AMERICA'S SHIPPING "BOYCOTT."

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 209, 3 September 1900, Page 2

AMERICA'S SHIPPING "BOYCOTT."

PROPOSED AUSTRALIAN

PROTEST

The potentialities, so far as Australian trading interests are concerned, of the extension of the coastal navigation laws of the United States of America so as to include Hawaii, are each clay becoming plainer to commercial people, in Sydney, says the "Daily Telegraph." Under these laws no foreign vessel is permitted to take any cargo at one American port and carry it to another. They were passed with the object of stopping the practice which was then followed on the American coast of British vessels taking a cargo across to a United States port, discharging it there, and loading up with goods for another American port.

The extension of these laws to Hawaii means, however, that Australa-sian-owned vessels are being squeezed out of the trade between Sydney and San Francisco, because, while they are permitted to take cargo from Australasia to Honolulu, and vice versa, they cannot- carry cargo from Honolulu to San Francisco and vice versa, and it so hapens that this covers the great part of the trade.

Sir William Lyne has already initiated negotiations with the Governments of the other colonies, With a view to 'united representations being made to the Imperial Govammeiiti' asking it to endeavour to obtain from the United States such modification of the navigation laws as will place our commerce with the United States by way of Honolulu on a more equitable footing than it is now.

With the object of strengthening the Premier's hands in this important matter, merchants and others are being invited by circular to take such action as they may think wise.

The circular referred to recites the facts already given, and proceeds in the following way:—"The effect of the operation of these laws is seen in the determination of Spreckels Brothers to place a third vessel on the San Francisco mail service with Australia as soon as the present contract with the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand expires, in March next, under which one of the three vessels belonging to the Union Company—practically the Moana—will be knocked off the trade in eight months' time. But the Government of New South Wales has decided, under these conditions, not to continue the subsidy for this mail service. "A circumstance which intensifies the injustice to British shipping of the recent application of the American navigation laws to Hawaii on its annexation by the United States, is that British-owned steamships have been, and are, prevented carrying passengers of British nationality between Honolulu and San Francisco, and that they are equally prevented from carrying merchandise manufactured or grown in British possessions between these ports, it having been previously landed at cither." In commercial circles it is said that the application of the American coastal shipping law to Hawaii has injured the interests of -Australasian shipping. Therefore it is felt that all those interested in the progress of the trading relations between Australia and America by way of the Pacific should take immediate steps to endeavour to hdve the present restrictions removed or modified.

Failing the United States Government agreeing to a proposal of this kind, it is felt, as one gentleman put it to a "Daily Telegraph" representative yesterday, "that Australia should make reprisals upon American shippinff#" "Not by way of revenge, he continued, "but "just to let Americans see how a similar law will suit them. To shut the door of Hawaii in the face of Australia was a very unfair thing to do, especially as Australians might, being very largely concerned about the obviously quickly-growing trade across the Pacific to their shores and to the East, have made a considerable protest to the Imperial Government against America being allowed to get HaNvaii at all. "However, she's got it, and she has shut the door in our face. y "But as Hawaii occupies a most important position on. the route from Aui-tralife. _o c the .United States (of America and "to Canada, we must try to get the existing state of things altered. , ■ "To get a slap on one side of the face and then turn the other is all very well, perhaps; but it isn't business."