306 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE.

The Canadian Government has done everything they could to foster the industry,
 and particularly the halibut industry, to the extent of subsidizing ships
and subsidizing plants.
So far as we are concerned, on the other hand, they have laid every obstacle
*hey could think of in our way, to the extent of prohibiting our vessels going in
there and getting bait or fuel, even prohibiting our going into their harbors
except in times of extreme stress of weather, and then they have ordered our
vessels out at times when they were unable to stay out and had to turn around
and come back into port. One advantage they have is that they have over
there Orders in Council which they can place on at a day or two days’ notice
to take effect at once, and whenever a condition arises whereby it is to their
advantage fo put in certain restrictions, they do so immediately.
A. Rupert, president of the Rupert Co., Portland, Oreg., dried
and canned fruit exporters, said:

One of our greatest difficulties in developing our foreign business has been
this matter of tariffs, in which.I presume you gentlemen are very much interested.
 For instance, in France, where we do a large business and have our
wn office and our own man, an American in charge, the duty on canned salmon
from the United States is 100 francs per 100 kilos. From Canada the duty
is 50 francs per 100 kilos.
G. R. Geauque, of Flint &amp; Walling Manufacturing Co., Kendallville,
 Ind., manufacturers of windmills, said:

The greatest handicap to-day in the foreign trade is the matter of ocean
ransportation. Of course I quite realize that this is a condition brought about
by the present war in Europe. There is probably nothing that can be done at
present to relieve this condition. There is a scarcity of steamer space available,
and prices have risen to an abnormal extent as a consequence. The competi-Hon
 of the nations at war has made the rates higher, and, as a result, legitimate
trade suffers. We have orders in our files for goods which we can not ship
because the ocean rates are too high.
In Australia, New Zealand, Russia, and Canada the customs duty is exreedingly
 high—out of proportion to reason. I am in favor of tariff measures
that will place us on a more favorable footing—that is, if they charge a high
duty against our goods, we should assess a similar high duty against their
goods coming to us.

A. C. Loring, president of the Pillsbury Flour Milling Co., Minneapolis,
 Minn., told of the handicap to American millers resulting
from differential duties abroad. .He stated:
The questions that came up prior to the war were that our business had
Jecreased materially due to the fact that the millers of the Northwest and
the United States, as a whole, were unable to compete with the millers in
Europe because of the great differential between wheat and flour, and also a
differential in the duties between flour and wheat. Many of the countries
make a preferential duty on wheat as against flour. That had a tendency as
well -to destroy the exporting business. Then some of the countries have a
preferential duty to their countries, which have also tended to decrease our
export business. Those are the main questions that have resulted in the
cutting down of the exporting of flour from the United States, as well, of
course, as the building up of better mills in Europe, due to the experience of
the American millers. They are the ones who have recently developed the
system of milling which is now common the world over.
Edgar H. Evans, president and treasurer of the Acme Evans Co.,
Indianapolis, Ind., manufacturers of flour, said:

Fifteen or twenty years ago a very large part of Europe was open to American
 flour, but since then, by virtue of discriminating tariffs, a considerable
part has been closed. The tariffs in some cases have been raised until they
were prohibited, and in other cases export tariffs have been issued in favor
of the exporting of the foreign country. Germany gives a bounty and France
gives a bounty that, at times, makes it very difficult, in fact impossible, for
American millers to compete with the foreigner,