Borrowing and business in Australia

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 183051623X

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-222122

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Wood, Gordon L. http://d-nb.info/gnd/1239193688

Title:: Borrowing and business in Australia

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Oxford university press, H. Milford

Year of publication:: 1930

Scope:: xv, 267 Seiten; graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part IV. The commonwealth, 1900-14

Collection:: Economics Books

INDEBTEDNESS FROM 1900 TO 1913 147 brokers, likewise, deal with cargoes piecemeal. It would be extremely useful to have one or two sample cargoes analysed for value by the Australian customs department, the only authority in possession of the facts necessary to establish a connexion between cargo and freight values. The essential difficulty, in working from the Commonwealth Statistics relating to trade, is that of translating figures repre- senting value into statistics of quantity from which the value of an average cargo might be determined and the amount of freight payable reckoned. This relationship being established for one year, a further complication is presented by the fluctuations in freight rates, although it is believed that these do not swing quite so widely for the Australian trade as for the world in general. Still another difficulty, especially in utilizing the figures for shipping tonnage inwards for all ports, is the variation between arrival in ballast and arrival fully loaded. The ‘method devised by Viner when faced by the similar Canadian problem was, of course, applicable ; but there was an advantage to be gained by choosing another method of esti- mating freight charges which would serve as a check upon the results obtained by him. .The device finally selected con- sisted of taking the analysis of imports into classes made by the Commonwealth Statistician, and loading for a normal year a sample cargo representative of all lines imported in a typical ship of 15,000 tons displacement loaded to three-fifths of capacity. Working on this classification for the years 1901, 1904, 1906, and 1908, an average cargo consisting of 127 units of textiles, 94 units of metals and metal manufactures, 30 of animal and vegetable foodstuffs, and so on down the list, was obtained. For a normal cargo composed in this way it was calculated that the value at prices prevailing in 1908 was approxi- mately £230,000, upon which the freight payable at 1908 rates would amount to about £15,000. In other words, the freight charged upon this representative cargo amounted to approxi- mately 6 per cent. of the value of the cargo. But in order to arrive at the net freight charge paid upon Australian imports it was, further, necessary to make allowance for various disbursements by the shipping companies represented by port dues, wages, wharfage, &c. in Australian ports. On this point C. K. Hobson calculated that 30 per cent. of the gross

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