From the commercial point of view, agricultural production thus depends chiefly on the importing markets. This is so far the case that if we look into the monthly figures of exportation, remembering that threshing begins at the end of December and continues sometimes into March or April, we shall find that by June three-quarters of the year’s export has already been shipped. The exportation of wheat in 1907 amounted to 100 million bushels, and by the end of June 79 million bushels, or 79 per cent., had already been shipped. The quantity of maize exported during the same year was 48 million bushels, and in October, that is, five months after the harvest, 40 millions had already been shipped; that is, 84 per cent. The statistics of the carriage of cereals by railroad also clearly prove the pressure and congestion existing in the months following the harvest. From this peculiarity it follows that there is always a struggle latent between the exporters of agricultural produce and the transport companies. In some cases, as in 1905, this struggle took the form of judicial protest; the chief export houses sued the “Great Southern of Buenos Ayres” for damages in respect of unjustifiable delay in the transport of cereals. It must be admitted, however, that the railway companies are not always the cause of such delays in export; there are other factors also which we must take into account and consider in relation to the national production. One of the elements which influence the regularity of transport is the amount of cargo-room available at the ports. When there are many steamers and sailing-ships in port the shipping rates fall; the exporters hurry to make contracts with the shipping lines, and in order to be in time to avoid surcharges, they demand a large number of goods wagons of the railways, which the latter naturally cannot always produce. The law states that the railway companies must maintain a goods service equal to the normal demands of the traffic; and the demands created by the accidental causes we have mentioned are not normal. On the other hand, if the shipping contracts are high, or the prices in the consumers’ market low, the buyers will be unwilling to despatch their cereals to the ports of embarkation, and the railway companies can do nothing to clear their stations of large quantities of accumulated grain, which they cannot forward, since the buyers will not give the order for their despatch. During a recent harvest both these phenomena were observed; on the Southern Railway the harvest was abundant in quantity and good in quality, but only a small number of steamers were lying in the terminal port (Engineer White Harbour); every exporter in the district wanted to ship at once, but the railway could carry only what it was capable of carrying in a normal period.