UNFAIR COMPETITION

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 91, 14 October 1926, Page 11

UNFAIR COMPETITION

FROM GOVERNMENT-OWNED VESSELS

HIGH COST OF LOADING.

(From Our Own] Correspondent.) LONDON, 24th'August. . Sir Frederick W. Lewis, speaking at the annual meeting of Messrs. Furness> Withy, and Co.^ declared himself to be a firm believer in the future of British shipping, always provided that the ordinary course of economic laws is not . o . "Not the least of our handicaps," lie said, "is the .continued competition from foreign govornment-owned vessels, which are still being operated at less thai cost, as is illustrated by the figures just recently published by tho United Statos Shipping Board in support of their application to Congress for a, graut to carry them ti.rough tho curent year. It is stated that 18,000,000 dollars will bo required, and out of the published results of twenty-nine services operated by Shipping Board tonnage, only one made a small profit of less than £5000." Foreign competition was still formidable, said Sir Frederick, and likely to remain so unless we altered our mothods iifr.several directions. The cost of operating a service under a foreign flag was usually much cheaper than, that of conducting tho same service under the British flag. That, it appears, is not solely due to lower wages, but is attributable to the fact that the facilities of British ports are too often inferior r,o those available at ports abroad. COSTS UNDEK tOREIGN FLAG. "I would like to quote an actual case of a steamer which we recently transferred to a« foreign flag," said Sir Frederick, "and which shows as clearly as possible the competitive conditions with which we are contending. On this particular, vessel there is a difference of 15J247 per .month, or, say, £3000 per annum between the operating cost under the foreign flag as compared with the cost of the same service under the British flag. I am afraid a good many comparisons could bo made showing either that the British shipowner is labouring under a disadvantage in competition with foreign owners, or that the facilities of British ports, even in the handling of commodities which are of pre-eminent importance to us, very often suffer in comparison with foreign ports. It is not always a question of wages, but frequently it is a question of better mechanical appliances, or of better work done within a given period of time, all of which questions ultimately resolve themselves into money costs from the point of view of the ship operator. For instance, we have recently had ships loading coal in the United States. One loaded 9000 tons of cargo and 1500 tons of bunkers within twen-ty-four hours; another loaded 9700 tons of cargo and 1000 tons of bunkers between tho time of arrival on Saturday inorning and 6 o'clock on Monday morning. A third steamer loaded 9650 tons of cargo and 1000 tons of bunkers between arrival at..6 a.m. and sailing at 5 p.m. the following day. Similarly, with discharging, at foreign ports we have had a grain cargo of 4200 tons discharged on the Continent in 32 hours and another cargo of 7100 tons at a different port in two clays. These are not isolated cases, but have all been experienced within the past month, and I regret to say that those performances arc rarely equalled even in the best of tho.TJnited Kingdom ports." BENEFIT FROM OTHERS' MISFORTUNES. * The coal strike, it appears, has been the means of finding employment for a certain number of vessels in bringing coal across from America and from other sources, but the dead cost of maintaining tonnage in idleness far more than offsets any small increase there has been in freight rates in markets affected by coal carryings. "What wo all want to see," said Sir Frederick Lewis, "is an all-round healthy improvement in trade as distinct from any temporary and local improvements. We derived some temporary benefit from the Japanese earthquake, an* from tho prolonged strike in the American anthracite coal fields, but they were transitory improvements and yielded no lasting benefit. In other words, any small advantages which the shipping industry has experienced within the past few years have had their origin in other people's misfortunes rather than, in any inherent improvements in the shipping situation."