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JULY 31, Ig02. THE MARINE RECORD. . . os - b " - THE !RON AND STEEL INDUSTRY. The phenomenal development of the iron and steel in- dustry of the United States led the British Iron Trade Association to appoint a commission last year to inquire into the industrial conditions and competition of the United States. The report cf that commission which has been recently presented is briefly reviewed by the London “Commercial Intelligence,” a copy of which has just reached the Treasury Bureau of Statistics. It says: “It is, indeed, a marvelous, and, to the British manufac- turer and trader, in some respects a most discouraging story. The British Iron Trade Commission gives details of the mineral resources of the United States as affect- ing that fundamental industry—the manufacture of iron and steel; shows the extraordinary richness of the princi- pal fields of coal, iron ore, and kindred minerals and demon- strate by concrete examples, how the natural inventiveness of the American has enabled him to apply to the opera- tions of production and distribution a wealth of original ideas and methods that are as yet little known in Europe. It is also made manifest how on land, on lake, on river, and on canal, the American people have applied their minds to the solution of the conditions and problems of cheap transport until they have at last attained a level of rates and charges such as we have hardly had any expe- rience of on this side of the Atlantic. It is not, however, to be supposed that the triumphs of the American’ people in these matters have been achieved without effort. Much testimony is borne to the fact that in the conditions of organization and adminstration, in their dealings with labor, in the confidence and enterprise with which they have embarked on industrial operations of great mag- nitude, in the efforts made to adapt themselves to new conditions, in the eagerness with which they have en- deavored to create new demands both at home and abroad, and in the care and attention given to the successful cul- tivation of foreign markets, the American people have labered strenuously for many years, until labor, ingenuity, and enterprise have become their’ most distinguishing characteristics. When one has appreciated all that the Americans have done for themselves, it is neither natural] nor reasonable to grudge them the success which has at- tended their labors.” “Commercial Intelligence” presents the following picture of the relative growth of thesiron and steel industry in the United States and the principal countries of the world. Produttion of pig iron in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and all other countries, in thousands of gross tons: United United All other Year. States. Kingdom. Germany. Countries. 1,000 1,000 1,000 T,000 tons. tons. tons tons. 1865 832 4,819 760 2,839 1870 1,668 5,904 1,369 2,902 1875 2,024 6,365 1,997 3,510 1880 3,835 7,749 2,685 3,201 1885 4,045 7,415 3,629 4,439 1890 9,203 7,904 4,585 5,738 1895 9,446 7,703 5,379 6,376 1900 13,789 8,960 8,386 9,265 1901 *15,878 75750 *7,737 9,042 *Iron and Steel Asssociation figures. G- n-ne Appeal—Error to District Court—Final Judgment—Dis- missal of Cross Libel—A decree of a district court of the United States dismissing a vessel in a collision with an. other is not a final judgment, and therefore cannot be re- viewed by the Supreme Court under the judiciary act of March 3, 1891 (26 St. at 1. 826, ch. 517), on the theory that the jurisdiction of the lower court was in issue. Bowker, vs. United States, 22 Sup. Ct. Rep. (U. S.) 802. SASS JAMES SPENCE ROBERTSON. If JAMES SPENCE ROBERTSON belong- ing to Dundee, Scotland, who was, it is believed, about 1889 in Tawas City, Michigan, U. S., and who was, it is understood, latterly acting as a Steward oua Lake Steamer running out of Bay City, Michigan, U.S, will communicate with the Subscribers, he will learn some- thing to his advantage. REID, JOHNSTON & Co., 34 Reform St., Solicitors. Dundee, Scotland. SHIPBUILDING IN GERMANY. A work just published in Germany, based on jinfornia? tion collected by the Imperial Navy Department, contains some interesting particulars on the subject of the posi- tion of the shipbuilding industry in the Fatherland. One of the principal facts established is that the business of building ships in Germany has developed far more rap- idly in the last three decades than the owning.and working of them. The number of shipyards capable of turning out iron sea-going vessels, and the amount of capital invested in them, from 1870 downwards, is shown in the following table: 1870...... 7 yards with a capital of 4,800,000 marks. ; t880......18 yards with a capital of 15,300,000! marks. / 1890......25 yards with 1900......39 yards with a capital of 66,000,000 marks. Up to the end of 1900 it is estimated that the ca invested had increased to ninety or ninety-five mil marks. This is a gigantic stride to be taken if thirty years, and the Germans are quite justified in boasting, that shipbuilding ‘has come to be one of their most itapottant industries. The profit-earning capabilities of thex!yards fluctuate, as is only natural, according to the am@ynt of capital invested, and other circumstances. Thirteen-:yards are brought together in a table contained in ‘the “work above alluded to (published by Messrs. Schwarz & Halle, Berlin), namely, the Stettin Vulcan, Oderwerke; -Neptun, Howaldtswerke, Germania, Flensburg Company, Blohm & - Voss, Reiherstieg, Janssen & Schmilinsky, Weser, Bremen Vulcan, Tecklenborg and Seebeck. The average dividends paid by these establishments in the years 1890-1900 were 10.05, 820, 7.89, 6.71, 5.55, 5.00, 4.98, 6.50, 6.08, 6.98, and 8.15 per cent. The activity at all these yards’ has, of course, been gradually increasing with the growth of their internal development and self-dependence, and the policy adopted by the government in building German warships in German yards, and in stipulating in the subvention- contracts, that all mail steamers taking state aid shall also be built at home, has contributed not a little towards - the development and prosperity of the shipbuilding trade as a national