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MARINE REVIEW. 9 The Commissioner's Recommendations, Although Mr. E. T. Chamberlain, United States commissioner of navigation, will retire with the present administration and will have little influence in the matter of shipping legislation on the new con- gress, some of his views, as contained in an annual report, just issued, may prove interesting. Notwithstanding his free ship views, in which he presents a lengthy argument, he advises an immediate extension of the act of 1892, under which the steamships New York and Paris were admitted to American registry and the steamships St. Louis and St. Paul. were built in the required for South American, Asiaticand African trade. A considera- ble share of the report is given to the consideration of this question, and the commissioner reaches the conclusion that the policy of dis- crimination always has been, and always will be, thwarted by retalia- tion. : Another feature of the report is a discussion of the interest of the United States in the carrying trade of the Pacific. Attention is directed to Japan's action in establishing'steamshipflines to the United States, largely through co-operation with American capital. "We haye,"? the commissioner United States. But under existing law, he says, it is impossible to establish on the Pacific a mail service even approximating our Atlantic mail service on ..equal conditions with those _.found: necessary to the re- cent creation:of the latter. The feature of his report is, of course, opposition to _the Frye bill now before "congress, to impose 10 per cent. additional discrimi- nating duties on all car- goes brought into the United States by. foreign vessels. This is prompted by the action of the re- cent republican national platform endorsing this measure. The commis- sioner urges that for over eighty years the United States have followed the policy of reciprocity in shipping, and declares that every other maritime na- tion of considerable rank has adopted and now pur- sues the same policy. Our total imports for 1895, he says, were valued at $731,- 969,965, of which $590,- 538,362 were brought in foreign vessels. The dis- criminating duty bill would, he adds, put an ad- ditional charge of $59,100,- 000 on our international exchanges, based on the figures for 1895, an amount approximately equal to our entire freight bills on imports and ex- ports. The report quotes articles from our. treaties With the thirty-five princi- -pal nations in the world, all of which, it is contend- says, "already seen the Americanflag almost whol- ly disappear from the mid- Atlantic, save as borne by the mail steamers of the American line, and the figures show that the car- rying trade of the Pacific is slipping from us. Be- fore it is altogether lost, congress should inquire into the conditions of Transpacific _ transporta- tion. Within the last five years Japan's sea-going steel steamers have in- creased from thirteen of 27,701 tons to fifty-three of 106,383 tons, while the number of American steel and iron steamers on the Pacific coast is only forty- three of 68,625 tons."' Retarders in Boilers. Spiral retarders, made of sheet iron and inserted in the fire tubes of Scotch boilers, have for some time been in use on lake vessels. The Dry Dock Engine Works of Detroit has used them in the boilers of all vessels to which they have fitted the Howden hot draft. They have even patented an improvement on the retarders that in- creases their advantages in cleaning the tubes. These retarders, alike to many other special devices, have met with opposition from some of the engineers, who claim that their ad- vantages are more fancied. than real. But it would seem that numerous tests made recently, in both stationary and marine boilers, have settled this case ed, must be abrogated at the expense of a disturb- _ ance of our trade relations with the world if the policy of discriminating duties 18 to be adopted by the United States. In arguing against the imposition of this tax the Commissioner cites the enormous importations of tea and coffee, aggre- gating in 1895 $125,000,000, and points out that the proposed tax would be a tax on the consumers of those articles. Of coffee from Brazil $54,000,000 came in foreign vessels, and the proposed tax Would equal $5,400,000, or sufficient, Mr. Chamberlain says, in coffee alone to subsidize steamship lines, including twenty-five steamers equal to the St. Louis and St. Paul, or a much larger number of the class Thomas Dunford. Joseph Wolter. Abram Smith. James Davidson. C. T. Morley. From Blue Book of American Shipping. WOODEN SHIP BUILDERS AND DRY DOCK MANAGERS. Henry B. Burger. H. J. Mill George Quayle. question. In the Novem- ber number of the Jour- nal of the Society of Naval Engineers, Mr, Jay M. Witham presents several pages covering exhaustive trials of boilers with and without the re tarders, all of them showing that the retarders are of value in saving fuel. As the result of a trial made on two Scotch boilers in the steamship Winyoh of the Clyde Steamship Co., _ plying between Norfolk and Richmond, Va., he concludes that retarders properly used, effect a saving in the use of coal; that they check the draft and their use is not advised except when it is strong; that they can be best ap- plied when the draft is strong and the gases are high in the stack, A. Gillmore. ; Thos E. Miller. Simon Langell. W. W. Brown. James E. Davidson.