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20 DEVOTED TO EVERYTHING AND EVERY INTEREST CONNECTED OR _ ASSO- CIATED WITH MARINE MATTERS. ' ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH. ' Published every Thursday by The Penton Publishing Co. CLEVELAND. BU AO) i aoe ata NGiotete era 932 Ellicott Sq. CHICAGO. Bes eet 1362 Monadnock Blk. CINCINNATI: ..0.4% 5 124 Government Place. NEAT YOR ose erctada weighs a 150 Nassau St. PETS BURG eee okies 521 Park Bldg. DULUTH. Correspondence on Marine - Engineering, Ship Building and Shipping Subjects Solicited. $3.00 per annum. To Foreign ; Countries, $4.50. Subscribers can have adéresses changed at will. Subscription, Change of advertising copy must reach this office on Thursday preceding date of publication. The Cleveland News Co. will supply the trade with the Marine Review through the regular channels of the American News Co. News Chancery England, European Agents, The International "Company, Breams Building, Lane, London, E. C, Entered at the Post Office at Cleveland, Ohio, 'as Second Class Matter. ' March 14, 1907. THE SHIPPING BILL. As will be seen by reference else- these Roosevelt will make the shipping bill where in columns, President the leading topic in his Indianapolis speech this summer, virtually making shipping the leading issue now before Why. shouldn't it be? It is the great unadjusted question. the country. The only sound argument that was made against the shipping bill in con- gress was one which challenged the fis- policy of the. United States. Granted if we abandon our fiscal policy Cal and abolish protection altogether, American shipping needs no artificial aid. {0 It is the protective policy applied every industry / except shipping which has made shipping in the for- eign trade languish. The reason is -- TAe MarINE REVIEW obvious. The protective policy has put everything on a higher plane in this country. It has increased the cost of material and increased the wage sched- ule: There is-. nothing else. on earth except these two things--material and labor. Everything that is created is the product of these two. While been made to abolish the policy of protection they have always been successfully resisted and always will be, insofar as it is pos- sible for one to penetrate the future. What we are dealing with, however, is:today. The protective policy is the many attempts have system under which we are at present operating and, in common fairness, if extended to one industry it should be extended to all. It should be extended to shipping, and if the day ever comes that it is removed from other industries, it should also at that time be removed from shipping. These facts are so plain that they burn themselves into one's un- derstanding. | : The fact that American goods. go. abroad. quite as cheaply in foreign ships as they would in American ships is simply begging the question. A na-. tion is entitled to the carriage of at least one-half of its foreign trade. Normally it should have at least one- half. is something wrong. Does anyone for If it hasn't that proportion there a moment think that Great Britain would permit 90 per cent of its com- merce to be carried in the ships. of other nations? Its supremacy as a sea power would be gone forever. When the proportion falls below 50 per cent the danger period is approach- ing, sea habit alive in her citizens should A maritime nation to keep the have a merchant marine capable of taking care of one-half of its foreign The United States has the largest navigable coast line of any na- trade. tion. It is essentially, a maritime country and yet with the largest navi- gable coast line it has the least num- ber of vessels and carries the least proportion of its own commerce over- sea. It hasn't enough ships to train men to replenish the natural wastage in the personnel of our navy, and yet we go on building naval ships steadily. We repeat that this subject is the most important now before the Ameri- can people. Interest in it will steadily grow from now on and while it may receive rebuffs, it will nevertheless gain an increasing number of adherents and it will continue to gain-them until a satisfactory shipping bill is enacted in- to law. This is a movement that can be checked, but it cannot be stopped. It is related in the cable dispatches that much sorrow was felt in the South American Republics when news reached them that the shipping bill, which meant so much to them, had been filibustered to death in the United States senate. GOOD WORK OF MERCHANT "MARINE LEAGUE. In a speech made after the launch of the Saratoga, the 18-knot. Ward line steamer for service between New York and Havana, which took place at Cramps yard on March 2, Mr. Aaron Vanderbilt, vice president of the Mer- chant Marine League, paid a glowing tribute to the hard work done by the west in the effort to pass the shipping bill' at the session of congress now Mr. Vanderbilt's were as follows: expired. remarks "The passage, by the house of rep- resentatives of the: shipping bill is an effort to restore our well-nigh extinct representation under our flag on the indeed to be a maritime nation, with the ex- high seas, for we have ceased ample before us' of what happens to a nation that has long ceased to culti- vate its sea habit and encounters in the coritest of war a nation that. has a sea habit. The shipping bill will en- courage the people to again cultivate the sea habit and may very easily be a saving of the life of the nation in the trial at arms, as it was.in 1865 when we had the sea habit, cultivated since the advent of the nation. "Organization in the middle west has in four years taken up the work of education among the people, to bring them to a realization of the situation. The American Shipping and Industrial League in the south made this effort in 1886 to 1801, resulting in the pas- sage of the mail subvention act. The Merchant Marine League of the United States has now accomplished this from the west, with headquarters at Cleve- land, Ohio. The good work should continue until the nation shall again in its history have on its sea habit; and never forget what Sir Walter Raleigh said, as to the strength of the nation that controls the sea."