Distance, Plymouth to Melbourne via Cape of Good Hope, 12,220 miles; distance, Plymouth to Melbourne via Suez 11 277 miles.

EXHIBIT V.

NOTES ON FREIGHT COSTS AND PERCENTAGE OF FREIGHT TO COST.

The following table shows the amount of groceries, dry goods, boots and shoes, and raw material imported by the commissary department of the Panama Railroad Co. from the United States during the month of September, 1911, on which freight was paid in advance. It does not include items which are delivered cost, insurance, and freight paid to the Isthmus of Panama.

The principal item of raw material is flour. In selling any merchandise, in order to determine what the selling price shall be the items of expense must be included, and this expense is always figured as a per cent of the final cost or selling value. It will be noted in the case of raw material and groceries that

although the actual freight per ton paid is comparatively low, the percentage is high; and that although the actual freights for dry goods and boots and shoes are high, the percentages are very low. This shows how high-priced cargoes which are light can stand very heavy freight rates, because the expense of selling such goods is usually low compared with the selling value. We sell boots and shoes on a less percentage of expense than any other article.

It will be noted that any system of canal tolls based upon displacement would discriminate very heavily against groceries and raw material and would make a very low freight rate for dry goods and boots and shoes. The ocean freight on dry goods and boots and shoes is always calculated on a measurement basis per ton of 40 cubic feet.

The figures under the column "c. i. f. cost" are the actual wholesale costs f. o. b. seaboard United States, with the ocean freight added.

LIEUT. COL. EUGENE T. WILSON, SUBSISTENCE OFFICER

Recalled.

Mr. STEVENS. I wanted to ask you what you have ascertained about coal prices and conditions, as you stated you would do the other night. Col. WILSON. I have some data here. I haven't it in very good shape at the present time. In the first place, I have prepared a blue print for my own information, drawn to scale, showing graphically the distances from continental ports, and I have one for each member of the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. Please have one placed in the record also.

Col. WILSON. So by merely looking at the map you can see the relative distances of various points by way of Suez and Magellan to points all over the world. Prof. Johnson has prepared a table embodying practically the same features. These distances are from Lloyds's Calendar, Lloyds of London. Distances not given by it are taken from the Navy Hydrographic Office Table, and where not given by the latter I have taken the balance from Bartholomew's Atlas of the World's Commerce. The drawing is to scale, and one inch equals a thousand nautical miles. In the matter of coal, I have had too little time to go into the matter very far.

The CHAIRMAN. We do not expect you to supply all of that until you revise your testimony.

Col. WILSON. I have cabled to London, but have not yet received a reply. I have also a good deal of valuable data that I got last night by getting together with the captains and engineers of some of the tramp steamers that are in the port, all British, and we had a "town meeting." Most of them had been through the Suez Canal; one man 40 times in the last 22 years. They told me that I made an incorrect statement the other day in saying there was no refrigerating plant, as there is one at Port Said, where you can get Australian beef and mutton, and that a ship of about 3,000 tons can go to Port Said, coal, take on water, ice, cold-storage supplies, and food and get away

in 4 hours.

Mr. STEVENS. By whom is that maintained?

Col. WILSON. I don't know. I will find out and put it in the record. They also have there a small turbine-driven dynamo, by which they furnish searchlights to vessels for their passage through the canal. They put them aboard and make connection to the steam pipes on the ship's winches. While ships are going through quarantine the coal man comes out and asks how much coal is wanted. By the time they are through quarantine the coal, which is already in lighters, is brought alongside and a lot of Arabs bring the coal aboard on their

heads in baskets. In this manner they coal at the rate of about 100 tons an hour. Tramp ships make a very low rate on Cardiff coal to Port Said because they generally go up to the Black Sea for wheat for homeward cargo, so they are able to make a fairly low rate on coal. I also obtained from some of these gentlemen some copies of the contracts which exist with their home firms and the coal dealers, which they make annually and covering pretty much all of the ports of the world. It is the general custom for tramp lines in England to make annual contracts and furnish captains with copies thereof, because they do not know where they may be sent. I have copies of the blank here all signed and sealed, and I will abstract the prices and put them into the record. I merely bring them to you now so you can see the source of information. I would rather not put the full contract in.

The CHAIRMAN. You can analyze it and give us the substance of it. Col. WILSON. I have it analyzed for the year 1909. I will get it in better shape and put it into the record. I am informed that Welsh coal that goes out to Port Said and Suez is screened when it leaves Cardiff; it runs over a single screen at the colliery. Screened more than once is usually bought by the admiralty only. Their term for run of mine, as we use it, is unscreened; and they also use the term "through and through," meaning that the coal goes though the first chute by the first screen and also by the second; the expression "through and through" or unscreened corresponding to our "run of mine." I am also informed that by the time the coal reaches the ships at Port Said and the places in the East, due to its breaking up and banging around, it is about the same grade as run-of-mine coal at the tipple at Cardiff.

