One of the elements which influence the regularity of transport is the amount of cargo-room available at the ports. When there are many steamers and sailing-ships in port the shipping rates fall; the exporters hurry to make contracts with the shipping lines, and in order to be in time to avoid surcharges, they demand a large number of goods wagons of the railways, which the latter naturally cannot always produce. The law states that the railway companies must maintain a goods service equal to the normal demands of the traffic; and the demands created by the accidental causes we have mentioned are not normal.
On the other hand, if the shipping contracts are high, or the prices in the consumers’ market low, the buyers will be unwilling to despatch their cereals to the ports of embarkation, and the railway companies can do nothing to clear their stations of large quantities of accumulated grain, which they cannot forward, since the buyers will not give the order for their despatch.
During a recent harvest both these phenomena were observed; on the Southern Railway the harvest was abundant in quantity and good in quality, but only a small number of steamers were lying in the terminal port (Engineer White Harbour); every exporter in the district wanted to ship at once, but the railway could carry only what it was capable of carrying in a normal period.
It was another affair in the districts served by the Central Argentine and the Buenos Ayres and Rosario Railways. Here the wheat was scanty and of poor quality, and the buyers had sent very little to their port of embarkation—Rosario. They preferred to send their purchases to the grain-elevators of Buenos Ayres, where, by means of blending the central with the southern wheat, a special grade of flour was produced, superior to that produced in the districts served by the above two companies.
The best solution of this question of the responsibility of the railway companies toward the despatchers would be a rule that the railways should be obliged to despatch in the course of a day only the amount of produce sent to the stations during the same lapse of time. But the exporters are generally Argentines, while the railways are usually in
foreign hands; so that this solution, though equitable, would not be regarded with much favour, and it is probable that the railway companies will be called upon to remedy this situation, so unfavourable to Argentine commerce, at their own cost.
Let us now see how far the railways have responded to the increase of agricultural productions.
According to the official statistics, in 1895 the Argentine Republic contained 8760 miles of railways, and the merchandise transported by the various railway companies during that year amounted to 9,811,100 tons. In 1907 the railway systems had increased to a total length of 14,000 miles, while the produce carried during the preceding year amounted to 28,394,500 tons. These figures represent an increase of rather more than 59 per cent, in railway mileage, while the transports had nearly trebled in twenty years.
According to the same authorities, between 1897 and the end of 1907 the rolling stock and the capacity of the goods cars increased in the following proportions:—