State Shipping.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17756, 7 May 1923, Page 8

State Shipping.

The cabled advice from Canada that the total loss for the past year on tho Canadian Government steamers amounts to £1,800,000 supplies another instance of the truth of Mr Massey's dictum that shipping is one of the many businesses that the Stale cannot successfully handle. We have another example of its failure in this branch of trading in the Commonwealth line. The loss on the working of this line during the year 1921-22 has just been reported, unofficially, as about one million, and since this is a great deal more than tho Commonwealth can afford, and there is no prospect or hope of matters improving, the future of the enterprise is at present the subject of careful consideration by the Government, whose present head, Mr £3. M. Bruce, is no believer iu Government trading. Tho Commonwealth lino has suffered to the fullest extent from all tho disabilities attaching to political interference with business affairs. A number of the steamers were built in Australia a fc-,v years ago at a cost five or six times greater than their value to-day, partly for the purpose Pf encouraging Australian shipbuilding. Most of,tho vessels of the fleet, numbering nearly fifty, aro of a typo unsuited for the Australian export trade; apart from this, their small size, heavy coat consumption, and low speed combine to make it impossible for them to earn enough to meet the high cost of labour imposed upon shipping registered in Australia. If the line is ever to pay, a large number —the gisat majoritv—of the ships must be sold. To enable this to be done the hook value of the ships, amounting altogether to about twelve or thirteen millions, must be written down to present-day~~ivalues of about four millions, ancj even at this they will have to meet an over-supplied market. At tho best, the Australian taxpayer, whp has now to shoulder past Josses, must be prepared to meet a heavy capital loss. The market for shipping, which we have already described as being over-sup-plied, seems likely tc be glutted, before long, by America's attempt to dispose of her State mercantile marine, launched with such admirable vigour when the temporary eucoess of the German submarine campaign threatened so gravely tho sea carriage of goods and supplies far the Allies. The war closed before any of tho American tonnage could be put ta use, but instead of taking advantage of the high rates then offering for tonnage and selling tho fleet then built and building, including the enemy vessels that had been seized, the American Government decided to operate the vessels. The result was disastrous. The losses were so great that President Harding proposed to aid the industry by a subsidy derived from a tax on foreign shipping visiting American ports. Opposition to the Shipping Subsidy Bill culminated in a "filibuster" in the Senate, by which the measure was talked to death, and nothing now remains for the Government but to get rid of the ships at bargain prices. At present, out of some 1700 vessels; only 300 are in actual operation ; the remainder, including between GOO and 700 steel sliips —built at a cost of some £SO a ton,and worth to-day, less -depreciation, from £5 to £6 per ton—are described as massed in rusting squadrons and hidden from view as much as possible in all the ports of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. For a long time the losses averaged three a.nd a half millions sterling a month, but these losses were reduced to about a million °a 711011 th by the laying up of a great majority of the vessels. The total Joss which" the American people will have to bear as the result of this experiment in a '•'nationalisation of the means of distribution" by sea will run into hundreds of millions—a sufficiently costly lesson, one must hope, to impress itself upon the minds of all except that section which will not be convinced, by any facts to the contrary, that the State cannot profitably handle all business undertakings.