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Sr ; May 18, 1899. i THE MARINE RECORD. KIPLING, ON HANDLING WHEAT AT BUFFALO. “It was my felicity,’ writes Rudyard Kipling in his American Notes; ‘‘ to catch a grain steatner and an elevator emptying that same steainer. Thesteatner might have been two thousand tons burden. She was laden with wheat in bulk; from stem to stern, 13 feet deep, lay the clean, red wheat. There was no 25 per cent. ditt admixture about it at all. It was wheat, fit for the grindstoties as it lay. They manceuvered the fore-hatch of that steatner directly under an elevator, a house of red tin 150 feet high, Then they let down into that fore-hatch a trunk as if it had been the trunk of an elephant, but stiff, because it was a pipe of iron-clamped wood. And the trunk had a steel shod nose to it, and contained an endless chain of steel buckets. “Then the captain swore, raising his eyes to heaven, and a gruff voice answered him from the place he swore at, and certain machinery, also in the firmament, began to clack, and the glittering steel-shod nose of that trunk burrowed into the wheat and the wheat quivered and sunk upon the instant as water sinks when the siphon sucks, because the steel buckets were flying upon their endless round, carry- ing each its appointed morsel of wheat. ‘« The wheat sunk into the fore-hatch while a man looked —sunk till the brown timbers of the bulkheads showed bare and men leaped down through clouds of golden dust and shoveled the wheat furiously around the nose of the trunk, and got a steam shovel of glitering steel and made that shovel also, till there remained of the grain not more than a horse Jeaves in the fold of his nose-bag. “In this manner do they handle wheat-at Buffalo.”’ Ne EEE DEEP WATER SHIPPING. The humiliating story of our national decadence in the matter of deep water shipping is told very effectively by Mr. H. P. Phelps Whitmarsh in the Atlantic Monthly for May ; “From Plymouth to Calais there is a chain of decayed sea- ports and idle shipyards—a chain of rotting wharves, tumble-down piers, shipless harbors, and old sailors all speak eloquently of a great carrying trade, of a great foreign shipping interest, of a great marine power that was, but is no more. The contrast is striking between the days when we controlled 92.3 per cent. of the carriage in the foreign trade and now. : ‘““The sight of gray‘old Salem, with its empty harbor, its deserted, rotting wharves, and not a deep water ship to its name—the sight of this historic port alone is enough to make any patriotic American go out in the highway in sack- cloth and ashes.’’ The question before us is how we are to regain our supremacy upon the sea? Mr. Whitmarsh does not believe in subsidies. England has profited by them to some extent, but her position asa sea power is by no means due to subsidies alone, while the meagre results of the bounty system in France and Italy are well known. England’s gain at our expense is due to the spirited interest in ships that every British subject takes, and has always taken. The British Lloyds is one expres- sion of this interest.. It has centralized marine insurance to such an extent that British companies carry seven-eighths of the risks of the world, and its authority has given it the control of the world’s over-sea traffic. To compete with it we must establish a department of the merchant marine, with a cabinet officer at its head, and give to it control of the inspection of ships and the examination of their officers. Connected with it should bea department of insurance. Hulls should be insured free, and cargoes carried by over- sea routes under the American flag at a lower rate than those offered by foreign insurance companies. These are radical measures, but Mr. Whitmarsh believes that our loss of shipping has gone so far, and the odds are now so much against us that only radical measures will suffice. Without them we can never establish a worthy merchant marine, never take our rightful place among the nations, never hold our own in the coming fight for the tropical trade, never become a great naval power. ‘‘Free ships are a snare and a delusion. If the United States is to regain her prestige on the high seas, she must build her own ships. Ships builtin American shipyards and sailing under our national flag would open up new avenues of trade, would introduce American wares into many parts of the world, where to the mass of consumers they are now unknown, and thus stimulate home industries by their . demand for the labor in nearly every craft.” -_ = one VISIBLE SUPPLY OF GRAIN As compiled for The Marine Record, by George F. Stone, Secretary Chicago Board of Trade. CITIES WHERE WHEAT.| CORN. OaTs. RYE. BARLEY STORED. Bushels. | Bushels. | Bushels. | Bushels. | Bushels. Buflalous ss ee as 147,000 352,000 476,000 8,00¢ 178,000 Chicago. see 4,796,000|, 8.388,00c| — 744,000] 143,000] . 680,000 Detroltsessiaees 135,000 gg, 000 6,000 7,000 - 1,000 Duluth and Superior} 7,795,000] 3.305,000} 2,413,000 163,000 187,000 Milwaukee.......... 