SOUTH AFRICA'S WAR CONTRIBUTION.
[To THE EDITOR Os THE "SPECTATOR,"] Srrt.—In connection with South African finance an American friend, who supplies almost the entire timber to the Johannes. burg mines, gave me recently some freight figures which are to-day interesting. There are five railways—namely, from Delagoa. Bay, Durban, East London, Port Elizabeth, and Cape Town—which deliver a million tons of freight yearly at Johannesburg, at a gross freight chargeof 25,500,000 sterling. If these million tone were carried for 22,500,000, the indus. tries of the Transvaal would at once be the richer by 23,000,000, or by the interest and sinking fund on 2100,000,000 of Debt. The rate from the Cape is 27 10s. per ton, or nearly 2d. per ton per mile for a haul of slightly over a thousand miles,—say the distance from Chicago to New York. The rates over the Pennsylvania Railway from Chicago to New York for timber, flour, rails, coal, or machinery would be rather less than id. per ton per mile. The trouble with the South African railways is that they are narrow gauge, their engines are too small, their road-beds poor, while to reduce their gradients would be costly. Yet it is by attention to these points that the Pennsylvania Railway to-day at the above rate is able to haul forty cars of fifty tons each behind a single locomotive between Chicago and New York over the Allegheny Mountains.. It was ray friend's opinion that with the consent of the Portuguese Government a standard. gauge road built from Delagoa, three hundred and eighty miles, to Johannesburg should cost 210,000 per mile, in. eluding heavy engines and steel cars, or 24,000,000 sterling. At id. per ton per mile it could haul the million tons to Johannesburg for 21,600,000, and make a profit of 2600,000 a year on its 24,000,000 of capital, while saving the Transvaal nearly 24,000,000 yearly. Thus were there a tariff on imports aggregating 23,000,000, and these imports were forwarded to Johannesburg by up-to-date machines at normal rates, only the proprietors of antiquated traction methods would be a penny the worse, and this is the risk which investors always
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