industry. The value of the work turned out from ten of the largest yards in the years 1871 to 1880 was 6% million marks, while in the years 1881 to 18090 the value was 88 millions, and in the years 1891 to 1806 about 103 millions. In the seventies, therefore, the annual value of work performed was. 6.5 million marks, 8&8 millions in the eighties, and 17 millions in the nineties up to 1806. In 1898, however, work to the value of 84 million marks was executed at twenty-four of the largest establishments, while from eighteen of the principal yards in the years 1806 to 1900 work was turned out to the value of 331 million marks. ‘These statistics had to be compiled before the returns had come in from all the yards (three of the largest being among the omissions), but enough is given to show that with official support and under favoring circumstances, the German shipbuild- ing trade is increasing in extent and importance. oe THE TALE OF A SHIP. For a number of years the old lake battered hulk of the wooden schooner A. J. Dewey has been lying inside of the Park breakwater at Chicago, about where Washing- ton street would reach if it cut through. Here she lay with her rails and most of her decks gone, and what re- mained barely above water. Recently the Park Board has begun the filling in of the space between the shore and the breakwater with the heavy blue clay that is taken out of the tunnel now being built under the city. The old schooner lying quietly, her upper works rctting above water, was not disturbed by the filling until it ap- proached about too feet of her, when she began to raise first her bow, and as the filling progressed; gradually the whole of her hull came up,.as the ooze and soft mud under her were driven against the breakwater, and now she lies high and dry on the top of the new made ground. The pathos manifested by seeing this old hulk rising out of the water and getting up on the land lies in this: If she could speak would she not say: “I was built upon the land high and dry, designed to float and perform the func- tions of a ship until I should either go under the element which floated me, or lie dashed upon the land from which I came. I was not designed or built to be buried by earth, to rot and be eaten by blind worms in a grave, hence I rise from where I was under the water to die high up on the land from which I came, so that it shall never be said that I was buried by dirt. I have too faithfully per- formed my service to die such an ignoble death; to disap- pear where man and beast can walk over me and tramp upon my decaying bones.” C. E. Kremer. WEI. Syke y r; Z NOTES. . Aya trial ‘trip, om the Tyne the new torpedo boat des- trover Velox, ‘buitt tor the British government and which is fitted with turbine engines, attained a mean speed of 33.12 kiidts ani how | © ie Site plans {for-the new’ plant of the Cleveland Pneu- matic Tool Co. are about completed, and contracts will be:-let:at an early day for the construction of the buildings. The company has just epened up an’ office at ~Now 4tm>+Park Building, Pittsburg, Pa., represented by, Chas: L. Nelson, andyat No. 34 Lemojne street., Montreal; Canada represented by N. J. Holden & Co. Ry Hanevi#idsrmr, in charge of the New Orleans branch of ry a capital of 36,100,000 marks.--the,.United States hydrographic office, reported to Wash- ington that a recent survey of the Gulf of Mexico near the mouth of the Mississippi river, shows only twenty fathoms cf water, where there was sixty fathoms at the ‘time of ‘the previous survey. Lieut. Foster is puzzled over’ the phenomenon. Many believe that it is catised by volcanic upheavals, the result of the recent. earth- quakes in the West Indies, while others think it is caused by a deposit of silt from the Mississippi river. As a result of the discovery the government will prob- ably order a new survey of the entire Gulf of. Mexico. Tur Saturday Review says a denouement followed Professer Thompson’s attacks in the Review on the validity of the Marconi patents in which the professor said.an Italian naval officer named Solari was the real inventor of the wireless telegraph system. Te says ¢ “The Official Journal of the patent office July 16, contains a brief notice of a very unusual character. It announces that, Guglielmo Marconi, who, September ro, roor, had filed a patent in his own name for this invention now seeks to amend the application by converting it into an application for a patent for an invention communicated to him from abroad by the Marquis Luigi Solari, of Italy.” New Zealand pays its men and women over 65 years of age, if their incomes do not exceed $170 a year, pen- sions of $90 a year each. It now has between 9,000 and 10,000 pensioners; to meet whose requirements an annual tax of a little more than a dollar is levied on every man, woman and child in the colony. The law provides only that a pensioner must have been a resident of New Zea- land for twenty-five years prior to his application; that he must have spent less than five years in the penitentiary during that time, and that he must not have been in jail more than four months or four times. during the twelve months preceding. It provides that his character must be good at the time of application, and that he must have been ‘sober and respectable during the five years preced- ing that time. ; RECENT speculation regarding the origin of the human race, has led to more careful study of some of the earli- est known remains, including the so-called “man of spy,” the Neauderthal skeleton: and the creature—human or semi-human—some of whose bones were discovered sey- eral years ago in Java. [wo German anatomists, »who have given much attention to the subject, are confident that the first-mentioned skeletons must be ascribed to’a distinct species of man, which they have named “Homo Neauderthaliensis.” The Javanese skeleton, which ‘its discoverer calls “pithecanthropus” (monkey-man), ‘ is lower down in the evolutionary scale, and the direct an- cestor of both, who may be regarded as the earliest man, must have lived, they think, as far back as the Pliocene period of geological time— August Success. 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