American steel has sold at Belfast for $24 a ton, while purchasers in this country had to pay $32 a ton at Pittsburg for the same steel.[335] American rails sell for $28 a ton for home use, but for foreign use they can be bought in New York for $19 a ton and delivered in Beirut for $22.88. Last year Mr. Wright, general manager of the Macon and Savannah Railroad, stated that his road had to pay $29 a ton for 5,618 tons of steel rails, although the same steel company offered him rails for Honduras at $20 loaded on vessels chartered to a foreign port.[336] During the last three or four years, while the home price has been $28, the price for export has been $5 to $12 below the home price, and during the period 1902–1904 the difference has been $8 to $12. The Great Northern and the Northern Pacific pay $28 a ton for rails, while their competitor, the Canadian Pacific, buys the same rails for $20 a ton and sometimes for $18 a ton.[337] Even the United States Government could not get fair prices at home for the materials and supplies needed for the Panama Canal project, and found it necessary to open the competition to foreign bids. Even if it were determined to use only American goods they could be bought more cheaply abroad than at home. Matters are arranged so that goods are hauled across the ocean to Europe and then hauled back and sold here at lower prices than they could be bought for at the factory here for home use. If the railways and the steamboats and the allied interests make money they do not care how much industrial power is wasted. An investigation last year brought out the interesting fact that the cheapest way sometimes to get goods from Chicago to San Francisco is to ship from Chicago across the Pacific Ocean and then back to California. The Interstate Commission says: “The complainant desired to ship the machinery for a stamp mill from Chicago to China. Being interested in a line of steamships between San Francisco and the East, his intention was to make shipment to San Francisco and thus to destination by his own line. Upon investigation, however, he learned that the rate from Chicago to San Francisco was $1.25 per hundred lbs., while from Chicago to Shanghai it was 90 cents per hundred lbs. The rate at that time from Shanghai to San Francisco was 20 cents per hundred lbs. Had he desired to lay down his stamp mill at San Francisco, he could have shipped it to Shanghai, and from Shanghai back for 15 cents per hundred lbs. less than the direct rate from Chicago to San Francisco.”[338]