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20 | MARINE REVIEW. [August 23, MARINE REVIEW Devoted to the Merchant Marine, the Navy, Ship Building, and Kindred Interests. Published every Thursday at No. 418-19 Perry-Payne building, Cleveland, Ohio, by ' Tue MARINE REVIEW PUBLISHING Co. SupscripTion--$3.00 per year in advance; foreign, including postage, $4.50, or 19 shillings. Single copies 10 cents each. Convenient binders sent, post paid, $1.00. Advertising rates on application. Entered at Cleveland Post Office as Second-class Mail Matter. ooo SOOO The long heralded tour of the committee on rivers and harbors of the house of representatives and of the committee on commerce of the senate, though to tell the truth, only one member of the last named com- mittee took the trip, is at an'end. The party disbanded in Chicago on Tuesday of this week and found their several ways home to think about it. It is a fortunate thing that the chairman of the committee on rivers and harbors is a lake man. The members of the committee were wined and dined and then shot through the various ports as from a catapault. They had about as much time to assimilate what they saw as though they made the trip astride a cannonball. Everywhere they went they were surrounded by committees on reception which were almost regimental in size; brass bands led the march through rolling mills and added their brazen notes to the general din; every craft in the harbor that had a pound of steam up blew itself black in the face in honor of the committee, and meanwhile the members were making their review at full tilt. The result is that they have a realistic and undying comprehension of the magnitude of the lakes and its commerce; but no details whatever. It is for this very reason that it is rare good fortune that a lake man is at the head of the committee. The average member did not bother himself much about details. He left all that to Burton. The lake trip will doubtless be far reaching in its results. It has served to give the inland member an impressionistic picture of lake commerce, which is all the more striking owing to its lack of detail. The lake business is so vast that it bewilders, and it comes upon him who takes the trip so suddenly as to completely overwhelm. The United States has 'become an expert nation and the government must shortly cast about for other means of revenue than tariff duties. Setting aside the enormous sum which its ships earn for carrying the goods, the export trade of the United States is greater than that of Great Britain. True the balance of dollars is still with Great Britain though the greater export is with us. Great Britain carries more than 50 per cent. of the world's commerce, and it is a sale just as much as the export of an article is a sale. The United States, from an agricultural and industrial standpoint, was never in a more prosperous condition than it is today. The total commerce of the year surpasses by $319,729,250 that of any preceding year, and for the first time exceeds $2,000,000,000. Even Reed little dreamed of what he was saying when he declared the United States to be a billion dollar country. It is a billion dollar country in more ways than one. Manufacturers' materials were more freely imported than ever before and exported as a finished product. The exports to Spain are greater than they were before the Spanish-American war. In depriving Spain of her colonies a permanent good seems to have been done, for it has caused Spain to vastly improve her domestic conditions. It has served to stimulate her internal industries. During the past year our exports have been more widely distributed than ever before. They have reached every country. The orient shows a respectable gain. But of all this far-flung commerce an infinitesimal per cent. of it went abroad in an American bottom. The profit in the carriage of all these goods went to Great Britain. This profit was sufficient, notwithstanding our enormous exports, to turn the tide in her favor. England made more money out of her export trade than we did, though in the bulk of it she plays a second part. The navy department is in receipt of an offer from a number of Chi- cago citizens to present the ship's bell from the old brick battleship Illi- ncis to the new Illinois, now approaching completion at Newport News. The Illinois, it will be recollected, was one of the lake front attractions at the Chicago world's fair, and, being the first battleship of that name, albeit she never saw any active service, it was considered appropriate that her bell should be transferred to the new battleship of the same name. The offer will be accepted and arrangements made for appropriate ceremonies when the presentation takes place. Germany proposes to pay an average price of $5,600,000 for each of the four battleships ordered under the navy extension scheme. Krupp, Schichau and the Vulcan works will each build one, while the fourth will be built in the imperial yards. This is considerably more than is paid in the United States for this type of ship. It is in the proportion of $475 per ton for a German ship and $878 a ton for a British ship. [np other words a British ship of 15,000 tons displacement costs no more than a German ship of 11,800 tons. SHIP BUILDING IN JAPAN. One of our consuls in England writes that the British public is very much surprised to hear that 13,000 tons of steamships are now building in Japan for European account. This new departure will certainly attract much attention in shipping circles. British ship yards have profited much in recent years irom the rapid development of Japan's 'merchant marine; but this year only half as much tonnage 1s building in British yards for Japan as the Japanese yards are turning out on European orders, and Japan is building a third as much tonnage of steamships for Europe as was in course of construction in all the ship yards of France during the first quarter of this year. The chief ship