The Americas Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 edition. Excerpt: ...And not only this, Germany, with its stateowned transportation lines and its influence over the others, has made its schedules of railway freight rates as much a part of its protective tariff system as are its customs duties. Germany differentiates against foreign manufacturers and against such producers of raw materials as compete with German industry by charging protective duties at the custom houses; it discriminates in favor of German manufacture by giving special concessions in both domestic and foreign business on railway rates; it helps particular industries that are hard pressed in competition on the price-basis in foreign trade, by low freight rates to the seaboard on export merchandise that goods moving in domestic trade cannot obtain. Germany is said to carry 63 per cent of its rail freight traffic at special rates for the purpose of artificially assisting German industries by discriminating against foreign goods. To build up its merchant marine, it has caused effectively low rates on ship-building materials to be given on transportation of these to German ship-yards. To favor German seaports, it has caused lower rates to be made on freight, whether originating in Germany or crossing Germany from other countries, when billed for transshipment at its ports, as against traffic moving towards ports of France, Holland or Belgium. If any German industry could reach a foreign market through a rate-concession, it got the rate-concession even if other traffic had to pay a little more to cover a loss on transportation. It must be said, in order to have a full understanding of the conditions and necessities surrounding the problem of transportation in connection with foreign trade, that every one of the great exporting countries of...