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MARINE REVIEW. 11 ------_------ ---__ id the equipment of boilers on the lakes with Howden's forced draft system. C. Endress & Sons of Whitefish point, Lake Superior, have sold the steamer City of Green Bay to Capt. Ty. B. Coates and the A. Booth Packing Company of Chicago. : Captains Frank Hackett and John McCormick of Amherst- burg have purchased the steamer Energy of Wallaceburg. She will be fitted up as a wrecker, with a steam pump and steam hoist aboard, and will be stationed at Pelee island. It has been decided to build an addition of 700 feet to the _new Allouez ore docks of Superior this winter. Some changes _ will have to be made in the part already built, as it has been : ee that the pockets do not discharge the soft Mesaba ore reely. Col. Jared A. Smith, government engineer in charge of the Cleveland district, has succeeded in causing the removal of the bar at the entrance to Cleveland harbor,and now it is annonnced that dredging has also been pushed at Lorain,another port within the district, making the channel 140 feet wide and 17 feet deep. The Conneaut Terminal Railway Company, controlling the new ore and coal docks at Conneaut, Lake Erie, was incorpora- ted a few days ago. 'The capital is fixed at $1,600,000, and the incorporators are Samuel B. Dick and A. C. Heidekoper of Meadville, Pa., Allen W. Cox of Cincinnati, Thomas M. Weller of Youngstown, O.,and F. E. Rittman of Cleveland. The Roberts Safety Water Tube Boiler Company of Red Bank, N. J., and No. 18 Cortland street, New York, closed its fiscal year Nov. 1, and paid the usual dividend. This company has built 484 boilers to date,all of which are reported to be giving excellent satisfaction. The growth of the concern seems to prove that there is merit in the boilers which they manufacture. Personal Mention. Capt. S. S. Curry, president of the company controlling the Norrie Mine, was in Cleveland during the week. Major Clinton B. Sears is the government engineer who has succeeded Capt. W. L. Fisk in charge of the Duluth district. C. W. Wetmore of the American Steel Barge Company and Capt. T. Johnston of London, Eng., who is at the head of the company recently formed to build whalebacks in Great Britain, were at Superior recently in consultation with the officers of the barge works. Hon. S. M. Stephenson of Menominee, Mich., who was a most valuable worker in the last congress for all measures favor- able to lake interests, is among the Republicans elected for another term. Mr. George W. Houk, one of the valuable mem- bers of the commerce committee in the present congress, has also been re-elected, but Senator Sawyer of Wisconsin, who is a member of the Marinette lumber corporation known as the Saw- yer-Goodman Company, and who has always been of great as- sistance in securing appropriations for river and harbor work, must vacate his senatorial chair. W. S. Linton, treasurer of the Linton Manufacturing Company of Saginaw and at present mayor of the city, succeeds Hon. Henry L. Youmans from the Saginaw district. Mr. Linton is a young man and can be relied upon to give support to legistation favorable to lake commerce. To Stand Aloof from Politics. In his annual report, just issued, James A. Dumont, super- vising inspector-general of the steamboat inspection service, says: " Another needed amendment, now for the first time officially suggested, in the interest of preserving the purity of the service and to insure its efficiency in the future, is to make the service in its personnel below the office of supervising inspector wholly non-partisan, so that neither local nor assistant inspectors shall be removable except for incompetency, inefficiency, or miscon- duct, and for these causes only after charges duly proven The Detroit Dry Dock Company has the exclusive agency for ~ before a committee of three supervising inspectors, to be ap- pointed by the supervising inspector general with the approval of the secretary of the treasury, it being further provided that the supervising inspector of the district wherein the accused offi- cer resides shall not be elegible to serve on such committee. "The reason for advising this change is that, as the law now is, whenever there is a change in the administration, no matter whether a change in its politics or not, the importunities for changes in the personnel of the service are well nigh irresisti- ble, and the worst feature of such a condition of affairs is that, as'a rule, the applicants commanding the influence to secure a removal of a competent officer are, in nine cases out of ten, in- competent to perform the duties of the officer whose removal they have procured. 'The fact that such incompetents scarcely ever succeed in reaping the coveted reward of their labors serves but to increase the perplexities of the appointing power, besides having a demoralizing effect on the service, in this: that the removed officer, when removed for political reasons only, is dis- missed subject to the appointment and qualification of his suc- cessor. 'The result of this is retention in office, till a suitable successor can be found, of an officer who naturally must be indifferent to the best interests of the service. Another and most serious evil results from removals from the inspection service for partisan reasons, and that is in creating a prejudice in the minds of really competent persons from seeking employ- ment in the service, the result being that, in several cases now existing, officers who have been under the ban of removal from one to neatly seven years are still performing duty, because in their localities, competent persons will not accept their positions, preferring less pay in some cases in private employment, because of its more certain tenure. 'Neither of the great political parties is more responsible for this unique condition of affairs than the other, for, in the cases referred to, two are of officers (republicans) removed when Mr. Cleveland was president and one is a democrat removed nearly two years ago under the present administration. When the fact is taken into consideration, that upon the ability and fidelity of the officers of the inspection service depend the lives of the mil- lions of persons traveling on steam vessels and that officers so retained have ceased by the department's own action to be sub- ject to the department's discipline, the extreme of such discip- line having already being meted out to them, it does seem that no further argument is needed to convince any one that the public interests would be better secured were the officers of the steamboat inspection service as secure in their tenure of office, during good behavior, as are the clerks in the executive depart- ments under the civil-service rules, the worst results of whose misconduct, if any occurs, is remidiable, whereas a life lost through the misconduct of a faithless or incompetent inspector of steam-vessels is irrepareable." Michigan Lumbermen in the Georgian Bay District. Only a short time ago vessel owners who followed the trans- portation of lumber were told that with a decline in the product of mills in in the Saginaw valley, and the great inroads which the railways were making in the business of that district, there would be no business for the lake barges to engage in. The pres- ent season, more than any other for three or four years past, has proven that this claim resulted from a narrow view of the future of the great lumber districts in Georgian bay (Canada) and at the head of Lake Superior. It is the universal verdict that the season just closing has been one of the best seasons the lumber trade of the Saginaw valley and eastern Michigan has yet ex- perienced. 'The movement of lumber has been satisfactory and fair prices have been realized. Everything available has been disposed of, and not in a score of years has the cleaning up pro- cess of odds and ends been so thorough. James Moiles of Saginaw, who is interested in this Georgian bay business, is quoted by the Northwestern Lumberman as esti- mating the product of fourteen Michigan firms operating in the Georgian bay district this winter at 368,000,000 feet. He di- vides this estimate among the different operators as follows: Saginaw Lumber & Wath Coxon Spanish river, 20,000,000 feet; Sibley & Bearinger,15,000,000; Spanish River Lumber (ompany, for Folsom & Arnold, Bay City, 27,000,000; Nelson of Cheboy- gan, 8,000,000; Pack, Woods & Co., 15,000,000; Heald; Detroit, for Bay City, 16,000.000; F. W. Gilchrist, Alpena, on the Mis- sissauga, 80,000,000; Howry & Sons, Saginaw, 25,000,000 ; Em- ery Lumber Company, F rench and Wahnapitae rivers, 50,000,- ooo; Hurst & Fisher, 50,000,000 ; Eddy Bros., Bay City, 20,000,- ooo; Alger, Bliss & Company, Saginaw, 25,000,000; Moore Lumber Company, 10,000,000; William Peter, 17,000,090,