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Schoenrich, Otto

"A Country with a Future"


Incidentally the guard has helped to keep the boundary line in place.
In the seaports most of the loading and unloading is done by lighters,
the wharves generally being small affairs. Only in Puerto Plata (where
extensive harbor improvements are now under way), Macoris and Santo
Domingo can larger vessels approach the wharves. All the wharves were
built under concessions from the government, which, in the
impossibility to provide them itself on account of its perpetual lack
of funds, was obliged to procure their construction by granting the
right to collect a specified wharf tax, more or less onerous, for a
period of years. The Santo Domingo City wharf concession provided that
everything exported from and imported into this city or any other
coast point in the province must pay the tax, whether the wharf was
used or not. The Samana wharf concession; as amended, gave the right
to collect certain high wharf taxes for fifty years, from 1875 to
1925, in return for the building of a diminutive dock. One of the
important objects accomplished through the 1907 bond issue was the
redemption by the government of the monopolistic wharf concessions.


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