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: THE Marine REVIEW | (25 bill is 16 knots, the lowest 12 knots, yet this speed, while moderate, is somewhat superior to that of the foreign vessels now engaged in similar trades. It guarantees improved dispatch for the United States mails, and yet is easily at- tainable by modern ships having a great capacity for mer- chandise. : "DELIVERY WAGON" SHIPS. "In the western and southern sections of the country there has been an earnest insistence on the value of what might be termed the 'delivery wagon' type of ship, the general cargo carrier especially adapted to transporting cotton, wheat, and other bulky articles that make up more than one-half of our exports to foreign lands. For all such vessels, steam or sail, the shipping bill provides a subvention of $5 per gross ton if engaged for a full year in the foreign trade, and for smaller sums for shorter periods. This is intended to equalize the cost of construc- tion, wages, and maintenance between our own and similar foreign craft, and is conditional upon the employment in the crews of a certain proportion of naval volunteers, while the vessels accepting it must carry the mails when re- quired free of charge, must be kept seaworthy and effect- iveg must make all ordinary repairs in the United States, and be held ready to be taken by the government in time of war. The subvention is payable under a contract for one year at a time, renewable from year to year, but paid in no case to a given vessel for a longer period than ten years. The bill also postpones the application of the coastwise principle to our trade with the Philippines from July 1, 1906, until 1909, and offers in place of this a special _ subvention of $6.50 per ton to American vessels engaged in our commerce with the Philippines." INCREASED TONNAGE TAXES. Another section of the bill increases the present tonnage taxes, now lower in the United States than in any other nation. These increased tonnage taxes, it is estimated, will provide a net increase of revenue of $1,900,000 a year, more than paying all the cost of the subventions in the first year and turning a net gain of $616,000 into the treas- ury.. In the second year of the bill, from July 1, 1907, to June 30, 1908, the commission's estimate is for a net cost of $1,667,000; June 30, 1909 of $3,533,000; for the fourth year, $4,282,000; and for the tenth year, from July 1, 1915, to June 30, 1916, $7,682,000--an average of $4,625,625 a year. Great Britain and her colonies next year will be expending between six and seven million dollars on their merchant marine, France about eight. million dollars and Italy and Japan between three and four million dollars. RESULTS OF THE BILL. Senator Gallinger summed up the results of the shipping bill as follows: 6c the naval service. "> A new fleet of from 200,000 to 300,000 tons of steel mail steamships, a naval reserve of fast transports, ammu- nition ships, supply ships, auxiliaries, etc., in case of war. a A new addition of 1,500,000 tons of cargo vessels, in- creasing four fold the actual ocean shipping of the United States. "4. The creation of ten new and strengthened American steamship lines to South America, Central America, Africa and Asia, supplemented by a large and active fleet of 'tramp' or cargo vessels opening new markets and giving increased trade and employment for the whole American people impossible to set down in specific figures, but fifty fold or a hundred fold the entire cost of the national sub- ventions." - Senator Gallinger said in closing: for the third year, from July 1, 1908, to. 1. A force of ten thousand naval volunteers, trained to © "We have paltered with and postponed this question of American ocean trade for forty years. We have seen our shipping and our seamen vanish, and every nation grasp- ing the trade that should have been our own. It must be acknowledged that the steady decline of our ocean ship- ping since 1861 marks the one great and humiliating failure of the Republican party. But the Republican party has failed here because here alone it has not been true to Republican principles. It has protected everything else that felt the pressure of foreign competition, but it has left unprotected the one industry that feels foreign competi- tion most directly and keenly of all. "Years ago, in 1881, in the last speech which Mr. Blaine delivered in the senate, he eloquently combated the proposi- tion that this country should be dependent. upon Great Britain for a merchant marine, and pointed to the fact that while congress had in the past twenty years passed 92 acts in aid of internal transportation by rail, giving 200,000,000 acres of public lands, worth today a thousand million dol- lars in money and added $70,000,,000 in cash, yet it had ex- tended the aid of scarcely a single dollar to build up our foreign commerce. "From that day to this," said Senator Gallinger in clos- ing, "nothing has been done for American shipping except the enactment of the inadequate postal aid law of 1891, and - we are now practically in the situation that Mr. Blaifie so earnestly inveighed against, of dependence upon foreign na- tions in the matter of over-seas transportation. It is to rescue this country from the deplorable condition that to- day exists that this bill is offered to the congress. | It does not go so far as I would wish, but its enactment will do something toward reviving the shipping interests of our country, and in a measure rehabilitating the American mer- chant marine, a result which all patriotic Americans desire, to see accomplished." - LAUNCH OF THE JOSEPH SELLWOOD. The steamer Joseph Sellwood, building for Capt. John Mitchell, of Cleveland, was launched from the Lorain yard of the American Ship Building Co., on Saturday last. The steamer was. christened by Miss Larue Sellwood, daughter of Joseph Sellwood. In the launching party were Mr..and Mrs. L. W. Leithead and Mr. R. M. Sell- wood, of Duluth; Miss Newton, Miss Dinkley, Mr. John Wedow, Miss Wedow, Miss Mitchell, Capt. and Mrs. John Mitchell, Ralph Mitchell, James Mitchell, Harry Mit- chell, Capt. Richard Jackson, Capt. C. B. Galton, Wm. Fet- ting, John Scott, H. W. Herriman and A. B: Hambleton. Mr. Russel C. Wetmore and Mr. Owen Steele repre- sented the ship building company. The Sellwood is 545 ft. over all, 525 ft. keel, 55 ft. beam and 31 ft. deep, and is - equipped with triple expansion engines with cylinders 2314, 38 and 63 in. diameters by 42 in. stroke, supplied with steam from two Scotch boilers 14 ft. 2% in. diameter and 11 ft. 6 in. long. She will be ready for service by the opening of navigation and will be commanded by Capt R. C: Jackson Jr. C. 4. Love vay be chief engineer. Important changes are recommended in the report of the lighthouse board to the secretary of commerce and labor, in the conditions in Buffalo Harbor, Niagara river. Appro- priations amounting to $25,000 are asked by the board to be expended, mainly in additional aids to navigation along the river, which is a dangerous one to navigate. Capt. Henry Mills will look after the repair work on the steamers of the United States Transportation Co.'s fleet at Buffalo during the winter. -