, the Powell Duffryn
Steam Coal Company is enabled to show a profit for 1915 of L438,799, as
compared with L422,204 for 1914 and L364,421 for 1913. The usual 20 per
cent is distributed on the ordinary shares, free of income tax, and last
year's allocation of L50,000 to the reserve fund is repeated. In
addition, the reserve for income tax benefits to the extent of L50,052,
and there remains L120,236 to carry forward. The decrease in output, it
should be noted, is due to the enlistment of the miners, and its
restoration to the normal and probable increase after the war should
balance the decline in profit that may be expected to attend the
decreased demand.

5. The Times, May 19, 1916:

SOAPMAKERS' "RECORD" PROFITS

Presiding yesterday at the annual meeting of Joseph Watson and Sons
(Limited), soapmakers, Leeds, Mr. Joseph Watson said that the company's
profits for the year amounted to L122,000, or L19,000 in excess of any
previous year's profits. Their turnover had largely increased because
they were now supplying soap to France, Belgium, Scandinavia, and a
small amount to Spain and Italy. It was not a question to-day of getting
orders; it was a question of refusing them. They had at the present time
three months' orders on the books.

6. _The New Witness_:

THE SCANDAL OF WAR PROFITS

It is a sinister and deplorable fact--one of the most ironical with
which the continuance of the War has yet confronted us--that there has
grown up in Great Britain a number of firms and businesses to whom a
successful prosecution of the campaign would mean ruin, and who have an
actual vested interest in the indecisive continuance of hostilities.
This is due entirely to the lack of grip and resolution which the
Government have displayed in dealing with the ugly phenomenon of War
Profits. We know, of course, what happens to those profits at present.
Half is taken by the State: half passes to the firms who are getting
"rich quick" out of its necessities. In theory, it is an anomalous
arrangement, indefensible in logic, and opposed to every canon alike of
justice and of taxation. In practice it works out in the way we have
indicated: that certain privileged firms and individuals are amassing
huge fortunes out of the gravest crisis through which the nation has
passed, and which will pinch us all before it is over.

Let us give some examples of the mammoth profits that some of these
concerns are making. There is first of all the fa