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M A R I N E R EV & 2 oe splendid ship yards and the magnificent shipping, all the product of and giving employment to American workingmen, and remember that it is due to the exclusion of foreign ves- sels from participation in our trade. It has been reserved for our own people, and it has grown great and prospered as a consequence. Here we build ships for -just one trade--: protected trade yards receive the full standard of American wages. They will accept nothing less. Do you think that other American workingmen, employed in other American ship yards, even in the building of ships for the foreign trade, will accept less wages than we receive? Of course you do not. Protection is universal in our trade up here, and it sets the standard for the whole country. So, you must see, congress has created a condition of protection in ship building that governs the whole industry. It is prosperous where it is protected, it is a failure where it is unprotected. "Today I may be employed at American wages in the build- ing of a vessel for the coastwise trade. Do you think that tomorrow [I will accept the foreign rate of wages because my employer puts me on a ship building for the foreign trade that will be compelled to compete under free trade conditions with foreign ships? Certainly not. Do you think in one ship yard on one set of ways there will be a gang employed in building a ship for the coastwise trade at the American rate of wages and on another set of ways another gang will be employed in building a ship for the foreign trade at the foreign rate of wages? Of course you do not. Do you think that in a boiler shop one set of men will work for foreign wages in building a boiler to be put into a ship for the foreign trade, and right next to them another set of men will receive American wages for building a boiler to be put into a ship for. the coastwise trade?y The condition you have created in our coastwise trade conforms to the general conditions that ob- tain in all of our land industries--a protective condition-- and it is impossible to expect that you can establish a suc- cessful branch of the same industry under free trade condi- tions. The result of such efforts has been to exclude from our ship yards the building of ships for our foreign trade. "Rather than extend the protective principle uniformly to our ship building and ship owning interests, congress has evaded its plain duty, and the men of my craft who are seek- ing work at their trade are the sufferers for it. "What is there about our coastwise and domestic trade that justifies congress extending and maintaining the protective system that it has so long maintained, and at the same time justifies the denial of protection to our ships engaged in the foreign trade? How can you look upon our prosperous pro- tected coastwise and domestic shipping, and watch its growth, and not realize why it is that our shipping in the foreign trade which is subject to free trade foreign competition has shrunk and declined? If you look for a prosperous American ship- ping upon the seas in free trade and unprotected competition with foreign shipping, under the protective conditions you have created in our coastwise trade and our land industries, you are looking for the impossible. "Face to face with these facts, as you must have been dur- ing the course of your investigations, perhaps some of you are considering why you may not import foreign ships and place them under American registry. You may think that you can, by this method, at least overcome the higher first cost of building ships in American ship yards. But, as you reflect upon that line of policy its impracticability must. be manifest. It must be clear that you cannot, by increasing the free trade conditions of competition, establish, in a protective country, a prosperous industry. It will be no more possible, by free ships. to establish an American shipping in the foreign trade than: it will be to make oil and water mix.. Even if you had free ships, you would still be confronted with the obstacle of higher cost of operation under the American flag: To over- and the men employed in the shops and. -------- ---- come this would you advocate ailowing aliens to command and officer the ships? Would you diminish the quantity and consent to an impairment of the quality of the food served on board American ships--would you conform the food scale to that of the most poorly fed of all the ships with which our own compete? And yet, can you contemplate with favor, tne idea of protecting American officers and seamen on board American ships, and at the same time deny protection to our workingmen in the ship yards. Are the men who officer and man our ships any more deserving of protection. than. those who build them? "Look at this problem as you may, gentlemen, it must be clear to you that there is but one course for you to pursue: you must devise a method of protection that shall be practical and effective which will overcome the adverse conditions un- der which ships are built in the United States and operated under the American flag, in competition with foreign ships. Until you completely abandon the protective policy there is no other way by which you can have an American merchant marine in the foreign trade than by protection. You have free trade competition betwen American and foreign ships now in the foreign trade and that competition has been de- structive of American shipping. Protection, therefore, is the only remedy applicable to existing conditions in the United States in the shipping industry. "Finally, it must be clear to you all that American labor is more deeply concerned in the successful conclusion of your investigations than any other class of citizens. Capital can find innumerable ways for safe and profitable investment, and you need not concern yourself with its needs. When you are told that those who are seeking protection for our shipr ing in the foreign trade are seeking to still further enrich those who are already wealthy--that the demand for protection comes from capitalists and corporations--remember that the statement is untrue, that so long as you deny protection to American shipping in. the foreign trade, so long you deny eraployment in American ship yards for American labor. If you fail--if you do not apply a remedy that will be success- ful--remember that your failure will continue and perpetuate the protection the aliens who now control the building and operation of the shipping in our foreign trade have so long enjoyed. The issue is distinctively and only one between for- eign and American labor." OBITUARY. Capt. O. A. Maxwell of Ashtabula, aged sixty-three years, is dead. He had sailed the lakes for. thirty-three years, and was master of a vessel when only twenty-one years of age. He retired from the lakes some years ago. _ Capt. Frederick Sharpe, one of the oldest and best known marine wreckers in the world, died in the United: States Marine Hospital at Clifton, S. I. He was overcome by gases in the hold of the sunken Boston City in the lower: bay on July 19. During his service, Capt. Sharpe had worked on most wrecks of any importance occurring on the Atlantic coast. ; 3 Rear Admiral Henry C. Taylor, chief of the bureau of navigation, died this week at Copper Cliff, Ont. while on a. visit to his son, Roger Taylor, superintendent of the Canad- ian Copper Co.'s works at Copper Cliff. Admiral Taylor commanded the Indiana at the battle of Santiago. He was appointed to the naval academy from Ohio in - 1860. In 1893 he was made president of the naval war college at Newport and attained the rank of rear admiral in toot. The American Line steamship St. Louis left New York last week without passengers for Southampton. After de- livering the mail she will go to Belfast to have her engines repaired. thon