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20 MARINE REVIEW. 'Devoted to the Merchant Marine, the Navy, Ship Building, and Kindred Interests. Published every Thursday at No. 418-19 Perry-Payne building, Cleveland, Ohio, by THe MARINE REviIEW PUBLISHING Co. ; i i 19 shillings. SusscripTion--$3.00 per year in advance; foreign, including postage, $4.50, or ae naples 10 conte each. Convenient binders sent, post paid, $1.00. Advertising rates on application. Entered at Cleveland Post Office as Second-class Mail Matter. As a rule, J. Pierpont Morgan is credited with having paid con- siderably more for the Leyland line than it is worth. Conservative Eng- land was inclined to be hysterical over the purchase for a day or two until some of the sober journals called their attention to the fact that £14 10s, was a very fat figure to pay for £10 shares and that it was wisdom on the part of the shareholders to sell. No one should decline to make a profit of nearly 50 per cent. upon his investment if he can. Others who showed signs of great mental excitement were informed that the Leyland line did not embrace the whole of the shipping interests of Great Britain by a good deal. Engineering says: "We do not think that the patriotic Briton need greatly fear that the negotiations are going to undermine the shipping supremacy of his coun- try. To buy £10 shares at a premium of nearly 50 per cent. does not ap- pear a very promising way of opening a new business, especially when one remembers that the shares to be purchased are those of a company organized only last year when the shipping industry was in great favor, and certainly far more sanguine views of business prospects were then taken than are common at present. As significant of what is to come, however, the transaction is full of suggestiveness."' England frankly sees in this purchase by Morgan the set purpose ot the industrial leaders of the United States to rehabilitate the American merchant marine. The total value of imports into the United States forty years ago was $338,768,130, of which amount $216,123,428 were car- ried in American vessels, making 68 per cent. of the whole. At that time also 70 per cent. of the exports were carried in American ships. In 1900 only 7 per cent, of the enormous export trade of the United States went abroad in American bottoms. It is not at all likely that the forces back of the United States Steel Corporation will permit this condition to exist. This corporation is beating the world in the manufacture of steel. Why? Chiefly because it is in possession of cheap raw material--the word cheap meaning its actual cost delivered at the furnace. Steel is the raw material of the ship. With the cheapest steel in the world what is to prevent the steel corporation from turning some of it into ships, in order that its surplus products may go abroad at a freight rate which will enable them to compete with foreign products? A few ships are, of course, needed in the beginning to build up an organization for which the ships will be built at home in the future. The record has been broken. In all the discussion attending the struggle over the shipping bill in the last congress, and in all the statis- tics on the subject that have been published during several years past, there is nothing so forcible as a few facts from "(Commerce and Naviga- tion for 1900" in showing the decline of our foreign shipping. It is learned from this volume, just issued by the United States treasury de- partment, that in the trade between Europe and the United States during the last fiscal year ended June 30, 1900, not one American merchant vessel went to or came from Germany, Russia, Sweden and Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Greece, Turkey. Two small American vessels came to the United States from France, one in ballast; one American sail vessel came from Belgium in ballast, and one American vessel cleared for Spain. There cleared for or entered from the United Kingdom eleven American sail vessels, and two small steam vessels went to the United Kingdom in ballast. The American flag was never before such a rarity on the North Atlantic between the United States and Eu- rope. Even during the year of President Jefferson's embargo (1808) and during the nearly two years cruises of the Alabama (1862 to 1864) the American flag was to be seen in these waters many times over the show- ing for the fiscal year 1900. The mail steamships St. Louis, St. Paul and New York were practically all we had last year on the North Atlantic. Capt. J. E. Bernier, who is planning to reach the north pole, finds that the appropriation allotted for the purpose by the 'Canadian govern- ment is not sufficient and has appealed to the public for subscriptions. Of course a north pole expedition is not a dividend-paying concern and all subscriptions must be for the cause of science only. It is a pity that the Dominion government has not allowed a sufficient sum for this pur- pose and saved the hardy explorer the necessity of appealing to an indifferent public. G@évernments will go on looking for the north pole un- til it is reached. Nothing will be gained by reaching it excent an addition to the sum of knowledge. But there never has been a polar expedition yet which has not enriched the pages of science. It is likely that future expeditions will discover truths of permanent value. Men are better equipped now for registering their discoveries. It is possible to take [May 16,: - ae along specialists in various departments of research, and therefore what- ever discoveries are made may have the invaluable stamp of authority upon them. These enterprises are properly a governmental function and money may legally be expended from the public treasury for them. It is too often the case, if left to private enterprise, that the man who has the ambition to undertake the expedition, has not the means to equip it. Gov- ernments frequently are lavish with funds for more doubtful objects. It is to be hoped that sufficient public sentiment will be aroused to induce the Dominion government to give Capt. Bernier the necessary sum. 