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30 TAE MarINeE. REVIEW OUR FOREIGN COMMERCE At the recent meeting of the Ohio Bankers' Association in Cleveland Mr. Harvey D. Goulder, president of the Merchant Marine League of the United States delivered an address upon the subject "Our Foreign Commerce." Mr. Goulder spoke as follows: "Circumstances give me the privilege, and with it the responsibility, of presenting the views of the Merchant Marine League of the United States on the subject of our foreign marine. I cannot hope to express, nor will it be permissible to detain you with, the individual views of members of this national organization. Regardful that any 'expression must be conservative, mindful also that while we are glad to discuss details the occasion does not invite this or furnish needed time, there is no hesitation in making public expression of what may properly be taken as the con- sensus of opinion of a large number of men, for the most part free from any selfish interest upon what many regard the most important economic and political question now before the people,--the question of transportation, internal and external. The immediate purpose of our organization is to point ot our need and dependence upon a foreign mer- chant marine, and invite and incite the best thought upon the subject of how this may be accomplished, urging a crystallization of public sentiment that we need and can afford a foreign merchant marine; or, more properly stated, that we. cannot afford to be without a foreign merchant marine under our own flag. . - "So much by way of introduction of the Merchant Marine League, which I have the distinction to represent before your convention. : "Superficial consideration would submerge this in the eco- nomic guestion of tariff, which furnished fecund opportunity for earnest and conscientious debate. It is because the sub- ject is superior to such treatment that our League exists. "At the hearing in Cleveland before the Congressional Commission, there appeared a man known to be earnest, thoughtful and consistent, who argued that the United States should consume its own productions and_ therefore, should not be concerned either with foreign commerce or with world politics. What he said was impressive from that point of view. Another came with the statement of the selling of steel plates delivered at Belfast, Ireland, some- thing like $8 a ton less than at Pittsburgh for the use of our home shipbuilders. "Careful thought on both of these propositions would seem to indicate that neither can furnish aid in the solution of the question, which, in its purely commercial and least important sense, is this: Our nation has a larger navi- gable seacoast than any other nation in the world, and now leads the other nations in manufactures, and has more than one-third of its entire population in cities and towns. We were once an agricultural country, sending out the products of the soil. When this nation began, we had something like six, possibly seven percent, of the then meagre population in cities and towns. Other countries, needing food stuffs or raw materials for their manufactures, may be depended upon to come according to their convenience for such mate- rial as they choose to buy here. But we have gone forward in manufacturing to such an extent that, as stated more than one-third, to be exact, quite thirty-five percent, of the pop- ulation of the United States is in industrial centers. The real strength of our country still may be in the agricultural districts, and should better remain there; nevertheless we have come to be and, if prosperity is to remain with us, must increasingly continue to be a nation exporting not only rudimental products, but the accomplished products of labor, in which the cost of labor so predominates that it may be roughly estimated at 80 to 90 percent. Everything of this character that we send out is world competitive. With railroad and other building in this country we have our enormous home market, but it is essential that we make our market as broad as we Can. "History shows the success of those nations which have sent out their own goods under their own flag. Not alone the consideration of time, but the intelligence of this audi- ence forbids illustration. of this truth. "Keeping for the moment to the purely commercial and economic side of the question, we have shown on the great lakes a progress to which the country is indebted for its supremacy in the steel industry. It may interest you to give some figures which were recently worked out. In 1871, the prototype of the present lake freighter was built. She carried 900 tons on a trip; freight then averaged about $3 a ton for a haul from Marquette to Cleveland, something over 600 miles. It was regarded fair dispatch for her to load in two days and unload in four. In the lake navigation season of eight months, she could haul 10,000 to 12,000 tons. The Government furnished to shipowners the exclusive right of coast-wise navigation and has spent about $40,000,- 000 in improving the channels, with the result that the lake freighter of today carries as much in a single trip as her prototype carried in an entire season, and for a freight of seventy cents from Marquette and seventy-five cents for the three hundred miles longer haul from the head of the lake. The freight includes all handling charges; she has been ' loaded in an hour and a half and discharged into cars in a little over four hours, and we have developed the finest working fleet in the world, just now having arranged for the building of two shins of 600 ft. length and 12,500 tons' carrying capacity. Not more than twenty ships in the world are longer than these, and, but for our restricted draught of some 20 ft. on the lakes, not more than twenty would have greater carry- ing capacity. "The point I desire to make is that with the Government aid of the coasting laws and with the $40,000,000 expended by the Government on channels and harbors, we have been enabled on the lakes to give the cheapest transportation known in the world. Upon this is founded the supremacy of this country in the steel industry, because down these lakes there is coming this year more than 30,000,000 tons of ore, which will represent more than 80 percent of the iron in a production of 22,000,000 tons or upwards of pig iron in this country this year. Every preparation is being made to increase even this in another year, some twenty- five percent based on conservative estimate. "Still holding to the' purely economic side, the excuse for our common experience of passenger trains being late on large lines, as well as for delays in freight deliveries, is the great bulk of freight business which the railroads are doing. We are asking on the lakes for additional locks at the Sault and for additional channels at the expense of some millions, and the expenditure should be authorized. People of the Ohio valley are asking for improvements in the Ohio river, and so on down the Mississippi at the expense of millions, and the simple fact is that the United States cannot afford to deny this request. No investment of Government funds will ever equal in broad national advantage the contributions to transcontinental railroads and the investments in improy- ing internal waterways already made, or which shall with an awakened spirit in this country, be granted by congress, Canada has taken this lesson wisely because broadly. We are now spending about $20,000,000 a year for these vital improvements. It will be a short time only when the en- lightened mind and auickened business conscience of. this country will double this expenditure or multiply it by three. Transportation through the great lakes down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and by the railroads which parallel these routes or give independent transportation to tide water on the Atlantic and Pacific and the Gulf coasts, is going forward, and no thoughtful man would think of delaying the progress. But