capital and its seaport, Kobé, caused these two lines to be built before carrying out the plan for the main trunk line. The Satsuma rebellion, which broke out in 1876, caused a suspension of activity in railway construction, and it was not until 1890, twenty years after the inception of the plan, that the railway connecting the former and the present. capital was opened for traffic.

These first lines were constructed and equipped by the British, and of course followed British standards throughout, and on the main island, where these roads are, no other type than that of the English engine was even thought of for many years. In Kiushu, the large island at the south, the first railroads were built about 1881 and in the Hokkaido, at the north, at nearly the same time, the Germans constructing and equipping the former, while the latter were in charge of American engineers, who procured all their supplies from the United States. Three standards of railway equipment were thus introduced into the Empire, the British having the advantage of being first in the field and of being established in the island, which, both from its size and from its including nearly all the important commercial cities of the Empire, would require much the greatest mileage.

There was no marked change in the conditions thus introduced into Japanese railway affairs, the standards of each nation continuing to predominate in the island where they were introduced until 1897, when 125 locomotives were ordered from America for the imperial and Nippon railways in the main island, the Nippon being the most important of the private railway companies. Since that No 269-03-4