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MARINE VoL. XXV. Published every Thursday at 418-19 -Perry-Payne Bldg., by the Marine Review Pub. Co. REVIE Entered at Cleveland Post Office as Second-class Mail Matter. CLEVELAND, O., JAN. 23, 1902. Subscription $3.00 a year. Foreign $4.50 a year. Single Copy 10 cents. No. 4 SHIPPING BILL RECOMMENDED FOR PASSAGE. Advocates of the shipping bill estimate that its expense to the gov- ernment if it becomes a law will be as follows: Postal subsidies--Maximum annual cost on the Pacific, $2,335,000; maximum annual cost on the Atlantic, $2,335,000; total cost of the Amer- ican mail service, $4,700,000; annual receipts from all ocean postage, $3,- 000,000; annual deficit under the proposed system, $1,700,000; annual deficit under the British and colonial system, $2,188,111. General subsidies--Total cost based on the number of vessels in foreign trade in 1900, $1,072,000; annual cost of deep sea fisheries bounty, $175,000; total annual cost to the government under all sections of the bill, $5,947,000; additional auxiliary merchant cruisers, if the bill becomes a law, forty-two. The senate committee on commerce has reported the bill to the senate by the strict ee vote of ten to six. The bill has been scheduled upon the senate calendar for consideration after the canal question is settled. Several of the senators are of the opinion that the bill will pass. While an endeavor will be made not to make the bill a patty measure, still it is quite likely that party lines will be drawn when it comes to the vote. Only one important amendment was made before the bill was reported to the senate. This amendment relates to section 6 of the general subsidy paragraph, and provides that the setretary of the tréasury shall pay as subsidy on each entry, tiot exceeding sixteet efitries in any otie fiscal year, and for a period of five years from the date of registration, one- fourth of ohe cent per gross tegistered ton for each 100 nautical miles sailed to ships of over 1,000 gross registered tons. The original bill stipulated that sueh payments should be made to ships of over 1,500 tons only. The amendment, therefore, will include a vast number of vessels not ineluded in the operations of the bill as framed and reported to the committee upon introduction to the senate. The bill, as agreed upon, grants subsidies amounting to over $9,000,000 a year to the American merchant marine. The bill is-accompanied by a voluminous report, the substance of which is as follows: The purpose and reasonably certain results of the bill in ten years will be to establish the maritime supremacy of the United States in trade with Asia and in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean; to establish securely trade between the United States and South American republics, and to give the United States a respectable representation on the North Atlantic. It will so extend ship building as to transfer in time from abroad to the United States the center of that industry, as the centers of other industries recently have been transferred. Finally, it will give to the United States a measure of maritime independence corresponding to our industrial and agricultural -independence. _» The postal subsidy provisions enable the postmaster general to estab- lish an American ocean mail system superior to the systems of Great Britain, France and Germany. This policy was declared ten years ago. The bill corrects errors in the act of 1891, in the light of the decade's progress in ship building and of changed political and commercial rela- tions of the United States with the rest of the world. It does not increase ay under existing mail contracts, some of which have ten years to run. he American ocean mail system outlined contemplates on the Pacific weekly mail services to Hawaii, the Philippines, Japan, China and Hong- kong, and a fortnightly service to Pago Paso, New Zealand and Australia. The maximum cost would be $2,335,000. The services would be performed by American vessels in speed and tonnage far superior to those by which Great Britain, Germany and France now maintain mail connections with Asia and Australia at an annual expense of $4,800,000. On the Atlantic the bill contemplates semi-weekly mail services to Jamaica, Havana and Europe, weekly to Mexico, once in ten days to Venezuela, and fortnightly to Brazil, at a maximum cost of $2,365,000. ; The establishment of this complete American ocean mail service, in- volving much ship building, will require several years. It will render the United States as independent of foreign powers for its ocean mail service as is Great Britain. The cost of the American service by American mail steamers will be $4,700,000; the cost of the British and colonial service by British mail steamers is $4,700,000. Receipts from ocean postage by the United States are now estimated at $3,000,000. The annual deficit under the new American system. proposed, including minor services, will be about $2,000,000. The annual deficit under the British and colonial system is $2,188,000. : The report compares in detail American services proposed with British services, and asserts that the bill will revolutionize in American favor, as against the Suez route, the world's ocean mail connections with China and Japan, and will affect Australian connections. It will give the United States forty-two auxiliary merchant cruisers, compared with Great Britain's fifty. Even if expenses of the American ocean mail system should exceed receipts by $2,000,000, in view of the large national and commercial interests served thereby the expenditure will be abundantly justified. The second part of the report deals with the general subsidy to all American vessels, steam and sail, except mail steamers. It quotes Presi- dent Roosevelt's message, showing that the cost of building American ships is greater than abroad, that American wages on shipboard are higher and that the government should remedy these inequalities. Discriminating duties, export bounties and subsidies based on export cargoes are in vio- lation of our international obligations, so direct subsidies is the only practical method. The subsidy proposed is not a naked bounty, for it is based on public services