The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER TUESDAY, MAY 30, 1916. THE WAR AND SHIPPING.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXX, Issue 47, 30 May 1916, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER TUESDAY, MAY 30, 1916. THE WAR AND SHIPPING.

Nearly every country in the world has felt the effect of the war on shipping, since it has entailed greatly increased freights and an enormous diminution in the amount of tonnage available. Certain commodities (says the Auckland "Star"). which'' before the war were carried at 5a and 7s 6d per ton are now coating 155 s to 175 s for transportation. Previous to the war rice was carried from Burma to the United Kingdom for 21s l)d per ton, while the price to-day is 150 s per ton. Argentine wheat is now carried at 152 s per ton instead of the former price of 18s. In the case of som> lines of goods the increase has been as much as forty times the amount charged two years ago. The indirect cost to the people of Great Britain in the first nineteen months of the war owing to the rise in freights has been calculated at £400,000,000, while the net profits in the shipping industry for 1915 were put at £250,000,000, as against £20,000,000 for 1013. Man;, neutral shipowners have made huge fortunes out of the rise in freights. One firm of foreign shippers recently sold two of their most obsolete small vessels for £40,000 each. These vessels cost £20,000 each 25 years ago. an..! would by now have been "scrapped" hut for the war and the corresponding large rise in freights. Yet the purchaser, though he hail paid for each \essel twice as much as they had cost when new reckoned that throe voyages

would give him his purchase money hack and leave him a substantial profit, ami the first voyage of each ship show--1 ed a net profit of £15,000, or considerably more than a third of what he ha I ' expended. The London Commercial Record also remarks that the British ' Government's restrictions which make

' the shipping of commodities other than wheat a matter of some difficulty, ar*> I giving the neutral shipowners the time of their lives, and some extra--1 ordinary freights have been paid recently. Merchants who have contracts to supply seeds and maize have to find vessels somewhere, and with! tonnage short 175 s has been conceded from Buenos Ayre s to Marseille*, for. May loading, 167 s 6d from the same port to the French Atlantic, and 172s] 6d to the Mediterranean. These figures are the highest yet recorded, and if anything they go to prove that it is hopeless to try to tamper with the laws of supply and demand, as obviously with the number of steamers, getting shorter every dav neutral owners, who are neither taxed nor controlled, can place whatever value they fancy upon the space they Wtve to let. i