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Peace Brings Call for Quick Action to Place Gulf Port in Commanding Position in Latin-American Trade By H. H. Dunn N interesting condition confronts A exporters and importers at New Orleans as the new year of peace begins. This condition is difficult to understand unless consideration is taken of several factors, some of them seemingly diametrically opposed to others, which combine to place the gulf port in its present position. The foreign trade of New Orleans doubled in the seven years from 1911 to 1918, yet in that time New Orleans dropped from second to sixth place among the ports of the United States. Exports from New Orleans in 1917 were more than double those of 1914, the year in which the war commenced; imports in the same period increased approximately 40 per cent, yet the ex- ports of raw cotton during that~ time fell off more than $8,000,000 in value, while the imports of coffee decreased by approximately $6,000,000. Free of Congestion New Orleans was the only major port in the United States in which there was no congestion during the war; in which there was no harbor disaster or sabotage, and the only one in which no ship was. detained beyond §its scheduled hour of departure. Yet New Orleans was one of the _ least-used— possibly the least-used—of all the ports of the country in the handling of gov- ernment shipments to Europe. Dur- ing the war an average of 90 ships of all classes left the port of New Orleans each month, whereas the har- _ bor has first-class accommodations for the handling, theoretically, of 8000 ships a month. Certainly, in actual practice, it could have handled 800 to 1000 instead of the paltry 90. Coupled with these factors came com- plaint, late in December, from certain . shippers and from agents of the ship- ping board, that the Public Belt rail- road, which connects every wharf ‘on the waterfront with every trunk line railroad entering the port, had _ not been delivering cargoes properly or promptly to ships docked at these wharves. So strong was this complaint that reports were current that the United States railroad administration had been asked to take over the Public Belt, and was considering this step. As a result of this report, Mayor Martin Behrman of New Orleans, requested B. L. Winchell, regional director for the rail- road administration, with headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., to inspect personally the situation in New Orleans. The mayor placed the responsibility for the accumulation of 2000 cars of unloaded freight on the Belt tracks in December on lack of ships. There the matter rests. All these factors tend to make the foreign trade future of New Orleans uncertain, but there are certain bright spots along the way which seem _ to ‘indicate a betterment of conditions, at Latin-American trade, al- . least in though there seems to be little hope of the Louisiana port getting much of a share in after-the-war European trade unless the shipping board can be per- suaded to allocate more deep-sea bot- toms to New Orleans. Arrival of the large steamer PANAMA Maru, owned in Tokio, from Yoko- hama; Panama and Rio, with a cargo of 87,000 bags of coffee’ from the Brazilian port and her sailing with a full cargo of cotton and machinery for Japanese ports, has opened the “Asiatic Triangle,’ though the “Euro- pean Triangle” remains Liverpool, New York and South America, with the re- turn of the Lamport and Holt liners to that service. Other Japanese ships are to follow PANAMA Maru with regu- lar arrivals and sailings, and this sched- ule will materially aid the coffee trade, virtually the most valuable of all im- ports through the port of New Orleans. In addition to this, the Santa CRISTINA, an American steamship. of 2119 tons gross, built in 1917 by the Aberdeen Shipbuilding Co., Aberdeen, Wash., has been purchased at a price reported to have been $300,000 by the recently organized New Orleans & South American Steamship Co., and put in freight service. between New Orleans and South and Central Amer- ican ports. Her first cargo was coffee from Colombia. This company will soon have three steamers in the Latin- American service, . SANTA CRISTINA being the second purchased for its fleet. Another ship movement of importance to New Orleans was the return of CHALLENGER, the first ship released to gulf ports by the shipping board, which left the Crescent City late in December, bound for England, with 29,000 bales of cotton and 3500 tons of pig iron. CHALLENGER is of 11,800 tons and came consigned to the J. H. W. Steele Ship- 158 ping Co., New Orleans. She was built by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., at Alameda, Cal., and her maiden voy- age was from San Francisco to Iquique, Chile, with general cargo. From the Chilean port, she came loaded with nitrates, to Pensacola, Fla., and then to New Orleans. In addition to CHat- LENGER, two other steamers, BEUKLSDYJK, to carry cotton to France, and WEst- ERDYJK, to handle general cargo between New Orleans and the River Plate— were released by the shipping board. Causes of Decline The anomalous condition mentioned previously, in which New Orleans, though doubling her foreign trade in seven years, fell at. the same. time from second to sixth place, presents the following figures: 1911 TESS New, YOR eed evan 6 wha wees $1,654,145,138 2.—New Orleans ..........c.c0ceee 239,557,588 Oi Galveston. se. aes he wiaisiotences Os 224,035,862 A= BOStONE \ crue v eeie vos eiateieele woareiele eek 188,131,522 he Philadelphians s ssiccis ier seve face csaanates 153,583,027 1918 Times NOW? YORK: Aiirarviee eaten mnie aerate $3,868,641,053 Die RGA ss eke Se ee bah ecole 584,986,644 3.—San Francisco ............2eee- 480,982,225 4 PHUAAGl pi iar: bs stews < doe nce wt stare ecets 474,172,025 © Bis SBOShOm Facies ieinlale diate 6 elanetaiwresous 454,116,440 6.—New Orleans .......0cecceeeees 418,536,295 During those years, New Orleans remained in second place during 1912, fell to third place in 1913 and 1914, rose again in 1915 to second place, dropped in 1916 back to third posi- tion, and then started on the tobog- gan in 1917, slipping down three places in one year. New Orleans ex- porters and importers, and others in- terested put the responsibility for this entirely on lack of ships, but in the opinion of many others there are two additional factors equally impor- tant. One is the longer haul from New Orleans around the tip of Florida before the freighter really gets started for Europe, and the second is the lack of ship owners in the port of New Orleans. Virtu- ally all the ships which ply out of New Orleans are owned elsewhere; compared with New York, Boston, Philadelphia, or even with Seattle and San Francisco, practically no ships are owned in New Orleans. Scores of vessels have been built in the south since the war began, but all were built for owners in other American ports or in Europe. None, a4 d :