What the exact losses have been, through the insigni- 

 ficance of the means for loading and discharging vessels, 

 hard to appieeiate. but we may say that the country 

 has failed to take advantage of an unparalleled oppnr 

 tuuity for disposing of lier produce at exceptionally pro- 

 fitable rates, owing largely to the absence of elevators. 

 I that countries possessing them have benefitted to th<- 

 extent of thousands of millions of pesos. Such' benefits 

 <jould reasonably have been expected in our case had 

 * <elevators existed. 



SHIPPING DISABILITIES. 



If we turn from the unnecessary losses, due partly 

 to inability to load grain rapidly which has been at the 

 root of our failure to take advantage of the war condi- 

 tions, to the losses suffered even in normal times, we see 

 that until reasonable efforts are made to put our busi- 

 ness on sound lines we shall never have anything else but 

 lost opportunities to record even in the most prosperous 

 of years*. 



The. inconvenience of not having adequate means for 

 handling our crop at the ports has been experienced for 

 years; it has been, the source of innumerable complaints 

 from, shippers, railways, captains, owners, charterers, 

 stevedores, grain merchants, etc. 



The shippers, because they are never able to count 

 on their disposing of the space they require at the date 

 fixed, owing to the delays in loading, moving, hauling 

 along the railways; the railways, because they never get 

 their wagons cleared and returned to time ; the captains, 

 ause they are ordered in and out of berths according 

 to arrivals; the charterers, because they can never clear 

 the ships to time, thus having demurrage to pay ; the own- 

 ers, because they can never count on the vessel on the date 

 fixed ; the stevedores, because they lose money by keeping 

 their gangs standing about idle; the grain merchants, 

 because delays coincide with eternal questions of extras 

 and rebates to the prejudice of their calculations: all 

 these reasonable complaints prevent sound business and 

 turn everything into speculation. 



None of these complaints are heard from other lands 

 where proper means for handling cargoes exist. At the 

 root of all our difficulties is the insufficiency of means 

 for handling the goods we produce; made doubly cons- 

 picuous by the absurd custom of hurrying all our pro- 

 duce out of the country as soon as it is harvested. 



This choking of all our outlets is only to be remedied 

 <by adopting rational methods : we must first regulate our 



