NOTABLE FAILURES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 18783, 17 May 1923, Page 4

NOTABLE FAILURES

While the world is witnessing this struggle for supremacy in merchant shipping, a struggle in which the British overseas dominions are deeply concerned, it is a noteworthy fact that State control has proved an impotent factor in the fight. Indeed, observant students of maritime affairs regard as one of the most notable features of the shipping history of the last few years the abject failure of attempts at Government ownership. Through the

enormous expenditure of public money the United States Government built a

fleet that enabled her to replace prewar Germany as the second greatest mercantile sea power. A shipping board was appointed to control the building and management. It consisted of recognised experts of long experience, but the extravagance and inefficiency that seem to be inseparable from Government enterprise defeated the best efforts. Hundreds of wooden ships were built as a result of overwhelming political influence, to collect barnacles on the seaboard. Against the warnings of knowledge Australia ordered wooden ships also, and lost about £3,000,000. America lost many scores of millions, and at last got rid of the wooden ships at something less than the cost of the bolts that held them together. At the e.nd of last year America was left with a gross tonnage of steel vessels amounting to 12,506,000, as compared with 1,837,000 tons before the war. This fleet, the greater part of which has been idle, has for some time past been costing the American taxpayers a loss of upwards of £10,000,000 a year. The total cost of the shipping venture is set down at something like £600,000,000—capital, interest and losses written off. President Harding, speaking in November last, said:—“The point is that our fleet, costing approximately three billions, is worth only a fraction of that cost to-day. Whatever that fraction may be, the truth remains that we have no market in which to sell the ships under our present policy, and a programme of surrender and sacrifice, and the liquidation which is inevitable unless the pending legislation is sanctioned, will cost scores of millions more.” Quite recently it was reported by cablegram that America was about to sell a considerable proportion of her costly ships to Germany, which sees prospects of using them with profit. Yet the American ships to a great extent were hurriedly and badly built. When a Government gives orders it is not usually so. The price realised was probably very low, and possibly America may set off her losses in this respect against the proportion of her war cost that is being borne by Great Britain.