'At a trade school meeting the other evening Mr. Charles M. Schwab, president of the United States Steel Corporation, said: "The boy in business who starts with a manual school education at seventeen or eighteen years of age will get a start that the boy who goes through college will never catch up with, other things being equal." Granting Mr. Schwab's premise, that the making of money is the chief object of life, he is doubtless right. A college education is not necessary to make money. The great money getters have not been college men. But it is doubtless true that many men, foremost in com- merce, finance and industry, would freely give millions to get that which the college boy got during his four years at college. There probably isn't a man living who started in life at sixteen or seventeen that doesn't feel his handicap and that isn't pitifully conscious of his educational limi- tations. The benefit of a complete education is not what one learns in college. Anyone might by desultory reading acquire the information. It is the mental discipline one receives that is the incalculable benefit; the endowment of a mind trained to understand and to discuss the great questions which bear upon life. One does not need such a mind to make money, but one does to make life complete. INTERVIEW WITH HEAD OF ATLANTIC TRANSPORT CoO. President Bernard N. Baker of the Atlantic Transport Co. has re- turned to the United States from England, where, as is well known, he was in consultation with J. Pierpont Morgan. Immediately upon his arrival he was asked whether it was the intention to consolidate the Leyland and the Atlantic Transport lines. "Well, now, if you were in my place would you tell the newspapers all about such a scheme if you had it in view?" It is just common sense that Mr, Baker cannot talk upon such a subject. Nevertheless there is every reason to believe that these two lines will be consolidated. It is no secret that the endeavor to consolidate them has been made hitherto. "Tf the Leyland and 'Atlantic Transport lines were merged, and I do not say that they are, they would do practically all the carrying trade in passengers and freight to London," said Mr. Baker. Mr. Baker then entered seriously into a discussion of the freight business between the United States and London. He said: "The Leyland and Atlantic Transport lines land at the London docks from American ports about 100,000 tons a week, or putting it roughly, 5,000,000 tons-a year. To handle this freight at an American dock costs about 25 cents a ton. By the antiquated methods they have in London it costs nearly three times as much. I have plans here in my desk made by engineers whom I took to London with me for the construction of new docks over there by which we can load and discharge cargo at one- third of the present cost. The docks will have to be practically rebuilt at a cost of perhaps $12,000,000. If, after the reconstruction of the docks, the Leyland and Atlantic Transport lines should combine they would be able to pay a large percentage on the investment, simply through the saving of money spent in discharging and loading freight. Of course we would have to employ labor-saving machinery such as is used here. -The English labor unions will not let their employers do this in London. The primitive way they discharge freight has been censured by the British themselves. They unload it from a steamship to a barge, then transport it to another place for weighing and finally transfer it to another barge for delivery." The Atlantic Transport Co. has at present eight vessels building--two at the Maryland Steel Co.'s yard, Sparrow's Point, Md., four at the yard oi Hoey York Ship Building Co., Camden, N. J., and two at Belfast, reland. Capt. W. W. Brown of Cleveland is secretary of the Globe Naviga- tion Co., which recently purchased from Messrs. Hawgood of Cleveland the steel steamers Tampico, Eureka and Meteor, vessels of Canadian canal dimensions, (about 3,000 tons capacity), built by the Craig Ship Building Co. of Toledo. The Globe Navigation Co. is Controlled by stockholders in the east, but the headquarters will probably be in Seattle, as the vessels are to bé operated in the future on the Pacific coast. The Tampico and Eureka left Norfolk several days ago with Pocahontas coal for the Mare Island navy yard in California, and the Meteor, which has passed down the St. Lawrence from the lakes, will soon follow them as she is to begin loading in Baltimore about Sunday next. Capt. K. A. Jensen, who sailed the Tampico on the lakes, is still in command of her. He was not a salt water man but studied navigation while on the lakes and had little difficulty in securing master's papers shortly after he took the ship to the Atlantic seaboard last spring. An effort to merge into one company the dredging concerns of the great lakes is meeting with success. It is understood that options cover- ing practically all the property of the dredging companies have been securedand that the work of appraisement is well under way., Ifthe undertaking is successful--and it is now more than probable that it will be--the headquarters will probably be in Cleveland. The Newport News Ship Building & Dry Dock Co. has notified the navy department that the battleship Illinois will be ready for her official trial on June 20. The trial will take place on the course between Cape Ann, Mass., and Cape Porpoise, Me. ee es