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0287 Tibet and Turkestan : vol.1
チベットとトルキスタン : vol.1
Tibet and Turkestan : vol.1 / 287 ページ(白黒高解像度画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000231
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five cents for profit we shall fall measurably near
the figure above given for caravan charges (thirteen
pence per ton-mile) and measurably near the figure
for profit which would be enforceable as against
frauds on the custom house and the recognised
monopolies. The figure thus given for annual trans-
port charges, say $1,500,000 (or, say, £300,000), is
one that appeals somewhat to our cupidity. But
let us study it further, first remarking that the city
of Washington, with three hundred thousand in-
habitants (about one-tenth the population of Tibet),
pays twice as much annually for its tramway fares,
i. e., twice as much as Tibet pays for substantially
all of its "long-haul" freight service. The thirteen
million pounds of tea may, with other imports, sup-
posing all to be concentrated at one point, be in-
creased to a total of say sixteen million pounds of
incoming merchandise. Taking a sixty-car train of
modern American freight cars, we see that six trains
per year would haul the entire imported load of the
country, and these trains, outgoing, would not be
more than half-filled.

The length of line over which this sixteen million
pounds must be carried is something like twelve
hundred miles. The idea of building a railway of
such length in such country is, indeed, fantastic;
but, merely to pursue the matter to its limits from
our usual point of view, let us calculate such con-
struction at the low figure of sixty thousand dollars
per mile, then the interest charge at five per cent.
on seventy-two million dollars is more than double
the amount now paid for freight transportation, even
though the rate be twenty times that familiar in