102 



German Bounties. 



[may, 



them could be so paid. They can also have these passes 

 credited to their accounts in the Custom Houses at which they 

 import. This so-called " Zollkonto " (Customs account) confers 

 •on them a " Zollkredit " (Customs credit) good for the space of 

 five months. There is here, therefore, no actual bounty paid in 

 cash ; but, as these Customs passes are negotiable papers, they 

 amount to much the same thing. There is always a strong 

 demand for them, and they fetch a price only very slightly 

 under the amount of the duty — namely, of nearly 35 marks 

 per ton for wheat and rye, and similarly for other kinds 

 ■of grain. 



The whole system affords not only a kind of direct bounty to 

 certain exporters, but also acts as an indirect one to some 

 producers. The large millers, with the best modern milling 

 machinery, are apparently specially favoured by it, inasmuch 

 as they can obtain from the wheat they manufacture into 

 flour, &c, a greater percentage than accords with the pro- 

 portional yield, as fixed under the Law, of 75 per cent, of flour, 

 for instance, from wheat. It is asserted that they can obtain 

 up to a 93 per cent, yield ; and, as the drawback is reckoned 

 on the amount of wheat consumed, they are thus supposed to 

 be able — from the fact of this excess yield over and above the 

 fixed 75 per cent. — to claim (in spite of certain regulations to 

 prevent it) a larger amount of duty-free imported wheat than 

 they ought to have in return for the actual amount of wheat 

 manufactured by them into flour. The exact amount of the 

 bounty, therefore, rises according to the increased capacity of 

 the particular mill to obtain the most flour out of a given 

 quantity of wheat. The same reasoning may be applied, more 

 or less, to other kinds of grain turned into mill products and 

 then exported. The proportions fixed by the Law are : flour 

 of wheat 75 per cent., of rye 65 per cent., and of barley and 

 wheat mixed 75 per cent. ; the proportion for malt is placed at 

 78 per cent. 



On the introduction of the corn duties in 1879 it became 

 necessary, in the interests of the transit trade and the exporta- 

 tion of corn, to make arrangements under which grain imported 

 from abroad could, on re-exportation, be freed from the import 

 duty paid on entry. Transit warehouses (" Transitlager ") 



