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: December, 1909 not do and has: no intention of do- ing anything of the kind. There will be no cost system which will give the slightest indication of cost be- yond possibly the labor pay _ roll and material invoices, and there will be no. effort to establish anything more complete. There will be no items of overhead expense, salaries of line and bureau officers, interest On: investment, taxes, insurance, de- postage and preciation, inspection, telegrams, -- legal repairs and maintenance, or profit on prod- expenses, uct, and any so-called cost system which does not show these charges in comparison with outside firms, with every one of which they are and must be taken into account, is nothing but a swindle and will fool no one but the department. The leopard will not change his spots and the navy will continue a festering sore until it is starved out and its reorganization undertaken by others than itself. or by secretaries who have something more in the way of practical business knowledge than the record of having held a few political 'offices and of having had. a place in the lists of directors of a few banks and trust companies, Mil- itary administration of navy yards and shore offices and equipment never did and never will achieve anything but failure in so far as results for money expended are concerned. A BRITISH VIEW OF OUR MERCHANT MARINE. Latterly English been paying some attention to the revival of the American merchant marine and are making some pefti- nent remaks upon the subject. Es- pecially is this so of the Naval and Military Record of London, which quotes Lord Brassey as saying that a navy unless backed by a mercantile marine is a hot house plant that can- It quotes also the fol- periodicals have not endure. lowing notable sentence in President Taft's speech at Seattle: Were we to go to war today our merchant marine lacks altogether a_ sufficient tonnage in the auxiliary unarmed _ ships absolutely necessary to the proper operation of (the navy; and we should have to purchase such vessels from foreign countries, and this, under the laws governing neutrals, might be most difficult. "TAE Marine. REVIEW The Naval and Military Record finds that the danger referred to by the President was illustrated through- out the voyage of the United States Atlantic fleet when it was found neces- sary to, charter a number of British That for- clearly recog- and other foreign colliers. eign powers. should nize our weakness is a most humiliat- Ing Tact, Commenting upon the decline of. the American merchant marine, this period- ical says: With the advent. of iron ships the high prices of that commodity in the States, plus the high cost of labor, rendered it inevi- table that ship building should cease to pay, and that is precisely what happened. As far back as 1870 President Grant appealed in vain to congress to stimulate the rebuild- ing of the merchant marine and five later presidents failed. The decline dates . from 1861, in which year the tonnage of Ameri- can registered vessels amounted to upwards of; -6;000,000 tons' or. "nearly -equal, to. the British tonnage. In President Grant's time it sunk:to about': 1,500,000 "and -in 1905 "it was. below 1,000,000 tons. The persistent refusal. of congress to subsidize lines of steamships is generally held to be the main cause .of the fatlure to recover the lost trade. The merchant marine is the one' un- protected industry in a _ rigidly protected country. Germany has shown the world how a mercantile marine can be built up and stimulated by subsidy, and this is the remedy which President Taft would apply. All his predecessors have failed durirg forty years, but there are some indications now that congress may alter its views. That is a fa statement - ot the case. All that the advocates of the upbuilding of the American merchant marine are contending for is assist- ance to equalize the handicaps im- posed upon it by the country's fiscal policy. Continuing the Naval and Miltary Record says: ° In these circumstances it can hardly be doubted that the United States will sooner or later determine to create a merchant marine such as will' enable them to profit by the opening of the Panama canal, It is amazing that congress has barred the way to the revival for forty years, but we cannot expect the attitude to endure. The British carrying trade stands to lose by _the almost inevitable revival of the American marine. It will be seen, too, that the Presi- dent has advanced a very strong argument in dwelling upon the intimate relations be- tween a powerful navy and_ the national marine of training ships. Denne the sailing era the British admiralty made a sort of naval re- serve of the whole merchant ser- vice, freely "pressing" all merchant seamen that were needed in time of war. Obviously these tough mariners were converted into efficient fighting men after a few months of active service. This policy, of course, is not possib'e today, "pressing" having gone . entirely out of fashion. Moreover, the training of a modern man-of-war's man is infinitely more complex than it was 515 in the sailing days. The introduction of long service into the British navy has altered the system, though a royal naval reserve of 26,000 men is. still maintained. War, however, always makes a close bond of union between the navy and the merchant marine. The navy will always need in times of war hundreds of merchant vessels to accompany the fleet. Britain wisely never loses sight of this fact. The United States dis- plays its folly by overlooking it alto- gether. It is creating a great navy without its necessary auxiliaries 'and without which its war ships are about as formidable as painted ships upon a painted sea. j AN ENLARGED FIELD FOR THE SPEED-REDUCING GEAR. When Melville & Macalpine set them- Selves the task of devising a suitable speed reducing gear to bridge the gap between the desirable high rotative speed of the turbine on the one hand, and the relatively slow speed at which the propellers for merchant ships are most efficient on the other, they doubt- | less did not realize that their success would in all probability merely facili- tate the progress of the steam driven motor to the rear, and yet such would seem to be the case. There can exist scarcely any doubt 'that steam: as a source of power must inevitably give way to gas. Economy of fuel alone will enforce the adoption of the lat- ter, while the reduced weights due to lessened fuel consumption and the re- placing of heavy boilers and boiler room equipment by comparatively light gas producers and the elimina- tion of condensers, large evaporating and distilling plants at sea, and much of the pumping equipment, together with entire absence of smoke and re- ducing maintenance expenses, all will tend to hasten the advent of the one and the supersession of the other. One of the prime obstacles in the path of the gas engine--in fact the chief, is the difficulty of effecting prompt and certain reversal. Another is the difficulty of achieving the wide range of speed control to which the steam en- gine lends itself perfectly. To be