Manager.

Reputation Of Burns

Philp & Co.

Tribute By a Rival Manager.

A NOTABLE tribute to “The Big Firm” was paid by Mr. H. E. Snell, a direc tor and chief executive of Morris Hedstrom, Ltd., in Suva on December 14.

The occasion was an entertainment aboard the new Burns Philp motor-ship "Yanawai” (a description and photograph of which were published last month).

Mr. Snell proposed the toast of Messrs.

Burns Philp & Co., Ltd. “When I came to Fiji 26 years ago”, said Mr. Snell, “Burns Philp were trading here only in a very small way and under a name other than their own. During the intervening quarter of a century their progress has been very fast and very steady. They have built in Suva what is undoubtedly the finest building in Fiji to date, and you see round you to-day evidence of their desire to cater for travellers better per haps than travellers have ever been cater ed for before in Fiji.

“They are a firm with money: their re cord shows they have not been afraid to risk that money, and the country is for tunate that a firm of B.P.’s standing has interested itself in Fiji because B.P. have both the enterprise to encourage development and the money with which to help matters along through a bad spell.

“More important than the financial standing of a firm is its general reputa tion. B.P. is a firm of the highest repu tation. In the course of business over these many years I have made a thou sand and one arrangements with B.P.— many of them arrangements made mere ly on an oral basis, and many of them arrangements which, as events turned out later, could have led to a lot of difficulty in interpretation. A few of these arrange ments (all too few T I fear) have resulted, as events turned out, in profit rather to my firm than to B.P. I have never known B.P. whine at losses; I have never found them technical in interpretation of con tracts. I have always found them anxious to honour their bond whatever the con sequences.

“In their origin Burns Philp are a Scottish firm, and Scotsmen are still strongly represented on their Board and on their staff. I think B.P. are worthy descendants of those old West of Scotland firms who have done so much to aid British civilisation throughout the world.

Like true Scotsmen, they have usually found it possible to make a very good pro fit themselves in the process; like true Scotsmen also (and there is no race so idealist as the Scottish) they have sought after other things than profit and in so doing have contributed very much to the development of the British Com monwealth of Nations in the Antipodes”.

The general manager of Burns Philp (S.S.) Co., Ltd., in Fiji, Mr. J. Trotter, in acknowledging Mr. Snell’s generous tribute, said that, during 17 years with the firm he had never been asked to do anything against fair business principles, and he could reciprocate the sentiments expressed by Mr. Snell. They felt that Suva had an era of stable prosperity ahead of it and there was a general tone of solidity about the Colony.

Mr. R. F. Thomson, of Aola, Guadal canal, British Solomon Islands, who was well-known throughout the Group, died

in Tulagi Hospital on January 18.