The Shipping Ring.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 257, 21 April 1888, Page 5

The Shipping Ring.

The effoits of those Australian shippers who have supported the movement to check the associated brokers in making inequitable concessions to different firms have already been attended by a degree of success, the supply of tonnage placed on the berth having increased to markedly that there is now scarcely a complaint to be heard of delayed This is regarded as a symptom that " the ring " brokers are disposed to capitulate should the cohesion of the malcontent shippers prove sufficiently strong ; but it i» also looked upon as a '' &op to Cerberus 1) —a spasmodic attempt to remove one of the most serious of the shippers' grievances—though whether any permanent improvemeinenb may be expected if the present agitation fail, or is allowed to subside abortively, is extremely doubtful. A great deal of attention has been directed towards the operations of " tbe ring,"' and with pcavcely an exception, the printed comments upon them have been condemnatory. The very existence ot a powerful organisation to monopolise such an important and rapidly increasing section of the shipping trade as that between Great Britain and the Australian colouics i* regarded with general disfavour, and most cogent arguments are advanced against the wisdom of merchants and agents continuing to support a combination which mutt eventually act most prejudicially to their interests. The shippers are reminded that the existing low rates of freight are entirely attiibutable to the competition introduced into the Australian shipping trade by Messrs Tyser and Co. and the Australian Mutual Shipping Com pany, and that the defeat of those competitors will be the signal for the stoppage of "fighting ships" and low rates, and for the imposition of a scale of freight which will recoup the associated brokers the heavy losses they are now admittedly sustaining. The "Financial News" pufc the case very plainly when it remarked :—: — "To say that 'fighting ships,' laid on by the ring at a low rate, avowedly to crush competition, confer a benefit upon the trade only obscures the real issue. Competition crushed out, it remains with the ring to impose what rates it chooses, and, again, the small shipper is at the mercy of his masters and at a disadvantage with those exporters who, by having a larger quantity of goods to go, enjoy rebates which are out of his reach The only remedy for the grievance —the only way to break down a powerful i and dangerous monopoly, which interferes most oppressively with the individual freedom of merchants and skippers —lies entiiely in the hands of the latter, and that is, to act in combination in the protection of their own interests, and, while refusing to be fettered by any such conditions as have been hitherto imposed upon them, to avail themselves of such independent tonnage as is provided by ' outsiders' until the ring, by its own weight, falls to pieces, and the trade at large becomes, as it should be, free and open." The agreement by which the shippers are bound is pronounced by the. " Econoiiiist" to be "a one-sided arrangement," conferring not a solitary tangible advantage upon the shipper, but binding him hand and foob to the brokers, Ifc may be said that only those who enter into such an agreement suffer for their, foolishness, but, as the " Economist" points out),, trade generally suffers in consequence of the power over it being placed in. the hands o a few persons.