26, 00¢ ZA;OO0] wants 75,000 Montreal sos oaks 155,000 84.006 521,006 4,000 14.000 OSWeSO uu. cutee enlet See oa Romar ieabd Ree mince eceucd | aeeegtety beeen yatta So TOLEAGs is csc. sa sean 247,000 212,000 161,000 T; OOD rineatacn ite) NOLOMCO®. Csrictesise si 5 OUC li inast ccc: E5000)" te snde ey 10,000 Grand Total..,.. 26,028,000} 19,140,000] 7,685,000 818,000] 1,519,000 Corresponding Date, 1 oo RM es a ORS 21,994,000] 22,460,000) 8,704,000] ,427,000 582,000 Iticreéasedns Sl Ric NOI] kOe RE el ae a a eee Decrease ..... 1,438,000] 2,905,000 206,000 135,000 82,000 While the stock of grain at lake ports only is here given, the total shows the figures for the entire country except the WATER METAPHORS. Probably there is nothing under the sun which is the basis of so large a number of figures of speech as water. It is in the familiar figures of ordinary conversation that one hears so much of water. A babbler is ‘‘a leaky vessel: a half-drunken man is ‘‘half seas over;’’ ‘‘fishing in troubled waters” is another name for getting into difficulty; “still waters run deep’ is a hint that your quiet and demure person has morein him than the world supposes; strong dislikes are compared to his Satanic majesty’s antipathy to “holy water; ifa manis in a bad predicament he is in “hot water;”’ disappointment is a ‘“‘wet blanket’’—wet with water, of course; when a lover gets ‘‘the mitten,” ‘‘cold water.is thrown on his hopes;’’ the strengthless are ‘‘weak as water;”’ fortune hasits ‘“‘tides’’ as well as the sea; the muse informs us that there are “tongues in the runniug brooks;’’ sometimes it ‘“‘rains blessings; and when the orator has exhausted his subject and begins to be tedious, we say he has “run dry;”’ news is always ‘‘afloat;’? specu- lators are often ‘“‘swamped;”’ many people find it impossible to ‘‘keep their heads above water;”” and very often in the absence of data for conjecture we are ‘‘all at sea.’’—Good Thoughts. ? TRADE NOTES. The Shelby Steel Tube Co., of Cleveland, O., reports heavy shipments of boiler tubes to Japan through Delacamp & Co. Several important inquiries are stated to have been received lately from that country: Henry W. Peabody & Co. have just sent in a large order for bicycle tubing, which isintended for Sidney, Australia. The Broderick & Bascom Rope Co. are making considera- ble improvements in their factory equipment, but without hindrance to manufacturing operations, which are continued through the full twenty-four hours of each day, baring Satur- day, in part, and Sunday. They report the general demand for rope as very good, and are making some noteworthy shipments. 50-ton cable for shipment to a New York City street railroad, and had nearly ready for shipment 60,000 pounds of wire - rope to go to Russia. About a month hence they will make another shipment of a similar quantity of wire rope to Russia. ——— oO Collision—Mutual Fault.—A steam propeller in the East river, required by law to navigate in mid-river, was going down stream, not more than 200 feet from the New York shore, near the docks, and with lights dim, if not out, when she collided with a ferry boat which was in fault for not keeping a lookout, nor obeying the propeller’s signal, nor reversing or going astern, according to the rules of naviga- tion. - Held, that the propeller contributed to the collision. The Columbia, 92 Fed. Rep. (U. S.) 936. OBIN BRONZE (Trade-Mark Registered.) Tensile strength of plates one-quarter inch thick, upward of 78,000 Ibs, per square inch. Torsional strength equal to the best machinery steel, Non-corrosive in sea water. é ‘ Square and Hexagon Bars for Bolt Forgings, Pump Piston Rods, Yacht Shaftings, etc. Rolled Sheets and Plates for Pump Linings and Condenser Tube Sheets, Centerboards, Fin Keels and Rudders, Pacific Slope. Can be forged at cherry red heat. Round, Send for Pamphlet. Ansonia Brass & Copper Co, SOLE MANUFACTURERS, 99 John St., NEW YORK. MARINE ENGINES, PROPELLER WHEELS, DECK HOISTERS, } @ a @ 312 ATWATER STREET, DETROIT, MICH. ° Chas. E. & W. F. 58 William Street, New York City. 5 and 6 Billiter Avenue, E. C., - 4 202 Main Street, Buffalo, N. Y. PARKER & MILLEN, [5 Atwater Street, W., Detroit, Mich. : : BROWN&CO., - - - surance J. G. KEITH & CO., - 138 Rialto Building, Chicago, Ill. LA SALLE & CO., Board of Trade Building, Duluth, Minn. Are prepared to mcke rates on all classes of Marine Insurance on the Great Lakes, both CARGOES AND HULLS. Royal Insurance Building, Chicago, Ill. C. T. BOWRING & CO. London, Englasid. Peck, ASSETS, - - CHARLES PLATT, President. CAPITAL, Paid up in Cash, - - > - GREVILLE EB. FRYER, Sec’y and Treas. T. HOUARD WRIGHT, Marine Secretary. INCORPORATED 1794. Insurance Company of North America $3,000,000.00 10,173,488.90 EUGENE L. ELLISON, Vice President. BENJAMIN RUSH, Second Vice President. JOHN H. ATWOOD, Assistant Secretary. Lake Marine Department, SFOPS™ S..OcS AR: Manor On Monday, of this week, they were loading a