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ed by the English shipowners, and for service, either mail service, which is of enormous expense, of course, or for protected cruiser purposes, and any one who has to build a protected cruiser for the British government and go through the troubles they have to encounter, deserves all the money he can get. Britain Does Nothing Says Mr, Reid. The paper of Mr. Dickie in one part says: "In Great Britain, on the contrary, her position among the na- tions is held to depend on her naval supremacy and so the British ship- builder had only to learn well his business of building good ships and his government saw to it that the ship owners should not lack encour- agement to use them." That is news to me. Britain has never done any- 'thing to help the ship owner. She has allowed Germany to control the shipping from the west coast of Afri- ca to the east coast. No subsidy is given on the east coast of Africa, which was practically opened up and explored by British explorers and ' British seamen, and today if you go to the east coast of Africa you will find that the Germans preponderate, and if you go to the west coast you will find them there also. In fact, Britain has held open for other na- tions, coasting trade like the Cana- dian and Australian trade, when the governments of these colonies or de- pendencies, as we call them, deter- mined to shut it down, and Canada has only now just gotten rid of the Norwegian tonnage, which was prac- tically exploited on the whole Nova Scotia coast, and she had difficulty to do it, because it was held that under certain laws Britain had the right to keep it open. Buying Tonnage in the Olen Mar- ket. Here is another peculiar argument: "Admitting to register foreign built ships as now proposed in a measure before Congress will not revive the shipping of this country; if it would the shipbuilder might ibe willing to be. sacrificed in order that such a result might follow. A country that could not build ships has never, as far as I have been able to find, been able to own and operate them." Now, I want to say that there is most am- ple evidence to show that numerous countries have thriven as ship owners by buying their tonnage in the cheap- est market. Take Norway, Germany, Italy--all these countries are, of course, increasing the number of their own shipbuilding plants, it is only natural, but they have thriven, and the lake trade, 'business. "Tae Marine. REVIEW Norway is one of the most astonish- ing examples of a country with hard- ly a single shipyard, the greatest ship owning community in the world for its size. So that proposition is not nearly so absurd as it looks,, but it would not satisfy the American shipbuilder. American Less of a Drinker. - The paper further says, "It is some- times claimed that the American workman is superior to his British brother and will produce as much for the wages paid as any workman in the world." So he does, and he is a good deal less of a: drinker, and that helps some. The paper then continued, "There does not appear to be any foundation for this claim as- applied to the workmen in American shipyards, as a large. proportion of them come from the yards in Great Britain. For piece work of which a good 'deal is done in shipyards, the price bears about the same ratio to the wages paid here as their piece work price bears to the wages paid there, and the wages average 50 per cent higher here than there.' Well, they may, when they come over here, I guess, but the great difficulty is in ship matters you find your level, and you do not find your level in any- thing quicker, and you cannot afford to spend a penny where a half-penny will do. If you do, you are lost. The sea is free to all, there is no cinch on it, and Britain will go down like any other country if she does not operate her ships under the most economical conditions, and so it' is with other nations. Goes to the Cheapest Market. The gentleman who spoke just be- fore me advanced a statement that insurance had something to do with it. Now, I-am not an expert in in- surance, but I know this, that insur- ance like everything else goes nat- urally to the cheapest market. You take your lake trade, I guess there is not much grass that grows under the feet of the men who have charge of and who build the ships for this trade. I am not saying that to please the builders here. The insurance of these ships goes straight to London. Why, because no- one else finds it worth while to take the The insurance goes to the cheapest market, and that is the whole secret of the shipping business, you have got to carry your goods in the cheapest possible way, and while we are a small community as _ ship- builders, and anxious to make the most of our work and life, you have great many years. February, 1910 got to consider the enormous mer- cantile trade that has to pass in the ships, and it has to compete with the trade of China and other countries, Can't Stand On Sentiment, I agree with Mr. McFarland that to start this matter on sentiment is ut- terly impossible. You cannot carry the trade of America in mail steam- ers. It is preposterous. You must have tramp steamers, and that is the only way you can manage it. There has been some talk about Japan and what she has done. She has develop- ed her naval marine and has also built some splendid mercantile steam- ers to compete with the C. P. R. The Blue Funnel line, which we all know, and Andrew Weir and other people have so competed with the Japanese lines, that in spite of large subsidies, they are in poor position, with little money to show for. their work, which is a good sample of the situation you get into when you or- ganize on a false basis. Mr. Lewis Nixon. Lewis Nixon: I have not given the paper the attention which it deserves, but I fear that Myr. Dickie has 'the point of view of an Englishman, al- though he has lived in America a I want 'tooreter tp a few points made by the last speak- er. I agree with him on one only, and that is that we ought to have a merchant marine made up of cargo steamers, capable of carrying our commerce, and that the possibility of mail subvention is only a sop, al- though a valuable and important one, and one which has enabled England to achieve her present great suprem- acy on the ocean, for while we may consider that the original subsidies granted by Great Britain in the be- ginning of the Cunard line was sim- _ ply to pass over the surface by meet- ing the cost of the mail carriage, we know that an entirely different con- dition arose. When the steam engine came to the front, England naturally saw an opportunity to wrest some of the commerce from us. We were at that time carrying a tremendously large share of the commerce of the rest of the world, in addition to doing practically all of our own, and in 1861 we had as much commerce as Great Britain. When the steamship was first brought on the ocean--they start- ed in 1839 with the Cunard line, al- though before that they made a s0- called agreement of reciprocal com- merce, whereby the two companies were not to take advantage of one