The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

a MARINE REVIEW -- AND MARINE RECORD. Se ee Published every Thursday at CLEVELAND , O., FEB. 19, J 903. Subscription $3.00 year. Vol. XXVII 39-41 Wade Bldg by 'the Eastern Office, 1023 Maritime Bidg., New York City, Foreign $4.50 year. No. 8 Marine Review Pub. Co. Chicago Office, 373 Dearborn St. Single Copy to cents. , [Entered at Cleveland Post Office as second-class matter.] SCOPE OF COMMERCE DEPARTMENT. It will Deal with the Greatest Interests of the World--Our Internal Com=- merce Amounts to Twenty Millions of Dollars Annually--A Nation of Wonderful Growth. ' The new department of commerce, so long talked of and now. a reality, will have much to do with the shipping interests of the country, as it takes over from the treasury department the lighthouse establishment, the bureau of navigation, the. steam- boat inspection service and other bureaus, and will exercise juris- diction also over the shipping commissioners, the coast and geodetic survey and similar branches of the government closely related to the operation of vessels. Of course the bureau of corporations, through which the enforcement of certain regula- tions regarding the so-called trusts is looked for, will be a very important feature of the new department. 'The scope of the new law as to corporations and a summary of the bureaus included in the new department will be found later on in this article. Only two additions to the cabinet have been created by congress in over a century, and the qualifications of Mr. Geo. B. Cortelyou, the president's secretary, who is to be at the head of the new department, are therefore a matter of considerable inter- est: To those who have not had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Cor- telycu this appointment may occasion some surprise, for he has no political backing whatever and his party beliefs are, if any- thing, democratic; to those who. have met him, however, the. He is really one of the. appointment is no surprise whatever. most remarkable men in public life and it has been repeatedly stated that he is the most competent man in the country fer. the office of. president of the United States. Association with Mr. - Cortelyou for a little while would demonstrate the eminent justice of this statement. men and, for the dispatch of business. He is apparently never in a hurry and yet he transacts business with the utmost rapidity. In the course of a week's work he represents the president a thousand times and does it better than the president himself could do it. Cortelyou is always well groomed and his poise is always perfect, cool, self possessed and invariably courteous. He possesses the happy faculty of dismissing a man in a moment and yet giving him the impression of a well-rounded interview. He has lifted a position, originally that of a clerkship, into «n executive office. He knows how to be swift without hurrying and how to be dignified without being pompous. ~ He entered the service of the federal government as shorthand writer in the office of the fourth-assistant postmaster-general. In 1895 ° President Cleveland wanted another shorthand writer at the white house, and upon Postmaster General Bissell's description that Cortelyou was as quick as lightning and as methodical as a machine, Mr. Cleveland sent for him. . He has been in the white house ever since, President McKinley making him assistant secretary and later secretary and. President Roosevelt .retaining him in that position. é tenure of office Cortelyou practically handled the entire corres- pondence, met all the diplomats on behalf of the president and kept the vast machinery of state in motion. 'This left the presi- dent practically free to deal with questions of policy. and legisla- tion. . Mr. Cortelyou is now forty years old. a The new department will consist of the bureau of. corpora- tions, the bureau of labor, the lighthouse board, the lighthouse establishment, the steamboat inspection service, the bureau of navigation, the bureau of standards, the coast and geodetic sur- vey, the commissioner-general of immigration, the commissioners of immigration, the bureau of immigration and the immigration . service at. large, the bureau of statistics of the treasury de- partment, the shipping commissioners, the bureau of foreign com- merce, the census bureau, and the fish commission. _ - In this list it will be noted that the bureau of corporations is new. With it comes upon the statute books, in the shape of what is known as the Nelson amendment, the principle that the . federal government shall exercise constitutional powers.to con- trol and restrain combinations in trade that are to the prejudice of, public policy and individual rights. it shall.be the province and duty of the new department through its bureau of corporations "to foster, promote and deve.op -the ' foreign and domestic commerce, the mining, manufacturing, - shipping and fishery industries, the labor interests, the transpor- tation facilities and the insurance business of the United States." Its head is to be a commissioner of corporations with a salary of $5,000 per annum. 