Mr. STEVENS. How would that compare with the run-of-mine coal delievered here?

Col. WILSON. I have some figures on that also which I will get into shape and put into the record. I got from these men last night for their own ships their statement as to what they considered the relative number of tons burned per day. One of the captains, whose ship is of 3,550 gross tons burden, says that his ship will burn per day 22 tons of best No. 1 Cardiff, 25 tons of Tyne coal from Newcastle, 25 from Lancashire, 29 to 30 of Indian; en route to the East they get the Indian coal first at Colombo and from there east until they get into competition with the Japanese coal; 29 to 30 Japanese; 24 to 25 Newcastle; 30 of Coronel; that is down in Chile; they get that in the Straits of Magellan, and they say it is all burned up into the stack and is very poor; 24 to 25 from Sydney, Cape Breton; that is near Halifax; 30 at Borneo; 24 to 25 Sterling, New River, or Berwind White; they get this at Norfolk or Newport News; and 26 Alabama. Another captain who has forced draft in his boat says that his boat is loaded in England for 16 tons of best Welsh, and he gets along with 15 to 153 Pocahontas.

Mr. Escн. What tonnage?

Col. WILSON. He has about 3,300 tons. He has forced draft and says that the Pocahontas coal works admirably with forced draft. You will notice the other list I gave you did not contain Pocahontas coal. The third man-his ship was the largest of all of them, about 4.700 gross tons-says he burned 25 tons of best Welsh, 26 tons of Pocahontas, 26 tons of best Welsh run of mine, 28 of Lancashire or

Tyne coal, and 30 of Indian or Japan. I give you that information for what it is worth, but it is thoroughly reliable. I took it directly from the practical man, who is actually navigating the ship. I had three captains and one engineer along. I did that last night and did not have time to get it into shape.

Mr. STEVENS. There are two or three suggestions then that should be drawn from those figures. First, that the coaling situation at Suez, and the supply of other necessities at Suez, is about equal to the best you can possibly do here with the best possible plan you can undertake?

Col. WILSON. Unquestionably. They all speak very favorably of it. They said at Port Said they got what they called a square deal; that east of Port Said they had to do a lot of bartering and huckstering with the native people and that they were short in their weights. One man said that if he got 95 per cent of the coal that his bill called for, he would sign the receipt, because that is all he would get. Some ports, they said, they avoided, particularly Aden. One captain said he got ice at Aden and paid £3 sterling, or $15, per ton for it, as he remembered; but that was two years ago.

Mr. STEVENS. So, unless we do the very best that is possible, Suez will have an advantage in that particular.

Col. WILSON. In that particular.

Mr. STEVENS. Now, in order to get the lowest possible prices for coal, does not the Suez situation show that it is necessary to have back cargoes to the port of destination from which the coal comes? Col. WILSON. Yes, sir.

Mr. STEVENS. And that would be about the same situation here as a general proposition?

Col. WILSON. Yes, sir; they developed the feature of the back cargo here, that the leading commodity coming out of British ports for these tramp steamers was coal. The ship would load out with Cardiff coal and go through here with enough to carry it to Puget Sound ports, where they load back with wheat or lumber. I am under the impression that you gentlemen probably know more about that than I do, that when bunker coal is exported you get the drawback when it is used for ship's purposes.

Mr. STEVENS. Isn't it true that if we desire to use the canal to the best advantage, there ought to be free coal on the zone for shipping purposes?

Col. WILSON. Unquestionably there has to be free coal for shipping purposes, if you want to make this route attractive to ships sailing from British ports, because in those parts of the world that we expect to reach in competition with the other routes we have to overcome their distance advantage in some other way. I have a memorandum that I prepared for Col. Goethals, in which I figured out that with the best type of cargo ship that comes here, a saving of $1 a ton on coal between here and Port Said will mean 40 miles a day for the ship when converted into distance. These figures for these three tramp ships that I figured out show that they will take 1,000 tons of dead weight cargo 1,000 miles on 20 tons of Pocahontas coal. One takes as high as 21, and the other as low as 181; they average about 20. The coal situation on the Pacific coast is pretty serious, because coal in San Francisco is high, around $6.90 for Comox, B. C., run of mine; and the introduction of Cardiff coal for ship's bunking purposes,