The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

28 M A R I N E DEVOTED TO EVERYTHING AND EVERY INTEREST CONNECTED OR ASSOCIATED WITH MARINE MATTERS ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH. Published every Thursday by The Penton Publishing Company, CLEVELAND, OHIO. CHICAGO: MONADNOCK Pee PITTSBURG: PARK BUILDIN NEW YORK: 150 NASSAU STREET. Correspondence on Marine Engineering, Ship Building and Shipping Subjects Solicited. Subscription, $3. 00 per annum. To Foreign Countries, $4.50. Subscribers can have addresses changed at will. The Cleveland News Co. will supply the trade with the MARINE REVIEW through the regular channels of the American News Co. Entered at the Post Office at Cleveland, Ohio, as Second Class Matter. APRIL 6, 1905. The ease with which the owner of a foreign-built vessel can secure an American register for her, by special act of congress, if she happens to have been wrecked anywhere outside the boundaries of the United States, and towed into and repaired in a ship yard in this country, is one of the most dis- couraging things that now confront the true friends of American shipping. American registry is of no value to these vessels unless they enter into the coast- wise trade, in which case the American registry en- hances their value anywhere from 50 to 100 per cent. Members of congress seem to take delight, and quite outside of party lines, in encouraging these shameless games of graft. The result is that upright American vessel owners hesitate to place orders in American ship yards for the vessels they need in the coastwise trade for fear their investment will net them a loss when brought into competition with these foreign- built vessels that have been wrecked in foreign waters and patched up in American ship yards. Adventurous Americans now scan the four corners of the earth to discover a foreign-built wreck that may be: pur- chased for a song, towed to the United States, and patched up, and given an American registry, at a cost of from two-thirds to one-half the cost of a newly built American vessel. This is demoralizing to Amer- ican vessel owners and ruinous to American ship R oy I Re builders. Since the foundation of the government the coastwise trade has been wholly reserved for Amer- ican vessels, as a consequence of which Americans have cheerfully paid the greatly higher cost of having their ships built in the United States, relying upon congress to keep faith with them, by excluding for- eign-built vessels--vessels built at from two-thirds to one-half the cost of similar American vessels-- from competition with them. In the last five years five foreign-built vessels, of about 5,000 gross tons measurement, have been admitted to American registry by special acts. It will be observed that the present issue of the Marine Review is devoted to a discussion of a 9-ft. channel from Pittsburg to tidewater. There is in- corporated herewith a paragraph from a recent ad- dress delivered by.Hon. I. .W:.- Burton, chairman of the committee on rivers and harbors of the house of representatives at Pittsburg, in which it is evi- dent that the attention of the general government is directed to this project: "Mark my words, gentlemen, the day will come and it is not far distant, when boats will float down the Ohio -at all Seasons of the year carrying the products of the great city of Pittsburg, the workshop of the world, to every point on the compass where civilization is known. [his is not a-dream, but as sure as we sit here tonight it will eventually be real- ized. Do not expect it to happen in a day, in a week, in a month or in a year.. It may take a decade, but it will come. You people of Pittsburg have the enter- prise and the push. Convince the whole country that you possess this, and convince them that it will be to everyone's interest to have it accomplished." The 9-ft. channel can be definitely, set down as one of the improvements of internal waterways which the government intends making. There is every reason why the government should be generous in the de- velopment of the waterways contiguous to Pittsburg ; for Pittsburg is, in its tonnage producing capacity, un- equaled throughout the globe. Its supremacy in this respect is so clearly established that there is no city which can properly be called second to her. Indeed the tonnage of New York, London, Liverpool, Ham- burg and Antwerp added together do not equal the tonnage of this one town of Pittsburg. In 1go2 Pitts- burg rail and river shipments aggregated 86,636,680 tons. This enormous tonnage too has been attained in the face of most unequal conditions. Shipping on the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers is restricted to that limited period of the year when navigable chan- nels are provided by freshets. During this brief period an enormous commerce is moved upon this river. What, therefore, would be the tonnage were these channels navigable practically the whole year round. Experience has shown that commerce multiplies greatly as the cost of. transporting it lessens and here is a system lying dormant the greater part of the year