From a legal point of view, nothing can be said against the State’s reducing railway rates, inasmuch as it was invested with the right of primarily drawing up those rates.
By the same Act of November 12, 1901, the State enjoys certain special conditions of transport for carrying out works of public utility. That right is quite legitimate for the Government, and does not entitle private citizens to demand its application for their own purposes. The State could have enjoyed these advantages if it had itself built and worked the line. The mere fact of a concession by no means robs the State of all its rights in this respect. These advantages are justified, for the State has made real sacrifices in ceding a part of its territory and in abandoning the repurchase clauses. The advantages accruing to the State do not in any way interfere with the equal treatment of individuals stipulated for in Article 16, which says: “As regards the rate of these tolls, foreigners and subjects of the respective territories shall be treated on a footing of perfect equality.”
No distinction is made on account of nationalities; the only difference made rests on a service of public utility, regardless of nationality. Neither subjects nor foreigners can say that their civil or commercial liberties are endangered.
There are certain authoritative interpretations of the Berlin Act which confirm our view of this question. The German Government, for example, considers no breach of equality the exemption of all dues granted to a German railway concessionaire. Below are two clauses of the Imperial German decree, dated December 1, 1891, and relating to the railway in German East Africa (Usambara line).
“Clause 1.—The Imperial Government shall grant to no other contractor, either individual or corporation, the right of constructing or working a railway line joining the said localities or liable to compete with the line ceded by the present decree or any parts of same.”
“Clause 9.—The Imperial Government guarantees to the German East African Railway Company, subject to compliance with the prescribed formalities, an exemption from all taxes on materials, engines, working tools, and all other implements and articles which may be imported into German East Africa for the construction, repair, renewal, and running of the railway.”
In drawing up special tariffs with its concessionaire, it may be asked whether the State can base these rates on the actual working expenses—that is to say, with neither profit nor loss for the concessionaire. From an economic point of view, such a tariff is perfectly justifiable. Transporting operations, per se, cannot be separated from the transactions to which they are related. These transactions must be considered in view of all the surrounding circumstances. In negotiating transport operations, which of themselves entail neither profit nor loss, a contractor is quite justified in calculating on present or probable advantages which may result from the whole of the operation; as, for instance, the opening of new markets and the renunciation to the right of immediate repurchase of the concern. To forbid him to do this would be to spoil his chances and deprive him in many cases of a part of the profit to which he is justly entitled.
Neither can it be argued, in the case of a railway like that of the Congo, that the contractor should require rates superior to his actual expenses, in order to realise an immediate profit. Clause 16 states “that there shall be collected only tolls calculated on the cost of construction, maintenance, and management, and on the profits due to the promoters.” To argue in the sense indicated would be against the purport of the clause which aims at forbidding excessive rates, but which in no way interferes with a gradual realisation of average profits by the contractors. To arbitrarily forbid the contractor to make such profits would be to fly in the face of Clause 16, inasmuch as it refers to the profits due to the contractor. It is equally fallacious to imagine that because certain merchandise is carried for a time without profit, the rates for certain other merchandise must needs be increased. Finally, it would still have to be shown that the Berlin Act forbids a proper and reasonable equalisation of contractors’ charges. But the Berlin Act does not meddle with such arrangements; it does not establish a detailed and proportional schedule of rates. It only says that such charges must not be excessive—that is to say, they must not exceed the comprehensive amount of the necessary expenses and due profits. The Act, moreover, fixes no maximum for such profits, neither does it fix any maximum rates on produce. Its intentions in this respect are shown by its refusal to define, even by means of a maximum scale, the extent of compensatory rates.
Africa Unknown to Africans.
Time was when the native Congolese, lazily living out his torpid life in a land where Nature in her luxuriance yielded him subsistence without the ennobling concomitant of his labour, avoided the great forests, the jungles, and the marshes of Equatorial Africa. He moved about to regions of easy access where the land afforded his indolence the greatest pleasure for the least responsibility. Explorers and the early builders of the Congo Free State often experienced great difficulty in preventing the desertion of their native carriers over a trackless course, such, for instance, as Stanley, Wissmann, De Brazza, cut out on their several expeditions. In short, the African Negro regarded his feet with such solicitude that he waited for the white man to show him the thickets and the fastnesses which contained those natural resources—rubber, oil, gum, ivory, nuts—which certain library philosophers and untravelled colonisers assert were the conscious property of the savage who neither knew of, nor cared for, their existence. Industry was not worth while to him who could supply his wants in idleness.