Bolivia And The Opening Of The Panama Canal PDF Download

Excerpt from Bolivia and the Opening of the Panama Canal "Railroad developments which were undertaken in Bolivia several years ago will be completed about the same time as the Panama Canal, or perhaps a little earlier. These developments will add to the effect of the work your government is doing. At present the Pacific coast trade must enter Bolivia either by way of Mollendo, in Peru, or Antofagasta, in Chili. Under an agreement with the government of Chili a new railway is being built from Arica, on the coast of Chili, to La Paz, in Bolivia, which will cut down the time of the journey at to at least a third and will bring La Paz within eight or ten hours of the coast. It is a particularly good omen that these two big undertakings should be completed at about the same time. "At present merchandise going by the Panama route and by Mollendo suffers a very great deal in transshipment. It has to be transshipped at Colon, then again at Panama, and several times again after it reaches the port of Mollendo. From Mollendo to La Paz there is no through route at present. The journey must be made in three stages. The first stage is by rail to Puno, on Lake Titicaca. At that point the merchandise must be transferred to the steamboat on the lake; then to Guaqui, the port of La Paz, to which city it is finally conveyed by rail. "I have calculated that merchandise shipped by this route is handled twenty-one times. When the service by the Panama Canal is opened and the Arica-La Paz Railroad is in operation this number will be cut down to eight. It is easy to see that this means a great deal in decreased freight charges, leaving savings in time out of consideration altogether. The time taken in transportation will be cut in less than half. Look for Increased Commerce. "The foreign commerce of Bolivia is not yet big. Not because the possibilities are not big but because so far we have lacked the means of transportation. Now that these arc to be supplied we should sec a great increase. In my office we have just completed the returns of the exports sent from New York to Bolivia for the fiscal year 1911. The total of the exports was $1,215,986. The biggest single item in this total was cottons, $389,234. Next came machinery, about $130,000, and then explosives, with $127,559. "I am not in possession of complete figures of the export and import trade of Bolivia, but these figures for the imports into Bolivia for the last five years give an idea of the way the business has grown. In 1906 our total imports were valued at 35,087,325 bolivianos; in 1907, 37,897,610; in 1908, 40,732,543; in 1909, 34,224,764, and in 1910, 48,802,394. Our total exports in 1910 amounted to 75,622,147 bolivianos. It is easy to convert these figures into American money, as a boliviano is equal roughly to forty cents. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.