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16 MARINE REVIEW. [June 26 SHIPPING PROSPECTS AND SHIPPING SUBSIDIES. Glasgow, June 13.--A new shipping combine has been formed--in the columns of the London evening newspapers. It has a capital of £10,000,- 000 and is going to build six 25-knot boats at £1,200,000 each, and twelve 16-knot boats at £110,000 each. With these it is going to lick creation on both the Atlantic and Pacific, and to monopolize the passenger and cargo traffic of both oceans by weekly or semi-weekly runs between Milford and Montreal, and between Vancouver and the far east. The boats are to be as heavily armed as third-class cruisers. They are to be subsidied by two or three, or half a dozen states of the British empire. And the combine is to be a sort of syndicate composed of the British government, the Cana- dian government, Lord Strathcona, Sir Christopher Furness and a few others. It will knock the Morgan corporation into a cocked hat, and the Cunard, Allan and Elder-Dempster lines into liquidation--unless the bosses of these lines make a virtue of necessity and join the happy throng. In short this wonderful Canadian-British shipping combine is to be and do everything that anybody but a London journalist knows to be im- probable, impracticable and undesirable. This paragraphist has probably never heard of the fuel problem, nor of the relation of speed over 20 knots to carrying capacity. It is so easy to build 25-knot boats--on paper. And so simple to place them on the berth and run them for all they are worth, chock and block, full speed both ways, all the year round. It is odd, how- ever, that Clyde ship builders know nothing of these projected high-speed boats--and there are no yards elsewhere in the country equipped for building them, except Harland & Wolff's, which is pledged to the Morgan ombine. : No doubt the Canadian government has for long been anxious to establish a service of high-speed mail steamers across the Atlantic, but they have not been able to tempt anyone with the means to undertake the work. Two or three bold spirits, without the means, have made a show of trying, but have failed before they began. The Allan company has declined the offer with thanks, and what the Allan line does not know, and does not already possess of the British-Canadian trade, can hardly be worth knowing or having. There are projects for the readjustment of the several steamer services on the North Atlantic, including those with Canada, but not on the lines of the imaginary Strathcona combine. It is a pity so much should be written upon shipping matters by people who know nothing about them. The amount of nonsense that has been penned and published since the announcement of the Morgan combine is simply appalling. No doubt the readers of the Marine Review take it at its true worth. Ship builders here are more interested in the project to establish steel ship building on an extensive scale in Canada. The scheme with which Messrs. C. S. Swan & Hunter of Newcastle-on-Tyne are concerned seems to have in it the elements of success, though with all the defects insepara- ble from state-aided industries. With her natural advantages Canada ought without subsidies to become the cheapest steel producer and (next to Great Britain) the largest ship builder in the world. This prospect is very important from an imperial point of view, but the British Empire League does not seem to have caught it yet, and the Navy League is more concerned about cruisers than commerce in discussing maritime affairs. They have just manifestoed as follows: "If, as we are credibly informed, it is open to the British government to secure by friendly agreement with the North Atlantic trust that there shall be no transfer' of British ships, either those now entering the combine, or those to be built for it in British yards, to any foreign register, and likewise to contract that they shall continue to be officered and manned by the Royal Naval Reserve, our national interests would be safeguarded, and the Navy League's ob- jects attained. If the government have reasonable proposals of this char- acter before them,. we trust that they may be accepted, as such an arrange- ment could not fail to strengthen our maritime position in the event of war with any other country than the United States. In any event the league appeals to the government to make the present the occasion for a new departure in our mercantile policy, recognizing the necessity of link- ing up the different parts of the empire by a subsidied line of steamers suitable for admiralty purposes." By subsidies, it should be noted that the Navy League means something like what in law practice is known as "retaining fees" and "'refreshers'--payments to have the right of call on properly equipped merchant steamers for naval purposes and annual pay- ments to make it worth while for the owners to keep their vessels up to the necessary mark of efficiency. The idea of subsidizing merchant ship- ping for any other purposes than this and for mail services is scouted by British ship owners as a class and would never commend itself to the British nation. For one thing, ship owners know that subsidies imply state interference and they have more than enough of that already. All that British shipping needs is to get rid of the restrictive shipping laws and blighting influence of officialism. And if the Morgan combine has led the way to that, it will have been the greatest blessing to Britain as a maritime nation. The note of reform has already been sounded and the prophetic one can forsee the change that is inevitable if we are to retain our maritime supremacy. We can build ships more cheaply than any other nation, and we can certainly sail them more cheaply, if only our own government will allow us. In a word our maritime industry in future must be governed by considerations of trade, not of the board of trade. Let me add here that ship owners generally by no means approve of the evidence recently given by Sir Robert Griffin before the select committee of the house of commons on steamship subsidies. They do not accept his views as to running vessels at a loss at the government expense in order to crush foreign competition and they do not want the coasting and colonial trade of Britain reserved for British ships. They want fair, open and free com- petition, with no government aid anywhere, and they want just the same access to foreign coasting and colonial trades as we afford to foreign vessels. British shipping has grown up without subsidies and can manage to live and thrive without them. It would be interesting and instructive if someone would figure out how far the depression of the freight markets is due to the large sales within the last three years of British second-hand ships to foreigners. It is certain that quite a fleet of these denationalized vessels have run down the rates on North sea and Mediterranean traffic to a losing point for British ships. This is especially true inthe Spanish ore and fruit trades, nearly all of which is now conducted in British-built vessels under foreign ownership. The outlook for ship owners is not good. A large amount of tonnage engaged by the government for the South African war will now be released and will soon. be competing for employment. There is an ex- cessive over-supply of ocean tonnage in the world just now, and unless more vessels are laid up until the conditiofs improve, freights must go even lower than they are. There is now happily little doing in the con- struction of new cargo vessels. 