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10 THE MARINE RECORD, 1878. ESTABLISHED f Published Every Thursday by THE MARINE RECORD PUBLISHING CO., Incorporated. (C. E, RUSKIN, % ‘ - - Manager. CAPT. JOHN SWAINSON, - . ~ Editor. LA CLEVELAND, CHICAGO, ‘ Western Reserve Building. Royal Insurance Building. Beh SUBSCRIPTION. ‘One Copy, one year, postage paid, gs - $2.00 $3.00 One Copy, one year, to foreign countries, - 5 : Invatiably in advance. ADVERTISING. Rates given on application. All communications should be addressed to the Cleveland office, THE MARINE RECORD PUBLISHING CO., Western Reserve Building, Cleveland, O. Entered at Cleveland Postoffice as second-class mail matter. GLEVELAND, O., MARCH 15, 1900. =a. NAVAL TONNAGE ON THE LAKES. ‘Secretary Hay, in his report to the President regarding ‘warships on the lakes, which has been presented to Con- gress, removes the obstacle which has prevented the navy from using the appropriation made two years ago for the purpose of replacing the antiquated cruiser Michigan with a modern gunboat, and the Navy Department is expected to take prompt advantage of the fact. As now regarded by the State Department, the Rush-Bagot agreement is not the bug- bear it seems to be in the estimation of recent Secretaries of State, nor is it any longer believed to prevent the shipbuil- ders of the lakes from competing for the construction of training ships or. torpedo boats, especially when the latter are to be armed only on reaching salt water. Secretary Hay says : _ “An agreement was reached between the two governments _ on May 30, 1898, for the creation of a joint high commis- ‘sion, to’ which should be referred for settlement various ‘pending questions between the United States and Canada, -. +. among which was a ‘revision of the agreement of 1817, re- : specting naval vessels on the lakes.’ ”’ The instructions given to the American members of this joint high commission on the subject referred to in the res- olution of the House of Representatives as representing the views of the government of the United States were that it was desirable to secure a declaration or recognition that it “was not contrary to the true spirit and intent of the arrange- ment of 1817 to build vessels of war upon the Great Lakes or in its ports, provided they were not to be used or maintained upon those lakes. It was held that the evident meaning of the arrangement, especially when read in the light of the _ correspondence leading up to it, was that only such armed _ vessels as described should thenceforth be maintained in _ those waters. Lake Ontario was shut up by the rapids of the St. Lawrence and by Niagara Falls; the lakes above Lake Erie were shut in by the flats of the St Clair river, and Lake Superior, in turn, was separated by the rapids of Sault Ste. Marie. There was, therefore, no navigable con- _ nection between them and the ocean. Under such circum- _ stances, to build and arm vessels on the lakes meant ‘‘to _ maintain’? them there and to use them for no other purpose _ than as part of the permanent armament. The language of the treaty, therefore, was not improper at the time to con- vey the idea intended. + Moreoyer, at the time of making the arrangement the region of the Great Lakes was in large measure an uninhab- ited wilderness. Today the lakes are highways for an - enormous traffic, and their ports are great centers of manu- _ facture and industry, and can afford to the United States facilities not dreamed of in 1817. They, have, among other . things, peculiar advantages for the construction of certain __ classes of war vessels, and their facilities in this respect are capable of large extension, and of a development which, in 7. s the future may be of inestimable valwe t the United States. For these reasons the goVerAinent of the United States regarded it as entirely tonsonant with the spirit of the ar- rangement of 4817 to use these naval facilities, and to do so upon a full understanding with Great Britain that its build- ing of war vessels on the lakes isin no Waly hostile to the arrangement, or intended to inttease the permanent “arma- ment to be there maintained, The Americal Wembers of the joint high Cotimission were thekefore instructed to se- eure GONE agreement Whereby, under proper conditions, such vessels should be constructed and passed through the Canadian earals to the ports of the United States on the Atlantic ocean. It was likewise held that a proper construction of the ar- rangement did not prohibit the tiaiittenadce on the lakes of vessels properly equipped for the purpose of training sea- men and reserves in the middle states, and that the employ- ment of a propet training ship is not necessarily hostile to the spirit of the arrangement and should be so declared. it is understood that some satisfactory progress was made in the joint high commission toward the attainment of these ends, but the labors of the commission have been suspended without reaching a definite result. : OO Oo oC reo REVENUE CUTTER SERVICE. The Treasury Department will open bids fof another rev- enue cutter vessel to be located on the Pacific Coast, on April 3. The new cutter to be located on the lakes, for which bids have just been opened, will be a single screw steel propeller of about 620 tons displacement. Dimensions will be 178 feet long over all, 30 feet molded beam, and 15 feet depth to the base line. The stem will be slightly ram- shaped. The hull is divided inte compartments by four water-tight bulkheads. Quarters for the officers are located on the berth deck, aft of the engine compartments, and quarters of the petty officers and crew forward of the boiler compartment. The accommodations for the crew, as well as for the officers, are comfortable, and every care has been ex- ercised to make the conditions of life on board ship as pleas- ant as possible. To this end shower baths and running water have been provided for the crew. Provision will be made for carrying a certain amount of sail, principally to be used for steadying purposes in a seaway. The propelling ma- chinery of the vessel which is expected to give a speed of 14 knots at full power, was designed by Capt. John Collins, engineer-in-chief, who also has charge of the electric light, sanitary and steam heating systems and the inspection of all material. The vessel will be fitted with steam steering gear, steam windlass, fireand flushing pumps. —— OO OO WESTERN PROGRESS. “The Grain Trade of the United States’’ is the title of a report just published by the Treasury