The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 1905. THE ATLANTIC RATE WAR.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 16, 19 January 1905, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 1905. THE ATLANTIC RATE WAR.

jrnr Mm oaate thmt teeka aa.lH—e. Wer the «rMf thmt need* r..(at—as, Ito the future it the iietemem, Am* the gaed thmt mc emm *•■

The struggle between the Cunard line and its Continental rivals for the Atlantic passenger trade has ended somewhat abruptly in a victory for the British company. The competition between the CunaaE and the Hamburg-American and other German lines in the Atlantic trade has been very keen for some years past. but the immediate occasion for this struggle was an agreement made by the Cunard Company with the Hungarian Government for the exclusive right to carry emigrants from Hungary to the United States on certain fixed terms for the next ten years. The German lines resented this contract as an encroachment upon their Continental trade, ana at once retaliated .by reducing their fares to America. At the beginning of 1904 the average passenger fare from German and British ports to America was £5 10/ per head. By the middle of May the German companies were carrying passengers across the Atlantic for £3, and several English companies— the White Star, Red Star, and othersfollowed suit. These English companies professed to be acting in self-defence, but there was -at least a strong suspicion that they were under agreement to assist the German lines to fight the Cun? ard, and that they were indemnified against loss by the Hamburg-American line.

However that may be, the Cunard was compelled to cut its rates, and the German lines then brought their fares down to £2 per bead. At this ridiculous figure—which means steam-traffic across the Atlantic at the rate of ten miles for one pegmy—the companies could not even cover expenses. But then the American combine companies took a hand in the fight, and by the middle of August the rate was down to £1 10/. The German companies were bitterly in earnest, but though the passenger traffic was prodigious, they could not sttana the financial strain, and in September

a conference was held at Frankfurt to arrange a compromise. Lord Inveapclyde represented the Cunard line, Herr Ballin of the Hamburg-American company the Continental lines, while Mr. Bruce I*may and Sir Clinton Dawkins appeared on behalf of the British rivals of rlie Cunard included in the American Cotnbine. As a result of these negotiaiioaTS the Cunard Company comes out of the fight victorious all along the line. It retains its Hungarian contract, and the German companies have agreed to raise the rates on a uniform scale to the point at which they stood before the rate war began. The struggle is said to have cost the companies concerned half a million sterling, and the greater part of this loss will naturally fall upon the Continental lines which first reduced their fares.

But though the Cunard Comepany may fairly congratulate itself upon its triumph, it is impossible to shut our eyes to the fact that England no longer controls the Atlantic trade as in years gone by. A constantly jncreasmg proportion of Atlantic shipping is falling into the hands of our Continental and American rivals. To begin with, the Hamburg-_knerican line is by far the largest shipping company in the world. It owns a fleet of 125 steamships, with a capacity of 650,000 tons. Its nearest rival is another German line, the Noxddeutscher Lloyd, with 122 vessels of 583,000 tons. The White Star line has only 27 vessels, of 260,000 tons, and the Cunard line'has only 19, of 129,000 tons. Nor is the superiority of the Germans confined to tonnage and number of ships. In speed the taateat German «teamers have uwßllltJy their British rivals. Four Oehnan vessels, with a speed' of from 22} to 23 J. knots, are easily first in the Atlantic: running, and bring the New York mails to London from 8 to 18 hours faster than their English competitors. On the Atlantic runs, speed pays more than other qualification for success, and the Lmmensely wealthy Americans and Europeans who constantly cross the Atlantic are willing to pay fabulous prices— £200 to £400—for cabin suites on board 'the German "greyhounds." Last year the Kaiser Wilhelm 11. left New York on a certain day with 334 first-class passengere, while the Etruria, St. Paul, and Majestic, three of the largest English liners, leaving in the same week, had only 339 between them. Last year, as statistics show, the German line's percentage of the whale traffic increased 3 per cent., while that of the British companies fell off 3 per cent. The North German Lloyd carriee! in 1903 nearly twice the number of passengers carried by the Cunard. The great English company is _nakjfl_f a strenuous effort to regain its lost supremacy by building, to Government contract, two 25-knot steamers, to act, if necessary, as cruisers. But these vessels will not be completed till 1906, and in the meantime Germain competition is making serious inroads, into our Atlantic trade. Ten years ago British steamers were without a rival on the Atlantic, and it is a somewhat saddening reflection that our lack of enterprise and a conservative adherence to traditional methods of business have enabled our competitors to establish themselves so firmly in a sphere that was once practically monopolised by England.