building yards of Japan are those of the Mitsu Bishi Co. of Nagasaki, which a while ago launched a mer- chant steamship, built for the Japan Mail Steamship Co., of 11,600 tons displacement and with a freight capacity of 7,150 tons. This is the largest steamship ever launched outside of American and European waters. The yards are arranged for vessels up to 500 ft. in length and four may be on the stocks at one time. About 2,000 men are employed in_ the yards. Nagasaki is the chief center of Japan's remarkable industrial progress in recent years and it is not strange that the ship 'building company has found it necessary gradually to advance the pay of its employes. The growth of industries in Nagasaki has so largely increased the population that the cost of rent, fuel, clothing and food at that port has also in- creased. The bounty which Japan pays under the law for the encouragement of ship building has undoubtedly stimulated the business and has pro- bably tended also to improve the quality of the output, as the law requires thoroughly good workmanship. No vessel that fails to meet the required standards receives any bounty. It was said in 1898 that not many vessels built up to that time had fulfilled the requirements of the law. As a few European orders have now come to the Japanese yards it seems likely that improvement is the order of the day. The way the Japanese rushed into the ocean carriage trade with lines of their own big steamships to Europe, America and Australia, made older and more experienced men in the transportation business rub their eyes. Their competitors were well established and sometimes it has been hard for the Japanese to pick up cargoes at the foreign end of their lines. They have been known to fill up at an'American port, for example, with railroad sleepers for Shanghai in lieu of more profitable freight. The liberal mileage subsidy their gov- ernment offers, has, however, helped them out; but some shipping enter- prises in Japan were nipped in the bud by the unfavorable balance sheets that the pioneer lines had to show for a while--New York Sun. IRON THE RULING INDUSTRY. CONTROL PRICES OF IRON AND WE WILL HAVE A REMEDY AGAINST HARD TIMES--A THEORY ADVANOED BY MR. GEO. H HULL. (From the Literary Digest.) Jay Gould, it has been said, used to consider the price of iron a finan- cial barometer by which he forecast the prices of other commodities. When the price of iron went up, he expected to see other prices go up; and when iron went down, he expected to see the rest of the market to follow, and it is said that he rarely found this method of forecasting prices to fail. The present downward course of the price of iron, there- fore, will be watched with considerable interest to see if it is the forerun- ner of a general depression of prices. Thus far, although the decline in iron has now (been in progress for the greater part of a year, it has not been accompanied by any notable decline in the prices of other staple products. George H. Hull, who has been in the iron business for years, and is . now president of the American Pig Iron Storage Warrant Co., has come to the conclusion, after considerable investigation, that it is the high price of iron that causes the subsequent low price, and, indeed, that it causes all the other low prices that make an industrial depression, or "hard times." His theory (as told by him in The Engineering Magazine for August) is, in a word, that a very high price for iron destroys the profit in all the many businesses where iron is used, so that the builders and manufactur- ers limit or stop production, workingmen are thrown out of employment, and the "hard times" begin. To illustrate, he says: "In the little community in which I reside, there were twenty-three houses built in 1899, all of which were contracted for before the advance in prices. This kept the workers employed all the year. <A large num ber of residences were planned for 1900, but when the bids for these came in, it was found that a residence which would have cost $100,000 in 1899 would cost $160,000 in 1900. The result has been that as 'bids have come in the projected buildings have been given up; and, as the houses con- tracted for at low prices have been completed, the workmen have departed. If this be an isolated instance and these workmen are finding employ- ment elsewhere, then it signifies little. But if this be typical of what has been taking place throughout the country and they are not finding other employment, then we have already made several months' progress toward industrial depression." oe oe building operations, but almost every other branch of a ae ustry, depends more or less upon the price of iron, -- Says _,_ Iron is acknowledged to be the foundation on which the modern industrial system rests. If that system is disturbed, it is most natural to look to the foundation for the cause of the disturbance. If one would appreciate how thoroughly the entire industrial system depends upon iron, let him imagine what the world would be today without it--what it would be if we depended upon wood, stone, copper and tin for our imple- ments of agriculture, tools, machinery, vehicles of transportation on land and sea, the vast network of rails on the surface, and the pipes which carry water, gas, etc., under the surface. What proportion of these could have existed without it? It matters little what its price is, provided that price is stable. The industries of the nation depend upon the actions of an aggregation of individuals. When the individual considers an expen- diture for a permanent improvement, and finds that improvement will cost 50 per cent. to 100 per cent. more than it would have done a year before, or is likely to do a year later, he acts, and that action is almost invariably a postponement of that improvement. This. in a nutshell, is the reason that industrial depressions follow an abnormal advance." Not content with the plausibility of his theory, Mr. Hull has ran- =