Bureau of Statistics as the first of a series of studies upon the production and transportation of the great staples. The present article points out the rapid and continuous westward shifting of the area of cultivation, and the changes in the routes by which western grain has reached the eastern consumers and the European markets. After the completion of the Erie canal, in 1825, and the settling of the Lake Michigan terri- tory, the great bulk of the western grain traffic moved east- ward over the lakes and the canal, and New York became the great grain shipping portofthecountry. Thediscussion shows how from Chicago a network of railways radiated to all points and acted as tributaries to the lake, and later how the unified and amalgamated railways conipeted with the lakes for the eastbound traffic. The traffic in corn and flour was diverted from the lakes to the railroads, and while the lakes regained part of this lost traffic later, the Erie canal was unable to compete with the railroads from Buffalo ; and grain which formerly reached tidewater at New York is now largely diverted to Philadelphia, Baltimore, and more southerly ports. The struggles of the railroads and of the ports among themselves are described and the history of the existing rate differentials is given, but the report confines itself to history and does not discuss policy or forecast future developments. The report also presents what appear as the two most recent developments of the grain trade of the United States : Firstly, the partial diversion of the wheat and flour trade from Lake Michigan to Lake Superior ports and the rise of a great milling industry at Minneapolis and Duluth-Superior; secondly, the increased movement of grain (and notably of corn) to the Gulf ports, partly by river, to a greater extent by rail from St, Louis and near-by points, and to an ever- growing extent by direct rail routes from cities in the north- western corn belt, + The statistics contained in this report show that the e%: — pottation of grain is increasing with great rapidity, that bot the production and exportatidn Of corn are assuming ; greater Voluie, anti that a constantly growing portion o os a ‘oli Wheat is exported in the form of flour, During the last 32 years the amount of corn produced has increased from ; PRE ons 2. yer 868 to 1,924 millions of bushels, an, increase of 122 per cent., while the exports of this cereal increased from 16 to 177 millions of bushels, or over 1,000 per cent. During the — 4 : Salle period our production of wheat increased from 152 to 67% millions of bushels, a gain of 344 per cent., while our — exports increased from 12.6 to 222.6 millions of bushels, or almost 18 fold, and our net exports of this grain increased at a still more rapid rate. : The year 1898 shows the United States to be easily the first wheat-producing country of the world, our production amounting to 675 million bushels, or neatly one-fourth (23.4 per cent.) of that of the whole world. Russia (both Ruropean and Asiatic) is second with 17.3 per cent., thei France with 12.9 per cent., British India with 8.4 per Cent,, and Austria-Hungary with 5.9 per cent: Our precedence in wheat production is largely due to our immense tract8 of available fertile land, our admirable transportation facilities, the reinarkable systein of handling the grain, both physically atid commercially, and the exceedingly low freight rates which obtain on ottr railroads and lakes. VAST BEDS OF COAL. A Pittsburgh, Pa., paper says: ‘‘Within the next year local — railroads will have connection with coal beds sufficient to supply abundant traffic for 300 years. Every hollow and ra- vine leading to coal deposits in Washington, Greene, Fay- ette, Westmoreland and Indiana counties is to be utilized as a grade for coal roads which will be branches of main Jines. The Baltimore & Ohio, Pittsburg and Lake Erie and Petin=. sylvania systems will lead in developing coal traffic, but the Pittsburg, Bessemer & Lake Erie will not neglect to obtain — its share of the business, and, as previously stated in this de- partment, the Carnegie company will arrange to build a line * to reach the vast coal beds in the region between Oliver and the Wheeling & Pittsburg branch of the B. & O. system. “Tt has been estimated that branch lines now being con® structed within 50 miles of Pittsburg will develop over 4,500 square miles of territory underlaid with the famous Pitts- burg coal bed. This bed is 11 feet thick on the average, and ~ as each square mile of a coal bed of one foot in thickness contains 1,000,000 tons, we find that in the region named there are 9,900,000,000 tons of bitumen. In 1885 the Penn- sylvania geologists estimated the amount of bituminous coal in Southwestern Pennsylvania at 5,000,000,000 tons, but they did not take into consideration some workable beds at dif- ferent elevations which have been discovered in the past five years, so that the estimate of nearly ten billion tons of coal in the region is not exaggerated. “This represents an amount of freight which can barely be imagined, and staggers the comprehensive power of the average calculator. It means enough freight for all the Pittsburg roads for the next Ioo years, no matter how their tacilities for transportation may be increased, andenough fuel underground to maintain the prestige of Pittsburg as a. manufacturing region for another century to come, without figuring on the other coal beds in this part of the state, and the vast deposits in West Virginia, not far from the Penn- sylvania line, which have only been merely touched so far, and are sufficient to supply the wants and requirements of this territory for thirty years to come.”’ rh rr Tor NEw YORK SHIP BUILDING Co., which is establish- ing an extensive works at Camden, N. J., has been making rapid progress. The weather has madeit possible for work on allthe structures to advance rapidly all winter. There have been very few days when. outdoor work had to be wholly suspended because of the cold, and only brief periods when icein the Delaware river interfered with the opera- tions of the wharf and dock builders. Asa result, it is ex- pected that the corapany will be ready to begin the actual work of ship construction by May 1. Indeed, itis stated semi-officially that plans for a large steel steamer have been in preparation for sometime and that the work of con- struction will begin early in the spring It is also under- stood that the company will bid on the next naval order for which the United States government invites bids.