2 The lines, however, have to go on building, however slack may be the current of trade and however low freights may fall. This week the Penin- sular & Oriental Co. has made another addition--the Sardinia--to their extensive fleet in the Indian and Australian mail and passenger service. This boat was built by Barclay, Curle & Co., Ltd., and is 466 ft. long by 52 ft. 3 in. broad and 33 ft. 6 in. molded depth. She will have triple- expansion engines with cylinders 221% in., 37% in. and 48 in. diameter respectively and a stroke of 48 in. There are three complete laid decks, a poop, bridge and forecastle, and a boat deck above the bridge. There is a double cellular bottom the whole length of the ship, and there is the usual P. & O. accommodation for first and second-class passengers, though this vessel is primarily for the cargo service of the line. The Vickers company has just launched the last of the experimental set of five submarine boats ordered last year by the admiralty. Those previously launched have been, with satisfactory results, put through a series of exhaustive deep-sea trials--at which, of course, newspaper re- porters were not present. The Vickers company is now busy building another submarine boat, a 100-footer of an altogether new type. The new armored cruiser King Alfred, built by the Vickers company. has now been delivered by the builders to the naval authorities at Ports- mouth for her steam trials. This cruiser has been completed for sea in the record time of seven months from the date of her launch, notwithstanding a strike of the ship yard carpenters during one-half of the time and in spite of some internal alterations ordered by the admiralty, which delayed the putting in of the machinery. The engine room bulkheads in this cruiser are of exceptional strength, having withstood the pressure of 1,000 tons of water pumped into the space divided by the walls. On the run from Barrow to Portsmouth the King Alfred made 18 knots with only about half power developed. UNITED STATES SHIP BUILDING CO. The New York Commercial publishes the following editorial upon the organization of the United States Ship Building Co.: "In marked contrast with the conditions and circumstances surround- ing the attempted consolidation of certain American ship building con- cerns a year ago, subscriptions to the bond issue of the new United States Ship Building Co. opened yesterday and to be closed this afternoon, were traded in on the curb as early as last Monday, and one block was sold at 105, the underwriters' offer being 97%. It is more than likely that the entire issue of $9,000,000 'fives' will@be oversubscribed many times--and such an immediate result of the consolidation would be the most conclu- sive proof that the conservative American investing public has still an abundance of faith in the future of large industrial enterprises under intel- ligent and honest management. Discussing at length the importance of the personal equation in the management of these industrial combinations, the Wall Street Journal called attention the other morning to the fact that. managers and executive officials of industrial companies have in very many instances 'permitted themselves to become identified with enterprises totally distinct and separate from those whose interests they are employed to watch over.' And all close observers of such matters will agree with it that instances of this sort have been sufficiently frequent since these con- solidations first began to justify the adverse comment that has been aroused. And they will likewise give prompt indorsement to these further opinions: 'We think that one of the things that stockholders should exact from those who manage their affairs, more especially in the case of in- dustrial companies, is a concentration of time and thought upon the affairs of that company to the exclusion of other enterprises. It is much better to pay a man $20,000 a year for all his time than $10,000 a year for half his time; and one man at $20,000 a year, giving all his thought to the affairs of the company, is much more efficient than two men at $10,000 with divided interests. Experience shows that the loss of efficiency by division of interest is in geometrical ratio to that division.' tte worth noting right here that in the case of the United States Ship Building Co., while the direct conduct of its affairs will doubtless be left as at present in the hands of the managements of the constituent com- panies, the personnel of the directorate embraces the heads of these com- panies almost exclusively; the two exceptions are the attorney and an officer of the underwriting trust company; and the general counsel of the Bethlehem Steel Co. will also go into the general board of the combina- tion as the representative of that newly-acquired property. Briefly, it was not-found necessary to go outside of the promoting ranks in order to give financial strength to the new directorate or to take in men merely for the sake of their influence or 'the looks of the thing.' Where that is necessary, it generally carries with it obligations that prove embarrassing later on; and in some instances indifferent industrial management can be traced clearly to the enforced employment of inefficient executives or sub-execu- tives through that influence. In its initial organization the United States Ship Building Co. appears to be conspicuously free from any personal Ais that might subject it to the sort of criticism noted by the ournal. _Comd'r Wainwright, superintendent of the naval academy, is to be assigned to command the battleship Alabama next October. The Alabama is a pretty big ship for a commander and the assignment to a vessel of her class of an officer lower than the rank of captain is unprecedented. The decision to give Comd'r Wainwright this important command is attributed to President Roosevelt's admiration for Wainwright's record as a fighter in the battle of Santiago where he served on the yacht Gloucester, a con- verted yacht that engaged the Spanish torpedo boat destroyers Furor and Pluton at close quarters. Mr. Spencer Miller, engineer of the cableway department of the Lidgerwood Mfg. Co., New York city, sailed June 17 on the Patricia for Europe, to confer with naval officials regarding the equipment of several battleships with the marine cableway. Mr. Miller will visit London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg and possibly other capitals before his return.