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steel, and fruit trades. Among the petroleum companies which own fleets, 12 account for 1,816,276 gross tons; 3 other fleets which are pri- marily industrial aggregate 339,442 gross tons. The fleet of each of these 15 companies exceeds 50,000 gross tons, and their total represents two- thirds of the total United States in- dustrial tonnage. On June 30, 1931, 1,297,795 gross tons, or 40 per cent of the seagoing industrial tonnage under United States documentation, was engaged in the foreign trade.”’ Status of American Ships The above is as nearly as possible an accurate picture of the present status of the American merchant ma- rine in foreign trade. For the fiscal year ending July 1, 1914, :9.7. per cent of the foreign waterborne com- merce of the United States was car- ried in American vessels. For the fiscal year ending July 1, 1932 the percentage of the foreign waterborne commerce of the United States car- ried in American vessels had in- creased to 34.7 per cent. Let us now return to the report of the British national committee pre- sented at the biennial congress of the international chamber of commerce at Vienna on May 29. In one of the tables in this report, referred to above, comparing all steam and mo- a 4 Stsestapatenccagecet gece oe "ETUA eet A Ses ae é ef RRM RIIEI SE é &, + ee 4 : seoee sieminaast FHP: Sci. Se oo RY aE vot en teenie tf sidinsaih es _ the United States has been extreme- ly excessive, without rhyme or rea- son. The analysis given so far shows that actual conditions bear no re- semblance to any impression that might be gained by looking at this table. No mention is made of the comparatively insignificant coastwise trade of Great Britain nor of the great volume and importance of this trade in the United States; nor is any particular emphasis made of the fact that the large losses of merchant shipping suffered by Great Britain during the war were gradually re- placed in postwar construction of what might be termed much more modern and altogether more suitable ships for the trade than those built in great haste in American shipyards during the war and in the year and a half following the war. In other words, ex- cept for the comparatively recent con- struction of splendid special types of ships under the merchant marine act of 1928, the British merchant fleet is far superior to the vessels these statistics so readily show the United States now possesses. We have tried to show that the ac- tual participation of American ves- sels in the foreign trade of the United States at the present time, though vastly greater than it was in 1914, is still modest. Only 7 per cent of the world’s trade is carried S. S. Morro Castle—11,300 gross tons—Speed, 20 knots—Completed, ‘Aug. 15, 1930— Sistership, one—See MARINE Review for September, 1930 tor tonnage as of June, 1914, 1923 and 1932, Great Britain and Ireland are shown as having 18,892,000 gross fons in 1914. 19,715,000: in 1923, 19,562,000 in 1932; with the corre- spondingly nominal increase in the period 1914 to 1923 of 223,000 gross . tons and in the period from 1923 to 1932 of 447,000 gross tons; while the United States is shown to have had an increase of 11,399,000 gross tons as between 1914 and 1923, with a decrease of 3,156,000 gross tons during the period from 1923 to 1932. To anyone not analyzing these comparative figures, looking at them just as they stand, the increase in British shipping during these periods has been nominal whereas that of 10 in American ships and this is repre- sented almost wholly by the 34.7 per cent of the foreign trade of the United States. Methods of Creating Tonnage In its report the British national committee makes it perfectly clear to the innocent reader that while Great Britain has stood patiently by without any appreciable government aid to private shipping and with con- sequently a very nominal increase in British tonnage since before the war, other nations including the United States have employed certain ‘‘meth- ods to create tonnage’’ which by in- ference ought to be quite shocking to all lovers of fair play. At the moment we are interested only in the methods used by the United States to “create tonnage,’ and the report is quite helpful in outlining these methods but neglects to give but a modicum of explanation of the rea- sons for adopting such methods. After having quoted figures, some of which have been referred to above, on the increase from pre-war levels in mer- chant tonnage of the maritime na- tions of the world, the report states: “Tt is manifest from these figures that since the war some nations have abandoned the pre-war policy of leaving to individual enterprises the provision of ocean transport facilities required in international commerce —a policy which had related the supply of ship carrying power to the world’s demands for transport and without bringing any burden on na- tional exchequers had met and satis- fied the needs of international trade throughout a long period of vast de- velopment and extensions in both in- ternational commerce and shipping. Some nations are no longer content to limit their grants in aid to the maintenance of sea communications on particular routes, the promotion of particular trades in which they have special interests, and the pro- vision of particular types of vessels which would be of value in time of war. They have since the war aimed at replacing by ships under their flags, and not merely supplementing S. S. Acadia—6185 gross tons—Speed, 20 knots—Completed, June 7, 1982—Sistership, one—See MARINE ReEvirw for June, 1932 MARINE REVIEW—July, 1933