STILL THEY C ME.

Vol. XIX.

WITHIN the last few days the British public has had an excellent opportunity of joining in at the great confidence trick. We allude to the issue of the prospectus of the Scott-Vogt Chemical Co., Ltd., and, although we are of opinion that the Chemical Trade Journal circulates amongst a portion of the community too intelligent to accept the invitation, we think it may not be out of place to devote a few words of criticism to this truly remarkable prospectus.

The share capital-on the principle, we presume, of "in for a penny, in for a pound"—is put down at £150,000., in £1. shares, of which 118,000 are offered to the public, and 32,000 are to be taken by the vendors in part payment of the purchase money. After the contemplation of these last figures, one is really surprised at the self abnegation on the part of the vendors which leads them to merely ask for a trifle of £13,000. in cash in addition.

We take exception to the prospectus because it bristles with mis-statements and suppressions, and we take exception to the whole scheme because not only does it contain nothing that is really new, but it does not offer the slightest guarantee that the unfortunate investors in this enterprise will start on even an equal footing with others who have al ready entered upon the manufacture of nitric acid chlorine.

Referring to our first point, we find the stale old figure of 150,000 tons of bleach and chlorates is raked up to mislead the investors into thinking that they would be entering into the manufacture of an article for which there must be an overwhelming demand, whereas the real facts of the case are that the annual production of Great Britain has now fallen so far below this figure as to tax even the consciencesoothing elasticity of the word "about," and that bleach is such a drug in the market that the great difficulty of manufacturers is not to produce but to dispose of it.

Then we are told that the leading distinctive feature of the Scott-Vogt process is that practically the whole of the chlorine contained in salt can be converted into bleaching powder. Now, if this is not a misrepresentation, we must confess that we do not know the meaning of the word, as it is a well-known fact that this feature is shared by all the nitric acid chlorine processes, and nobody should be better aware of the fact than the gentleman whose name appears first on the list of directors of the Scott-Vogt Chemical Co. It would perhaps be more accurate to say that all the hydrochloric acid can be converted into chlorine if put through the process often enough, but we presume this is much too small a detail to find a place in this prospectus.

We are not going to quibble about the estimated cost of production, which is put down at £4. per ton, seeing that this is based upon a production of half-a-hundred-weight per day by a process which one of the experts, whose report is given, says "will in all probability be commercially successful," but