310 REPORT ON COOPERATION IN AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE.
1
On the subject of transportation, Joseph J. Slechta, New York
agent Brazilian Steamship Co., said:

To those who contend that we need better facilities now for shipment to
South America, I am prepared to prove that existing facilities are already better
than the profit in the business and other circumstances justify, * *= *
The United States Steel Corporation is chartering vessels for the South
American trade and paying rates for same such that I hereby pledge myself to
pay them $10 for every dollar of profit they can show if they will pay me one
for every dollar they actually lose. The Prince Line and Lamport &amp; Holt are
maintaining vessels in the South American trade when they could earn fully
LOO per cent more by leasing them to operators in the European trade.
Robert Dollar, president of the Robert Dollar Co., San Francisco,
Cal., said:

We have not got our delivery wagons and we have got to depend on Great
Britain and other nations to deliver our goods, and when they have their own
yoods to deliver they are not going to deliver ours, and we come in second best.
* % = AJ] we ask is that you permit us in the foreign trade to operate
our ships on identically the same terms; give us no advantage whatever.
The American shipowner will do the rest.
* = % We are able to take care of ourselves, provided you unloose our
hands.

He gave the monthly cost of wages and board on three vessels of
practically the same nominal horsepower operated by his company
as follows: $777 on a Japanese steamer manned according to
Japanese law, and fully meeting the requirements of our seamen’s
bill; $1,308 on an American steamer manned under the emergency
act as if she were a British ship; $3,270 on an American steamer
manned according to the requirements of the seamen’s bill.
Relative to transportation Percy C. Denroche, president of S. L.
Jones &amp; Co., an importing company in San Francisco, said:
A few years ago we did some business in Japan. "We used to do all our
business with English houses over there, or German houses, and we found
as time went on we could not compete—absolutely impossible; we lost all
our business. I went over there in 1902 and made a Japanese connection,
and that Japanese connection made an increase in my business right away,
quite a large increase, and I saw the reasons why, and I remembered we used
to buy all our goods on a cost and freight basis—always on a cost and freight
basis; and I noticed all our goods came on a Japanese steamer; instead of coming
 on a Pacific’ Mail or a Dollar boat they came on a Japanese steamer, and I
noticed on several occasions when that cargo arrived here I would look at
the cubic measurement and shake my head and say, “ That is wrong,” and the
weight the same way, and I wondered how that was, and I came to the conclusion
 that was the manner in which the Japanese helped one another on the
other side. That was in the form of a rebate where the goods were shortmeasured
 or short-weighed, and that is where the Japanese were getting in
and cutting out the European exporter in Japan.

W. P. Whitley, sales manager of the Pacific Ammonia &amp; Sales
Co.. Seattle, Wash., stated that—

Transportation is the principal trouble with us in the Orient; yes; and 1
jo not know what we are going to do when the Pacific Mail is taken off.
G. R. Geauque, of the Flint &amp; Walling Manufacturing Co., Ken-Jallville,
 Ind., manufacturers of windmills, said:
The greatest handicap to-day in the foreign trade is the matter of ocean
cransportation. Of course I quite realize that this is a condition brought about
hy 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 com-