to be rendered in return. Americans have abso- lute free trade in foreign-going ships, so no ship builders' trust is possible under the, bill. Ship builders can import now free of duty nfaterials for ships for foreign trade, so nO combination to raise prices of materials is practicable. If an American ship owner will build his vessel in the United States, employing home labor, employing American' offi¢ers and crews, performing certain services for the American government and using the -- vessel to promote American commerce, he will be paid a subsidy sufficient to put him on an equality with the foreign ship owner employing foreign labor and serving a foreign government. ; The average cost of building ocean steamers, mainly for cargo, is $102 per ton in the United States and $76 in Great Britain. Average monthly wages on ocean steamers, mainly for cargo, are, American, $36; British, $26; German and Scandinavian, $17. The general subsidies proposed equalize American and foreign costs on these bases. a The bill will promote the building of new vessels of large carrying capacity which promote export trade at low freight rates. Combined with our geographical position, it gives special advantages to American vessels in the Pacific trade. Based on actual navigation of American vessels in foreign trade in 1900, the subsidies proposed would amount to $1,072,000, divided as follows: Steam (excluding mail vessels), $559,000; sail, $513,- 000; geographically--Atlantic ocean, $444,000; Pacific ocean, $467,000; square-rigged ships on both oceans, $161,000. Full compliance with all requirements for the bill would fix the initial expenditures at between $800,000 and $900,000. Under the general subsidy increase in expenditure depends on increase in ship building. The completion of 200,000 tons of ocean steamers for foreign trade in one year, involving $1,300,000 in sub- sidies, will place the United States in advance of Germany as a ship building nation. The deep-sea fisheries bounty is to encourage an industry which from the battle of Lexington to the battle of Santiago has furnished more men proportionately for the national defense than any other American industry. The annual expenditure is estimated at $175,000. This amount offsets $160,000 paid to promote fisheries by Canada, which uses for the purpose the annual interest ot $5,500,000 paid by the United States to Canada under the Halifax Award in 1878. For seventy years the United States . paid bounties to deep-sea _fishermen. The president of the United States has general supervision of regula- tions to enforce the act.. IRON ORE AND LAKE FRE!tGHTS. Representatives of the large iron mining companies of the Lake Supe- rior region, who have been meeting in Cleveland during the past few days, have concluded that it is not possible to bring about an agreement re- garding output and prices of iron ore to come this year from the big producing district of Minnesota known as the Mesabi range. The main difficulty in the matter of fixing tonnage from the Mesabi is the number of ten-year contracts made some time ago with sevetal furnace interests at what would now be regarded as low prices. It has practically been decided that the base price for old-range Bessemer ores, on which agree- ments have been made for several years past, will be the same as last year, $4.25 a ton. Freedom of output from the big mines of the Mesabi is, of course, regarded as favorable to the vessel interests. _Probably the meetings of the past week will hurry a settlement of the question of. season contracts with the ships for transportation of the ore. If the vessel owners who say they will not accept last year's rate--80 cents from the head of lake Stiperior--are in earnest, they have nothing to fear in conditions attending all branches of the iron and steel trades. Advances in both pig iron and finished material for delivery extending well into the future have again been recorded within the past week, with the markets strong all around, but badly hampered, as far as the blast furnaces are concerned, on account of inadequate coke supplies, due to car shortage. TO SELL ARMY TRANSPORTS. Secretary Root has prepared a bill providing for the abolition of the army transport service and authorizing the war department to sell the transports and contract with private companies for the transportation of troops and supplies. There is one obstacle in the way of the sale of the transports which the bill proposes to overcome. Owing to the fact that nearly all the vessels are foreign-built and were purchased of foreign owners they have no American registry. The bill proposes to grant American registry to each of the transports. It is understood that Mr. J. J. Hill is planning to secure the contract for the carrying of government supplies to the Philippines, which will be the forerunner of a greatly augmented commercial service on the Pacific. NEW ORDERS FOR COAST SHIP YARDS. The Newport News Ship Building & Dry Dock Co., Newport News, Va., has just been awarded contract to build a_single-screw steamship for the Old Dominion Steamship Co. of New York at a cost of about $600,000. The steamer will be larger than the Hamilton, Jefferson and Princess Anne which are the latest additions to the Old Dominion fleet, and will be the finest vessel in the Atlantic coast service. Her dimensions ill be: Length, 366 ft.; beam, 42 ft.; gross tonnage about 4,200. : . Tt is aoe from Philadelphia that the Standard Oil Co. is asking for bids on a 7,000-ton tank steamer and that the Mallory line and Mer- chants & Miners' Transportation Co. will also be in the market shortly for new ships. Officers of the Republic Iron Co., one of the oldest of the Lake Superior mining concerns, elected at the annual meeting held in Cleveland a few days ago. are as follows: President and treasurer, W. D. Rees; vice-president, Satmuel Mather; secretary, William B. Castle;, directors, H. B. Perkihs, G. W. R. Matteson, Samuel Mather, Peter White, J. V. Painter,.W. D. Rees, N. M. Kaufman, A. Hart, W..F. Dammer,, #4 4 ik ft Efforts to combine dredgifg interests of the lakes have been given up, mainly on accotnt:of unfavorable conditions mn the money market of late for combinations of this kind. The scheme is dead.