THE PANAMA CANAL TOLLS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 156, 19 November 1912, Page 4

THE PANAMA CANAL TOLLS.

The announcement of the charges which are to be imposed on ships using the Panama Canal will set the shipping companies of the world at work on estimates of revenue and expenditure (says the Lyttelton Times). It is scarcely possible for the layman to frame an opinion regarding the rates until the experts have pronounced upon them, but at first sight it does not seem that the American Government has made a bold bid for trade. Mr. Taft and his advisers have been embarrassed by the necessity of making provision for payment of interest and, if possible, sinking fund on the huge sum of money, approaching £80,000,000, which has been invested in the canal. They were confronted by the task of gauging to a nicety how high the rate could be fixed without, drivin« traffic round Cape Horn and through the Suez Canal, which is bound to compete actively with Panama for the trade of Eastern Asia and Australasia. But it seems to have been expected in many quarters that a rate of a dollar a ton would be found sufficient, and the charges now mentioned will cause some calculations to be revised. The declaration of the tolls will be likely, too, to cause a renewal of Britain's demand for the observance of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty in connection with' the canal charges. • Senator Chauncey Depew statr ed that the United States would neither redeem the pledge given eleven years ago nor submit the matter to arbitration, and he added rather gloomily that tiie dispute would do his country as much harm as the repudiation of State bonds held in Europe did after the Civil War. But it is difficult to believe that the Republic is going to strike this blow at the very foundation of international relationships.