'This commissioner is to have power to make "diligent investigation into the organization, conduct 2nd man- agement of the business of any corporation, joint stock company, -- or corporate combination engaged in commerce among the sev- He has a positive genius for meeting . During the last two.years of McKinley's ° The law declares: that... eral states, and with foreign nations, excepting common carriers: subject. to the interstate:commerce act, and to gather such infor- mation and data as will enable the president of the United States to make recommendations to congress for the regulation of such commerce and to report such data to the president from time to time as he shall require, and the information so obtained, and as- much thereof as the president may direct, shall be made public." -La order to accomplish this "the commissioner shall have and exercise the same power and authority in respect to corpora- visions ofthe law as is conferred on the interstate commerce commission in respect to common carriers, so far as applicable, including the right to subpeona and compel the attendance. and testimony of witnesses." . All requirements, obligations, liabili- ties and immunities imposed or conferred by the interstate com- merce act also apply to all. persons who may be. subpoenaed to testify as witnesses or to produce documentary. evidence before the commissioner of :corporations. President Roosevelt has. selected Mr. James R. Garfield of Cleveland,.the second son of the late President Garfield, as com- missioner of the bureau. of corporations and has already sent his name to the Senate. Mr, Garfield was appointed a year ago by President Roosevelt as. civil service commissioner. | He pos- sesses extraordinary: physical.and. mental power and is well en- dowed to perform the arduous labors of this office. He has had a long experience in public life for his years which, while not of a, character to bring him into. national notice has, nevertheless, given him a large knowledge of affairs. He has several times been a member of the Ohio state senate and was, at one time, its president. But what qualifies him most for this office is a tem- perate and judicial mind reinforced by abundant courage, abili- ties.of the highest order and unimpeachable honesty. . The new department of commerce will have the unique dis- tinction of dealing with the largest commercial interests of. the world. In domestic exports, in manufactures, in transportation, and in internal commerce the United States is at the head of the world's' list .of great nations. Some figures just com- piled by the treasury bureau of statistics, which by the new - tions, joint stock companies and combinations subject to the pro-. law becomes a part of the department of commerce, estimate » the internal,commerce of the country at. $20,000,000,000, or equal . to the entire international commerce of the world. | In arriving at this estiniate of $20,000,000,000 for the inter- cludes only one transaction in each article produced, while, in fact, a' very large number. of the articles produced pass through the hands of: several. "middlemen" between those of the producer and those of the consumer: . The estimate is based upon the fig- ures of the census, which put:the total value of manufactures in-19c0 at $13,000,000,000;. those of agriculture, at nearly $4,000,- 000,000, and those of minerals about $1,000,000,000. Adding io these the product of the fisheries, the total value of the products nal commerce of the United. States, the bureau of statistics in- of the. great: industries-in 1900 would be $18,000,000,000, and the rapid .growth in- al] lines of industry since 1900, especially in manufacturing, seems to justify the conclusion that even a sin- gle transaction in all the products of the country would produce an aggregate for 1902 of fully $20,000,000,000, Estimating the internal commerce of the country at former census years by the same method, it is found that the total in- ternal commerce has grown from about $2,000,000,000 -in . 1850 to $3,500,000,000 in- 1860, $6,250,000,000 in 1870, $7,750,- 000,cco, in 1880 and $12,000,000,000 in 1890. It will be seen. from this that the internal commerce seems to have increased 30 per cent. in the decade from 1890 to 1900, and is ten times as large in 1902 as in the year 1850. ye oo During the same period, from 1850 to 1902, the population has increased from 23,000,000 to 79,000,000, and is therefore only three and oné-half times as great as in 1850, while the internal commerce is. ten times as great as at that time. gain of internal commerce over population is due, in part, to the greatly increased facilities for transportation, the cheapening of cost of articles utilized, and the increased earnings and increased wealth of the people. The railroads have increased from 9,021 miles 'in 1850 to-201,839 miles in 1902; and the estimated wealth This relative - of: the country from $7,135,780,000' in 1850 to. $94,300,000,000 in . 1900--a per capita increase of from $308 in 1850 to $1,236 in 1900. This increase in wealth has been accompanied by an increase in deposits in. banks, those in savings banks alone increasing from $43,431,130 in 1850-to $2,507,004,580 in 190I. - Meantime the foreign commerce has made rapid increase, though.fot:at a rate of speed proportionate to that of internal commerce. 1902, '$903,320,048. 1902, $1,381,719,401. The imports of 1850 were $173,500,526; those of The exports in 1850 were $144,375,726; in