FINANCE AND TRADE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1685, 15 June 1904, Page 69 (Supplement)

FINANCE AND TRADE.

The jealousy of Continental steamship companies of the Cunard Company in making, an arrangement with the Hungarian Government to convey passengers to America on special terms, and which induced foreign companies to lower the third-class rates from England to America to 40s per head, is doubtless responsible for the general lowering of such rates, as advised by cable: No other result could have been anticipated, for with probably equal, or nearly equal, accommodation, people will not pay the Cunard Company £5 15s to £6 for thirdclass accommodation, the late rate, if it is obtainable for £‘2 by the Hamburg, American, or other lines. It can hardly, however, pay to keep and transport people at the rate of about 5s per day on expensive steamships, or much less than ordinary first-class hotel accommodation. The cost of coal alone cannot be less than 2s per day per head; while the first cost and upkeep of the emigrant steamships must he far greater than tliose of establishments for the housing of like classes of people ashore.

The United States Alaska gold mines are certainly worked very cheaply. The Alaska Treadwell, -which, it is stated/ has the second largest mill in the world,

mines ore of st value of less than 9s

per ton, manages to realise a profit of 3s 9d per ton in doing so, and pays steady dividends. The adjoining property, the Alaska Mexican, last year crushed 239,453 tons at an expenditure of 7s 4d per ton, and ah operating profit of 4s 4d, and in addition to a considerable outlay on development, paid £21,660 in dividends. Thus, they work at a profit ore yielding only from 21 to 2if dvt. Of course, the ore body is very large, but, even so, this economy in working is remarkable.

Supplementary to recent cable news of the budget speech, the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer with regard to the public and local loans debts covers an interesting feature. The total deadweight on March 31 was £762,030,000 — a reduction in the course of the year of £8,149,000. The increase in the Nation ah Debt during the last five years ending March 31 was £188,630,000. Of that £169,000,000 was attributable to the war. The total amount redeemed in that period was £29,525,000, leaving a net increase in the State’s liability over that period of five years at £159,105,000, o* almost exactly the sum raised for the purposes of the war. In England and Wales tli9 total oiitstanding local loans in 1880 were £137,000,000'. In ten years they were increased by £62,000,000, and in the ten years to 1900 they were increased by £95,000,000 ;■ but in the last two years the total was increased by £45,000,000. The present rate cf increase was 2 4 per cent-., or twice as great as in the period 18901900. In the twenty years between 1880 and 1900 local borrowings increased by £197,000,000, while the gross liabilities of the State were reduced by £132,000,000, and in the three years ending March 31, 1902, the local authorities of the United Kingdom borrowed over £103,000,000. Tlie total sum added to the National Debt on account of the war, which disturbed the equilibrium of four financial years, was therefore just about 44 years’ borrow-

ings by the local authorities in the United Kingdom at their present rate of progress.