TRADE WITH AMERICA.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 March 1916, Page 6

TRADE WITH AMERICA.

SERIOUS DISLOCATION. FEW SHIPS AND HIGH FREIGHTS. (Auckland Herald). The extraordinary congestion in trade between the eastern coast of North America and New Zealand, noted a month ago, continues unrelieved. If there is any difference in the conditions, they are somewhat accentuated. There is the greatest difficulty in obtaining freights from American ports for goods ordered for New Zealand, and in consequence of the blockage in the ports, the railway lines of the Eastern States, extending back from the seaboard to the great manufacturing States, are still choked with good 3 awaiting shipment, over an area stretching for hundreds of miles. Consequently, the railway companies are withholding permits for the sending of goods across their lines to the docks, with the exception of consignments the carriage of which they have already undertaken. The importation of goods to the Dominion is both restricted and expensive, and prices are soaring to an unprecedented extent. One Auckland importing firm, which deals largely in such goods as structural steel, barbed wire, nails and the like, reports that .within the last six weeks alone it has declined orders to the value of about £30,000 because of the utter impossibility of assuring shipment. As to prices, it states that nails, which before the war were sold at from £7 10s to £6 10s per ton, canwot now tie procured for less than £26 per ton. Other lines of ironwork have risen in about the same proportion—more than 300 per cent—and even at these prices they cannot be imported, owing to the difheulties attending shipment. It was recently announced to importers that the New Zealand Shipping Company's service from St. John's, New Brunswick, would cease with the sailing of the Matatna about the end of February or the beginning of March. Within the last few days, however, official advice has been received that arrangements have been made with the company to despatch another vessel in March and yet another in April, but beyond that month there is no assurance that the service will be continued. The steamers of the Australian and American, Commonwealth, and Dominion and Barber lines are running from New York as regularly as they can be despatched, In view of the difficulties of loading.

PANAMA CANAL BLOCKAGE. REOPENING EXPECTED wednesoay. ; The Panama Canal, according to information received by Mr. A, A. Winslow, Consul-General' for the United States, should have re-opened on Wednesday. The information did not reach Mr. Winslow officially, but he confidently expects that the new channel will be ready for traffic as stated. It will be rememborrd that the canal was completely blocked by a huge landslip. The waterway at the point of the slip was 300 ft wide, but the new channel which is being constructed will be only about 100 ft in width. In the meantime work on a large scale is proceeding t,i ensure that ianddips shall not recur, and the former width d the canal will then be maintained. Mr. Winslow was unable to say whether full tvallic would be possible through the temporary channel, or whether only ships of a certain draught would be admitted for the time being. The United States, he said, was determined to make a perfectly safe and permanent waterway. After the war a greater trade would be sought with Australia and New Zealand, whose products were greatly in favor. Mr. Winslow said that there would be no increase made in canal tolls to meet the coat of clearing the landslipe. Indeed, he expected the reverse taking piace, because he believed that a new system of measurement applicable to vessels passing through the canal, and that system was not so favorable as the British standard of measurement. The latter, he believed, was about to be adopted. When Mr. Winslnw's attention was directed to a New York cablegram, dated February 27, and announcing that a new shipping company, with a capital of £1,000,000, had been formed to'run a line of steamers from New York to China, Japan and Russia, under the American flag, he • said he hoped that the new Company would extend its sphere to Australia. Indeed, he had written the day after reading the cablegram urging that the extension be made. In this connection Mr. Winslow pointed out that there were growing complaints, both in New Zealand and in America, of the shortage of shipping space for the trade between the two countries. He had repeatedly urged upon American interests the need for additional shipping facilities. At the present time to travel to Europe via the Panama Canal was to take the safest route.