CHAPTER XI CARGO AND CARRYING CAPACITY Weight of world's seaborne trade.-No organism can be understood unless its functions are understood. The function of world shipping is to carry the seaborne trade of all countries. Therefore, a discussion of the cargo, its nature and volume is imperative.1 The first question to be answered is: What is the total volume or the aggregate tonnage of the commodities shipped from one country to another? In other words, what is the total weight of the world's seaborne trade? One does not have to be a statistician to realize the difficulties which render an accurate answer to this important question well nigh impossible. It is fortunate, therefore, that so eminent an authority as the "Departmental Committee appointed by the British Board of Trade to consider the position of the Shipping and Shipbuilding Industries After the War," whose chairman was Alfred Booth, the directing genius of the Cunard Line, has ventured an estimate based upon all data available. According to this authority, the total weight carried by seagoing vessels plying between the different countries of the world, averages 250 to 300 million tons a year. This approximation refers to the days when the war had not yet disarranged the mechanism of international trade. 1 We shall reserve the discussion of passenger traffic for a later chapter and confine ourselves here to an analysis of the freight business. Comparison with other weight statistics. Such a figure means little to the average person and gains significance only by comparison with similar figures. We shall compare it first with the total weights of the commodities produced in the United States. The Shipping Board, through its statistical division, has compiled tables giving the weight of the most important agricultural and mineral products of the United States for the year 1917. These figures show a total of a little less than a billion and a half tons. Careful production figures have been compiled by leading economists such as Day, Stewart, Kemmer and King. Mr. Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce, in an article which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post of April 10, 1920 gives the following table which covers the great bulk of our products, namely, agricultural products, metals, coal, salt, cement, lumber and the products of quarries. Similar results are shown by transportation returns. Recent railways statistics tell us that, after eliminating all duplications, the total weight of freight carried by the railroads of the United States is, approximately, 1,100 million tons. While it is true that this country produces more than half of the world's total output of many basic products, nevertheless, all things considered, the world's total production of the principal agricultural and mineral commodities is probably a multiple of the figures given for the United States. We see, therefore, that in spite of the unprecedented development of ocean navigation which has marked the last one hundred years, and in spite of the fact that many necessities of life are to-day moved by water from their place of origin to distant lands, only a relatively small percentage of the world's total production enters into seaborne trade. Nevertheless, the seaborne trade of to-day is enormous. Weight of seaborne trade by countries.-Among the commercial nations, the United Kingdom supplies the most satisfactory statistics of seaborne exports and imports. One reason is the fact that in this case total trade and seaborne trade are identical. British foreign trade during selected years showed the following weight totals: WEIGHT OF FOREIGN TRADE OF THE UNITED KINGDOM IN MILLION NET TONS After careful consideration of all data available to us, we believe the following to represent fairly closely the weight balance of our own seaborne foreign trade: WEIGHT OF SEABORNE FOREIGN TRADE OF THE UNITED STATES IN MILLION GROSS TONS |