File MS Vols/ Volume 1/ No. 25. - William Crawshay, London, to William Tait, Esqre,

Intimates that Richard Hill may do as he likes about his ruinous price-cutting policy, which the other ironmasters will be compelled to follow; that the writer has dissuaded Samuel Homfray from advertizing for a meeting of the whole Trade to consider a plan for Government Regulation, etc.; that the writer will not attend a meeting at Gloucester because price agreements thus made are never kept; that the Staffordshire works, having innundated the market, seek to close the Welsh works; that William Crawshay, Junior, will co-operate in local measures to reduce production costs but that sales and prices will be entirely a matter for the writer, who confident of his ability to last as long as others, and believing that the crisis is due to the poverty and distress of producers and not to overproduction, will charge whatever circumstances seem to dictate. [or, simply: Refuses to participate in price-fixing arrangements].