A DARING PROJECT.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2365, 4 December 1908, Page 7

A DARING PROJECT.

PROPOSED ATLANTIC COMBINE

When Mr. Pierpont Morgan (says the “Daily Telegraph”) formed the North Atlantic Combine, it was considered a sufficiently daring enterprise. But it pales before the project which Herr .Ballin, the head of the Hamburg-America Line, has sketched out. Mr. Pierpont Morgan’s was a purely financial experiment, as it turned out, and still left the Atlantic a field for competition, though not quite to tho same degree as formerly. Herr Ballin goes much further. He seeks to bring about practical identity between all the most -important lines running to New York tho two German lines, the White Star the Cunard, and the America Line! His scheme may bo roughly presented as follows:

1. Contribution of each company at the' rate of £1 for every first-class passenger, and 5s for every second cabin, passenger to a fund to be used tor breaking up the older and slower boats of each company. 2. A definite agreement as to sailings to and from New York, including the complete reorganisation of the Atlantic mail services, and their accommodation to a system under which one- fast steamer will leave each side every day. 3. An agreement as to future shipbuilding, 'So that such company will no longer attempt to outvie the other in the speed, size and luxury of its boat.

Such is the monumental programme which Herr Ballin lias put before the companies s in question. It would involve, it will be seen, a community of interests infinitely greater than that which Air.' Pierpont Morgan was able to bring about. It would mean 'an end to all independence. It implies joint working and close financial cooperation.

For the launching of a great scheme of this kind it is essential to select an auspicious moment, and just now a spirit of peace and concord seems to reign over the Atlantic. Kate wars, which robbed the steamship companies of hundreds of thousands of pounds, are at an end, save and except for a small squabble with the Italian companies over the Mediterranean and New York trade, which is now in process of settlement. For months past the lines forming the North Atlantic Conference have been pooling their third-class traffic and charging \ minimum cabin fares, according to a scale .which recognises the . speed and accommodation of individual ships. Everything, indeed, is harmonious, or would be if only traffic kept up. But it has not. Holidaymaking Americans have come ro Europe and gone back again fn scarcely diminished numbers, but the emigrant, frightened by reports of unemployment in the United States, hat, stopped at home. Instead of Europe emptying its surplus population into America, as usual, the .United States has been busy ladling out some oi its newcomers.

It might .be supposed that all the while the suites cie luxe were fuCi, and the rest of the cabin accommodation taxed to its -utmost, things would be going very well with the steamship companies. Tho very reverse is the case-. The steamship lines do not live on millionaires. They depend for their existence on the poor passenger'who -wishes to exchange serfdom m Europe for liberty -under the American Eagle. If we to mo to think of it, tho steamship companies bjivo not built the big vessels of the last few years for the comfort of the few, but for the accommodation of the million, and it is the million which has disappointed them. What, for instance, can the Hamburg-American Lino do with two such steamers as the .President Lincoln and the President Grant, which they lately acquired? These wi.fi carry something like d 4,000 souis apiece. The Leyland Line, for which tney were, -built, did not want them. 'The Hamburg-American Company bought them, and to-day it washes it had not. There is no use for such ships in the present condition of Atlantic traffic. Looking at it from the point oi view of the counting-house, a system under which the Atlantic companies endeuvor to outbid each other at ■ruinous outlay seems as incomprehensible as tho recent rate wars. Herd Ballin tries to drive home this scheme by giving some figures as to the recent increase in cost of Atlantic liners. Tho old Auguste Victoria, oi the Hamburg-American Line, introduced in 1889, cost, he says, little more thun £200,000. Then the English companies went .ahead, and the Germans had to reply with the o.d E-urst Bismarck, costing about £350,000. Things went on until, m 1900, the Hamburg-American Line paid over £550,000 for the Deutschland. Then, again, -all "through the English, the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria had to be produced at a cost of £700,000. The Lusitania and the Mauretania probably cost £1,250,000 apiece, and Herr Ballin estimates that the two ‘White Star leviathuns of the future will each cost at least £1,300,000. He is probably under the mark. Altogether, says Herr Ballin, this sort of thing has gone on until no private company can stand it.