SHIPPING PROBLEMS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 August 1938, Page 3

SHIPPING PROBLEMS

BUSINESS BECOMING MORE COMPLEX. USE OF STATE SUBSIDIES. The business of shipping annually becomes more and more complex, simply because, in the view of Lord Essendon, shipowning can no longer be regarded as a purely individual or commercial enterprise. Of the great variety of insidious influences at work today undermining the position of British shipping in world trade, the explanation is to be found in most cases in some real or fancied “national” need. The shipping industry and the commercial world generally have come to expect from Lord Essendon, as chairman of Furness, Withy and Company, Limited, an annual assessment of the outlook at that company’s meeting. His plain speaking recently in summing up a situation which grows more and more complex is appreciated in the City. He has rendered a service in saying bluntly that no industry run on commercial lines can cope with Stateaided competition. “He suggested that certain projected developments of the United States Maritime Commission went far beyond even the policy of subsidising United States ships to the extent of meeting the higher cost of operating them compared with vessels under other flags, which, it was understood, was the intention of the latest American legislation. Such support of American services—in competition in at least one case with an existing American line — was a departure, he asserted, which, if persisted in, would be grossly unfair to the lines that during a long period of years had given good and adequate service to the shippers. Lord Essendon was glad to be able to report that the Shaw, Savill and Albion Company continued to do well and had fulfilled their expectations. The fleet was being augmented by new tonnage from time to time, the Waimarama having recently been launched at Belfast and the Dominion Monarch on the Tyne in July, while an additional cargo steamer similar to the Waimarama had recently been contracted for with Messrs Harland and Wolff.

It is interesting to observe that Lord Essendon regards the present setback as temporary and sees in the restoration of political confidence the best hope of bridging the gap between profitable and unprofitable trading. “Beggar your neighbour,”. he said, “never did much good, either to the beggar or the neighbour, and,'in my view, active and prosperous trading among nations is one of the surest methods of achieving peace and restoring confidence, the lack of which is one of the greatest stumbling blocks today.”