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DEVOTED TO EVERYTHING AND EVERY INTEREST CONNECTED OR ASSOCIATED WITH MARINE MATTERS ON THE FACE OF THE KARTH. Published every Thursday by The Penton Publishing Company, CLEVELAND, OHIO. CHICAGO: -MONADNOCK BUILDING. PITTSBURG: PARK BUILDING. NEW YORK: 150 NASSAU STREET. Correspondence on Marine Engineering, Ship Building and Shipping Subjects Solicited. Subscription, $3.00 per annum. To Foreign Countries, $4.50. Subscribers can have addresses changed at will. The Cleveland News Co. will supply the trade with the MARINE REVIEW through the regular channels of the American News Co. Entered at the Post Office at Cleveland, Ohio, as Second Class Matter. MAY 18, 1905. It does not require the appointment of an Isthmian Canal Commission to discover that it costs more to build vessels in the United States than it does in Great Britain. That fact was very clearly known long before the Panama Canal commission was appointed. It is announced in the newspapers that the canal commis- sion wants two cargo steamers and finds that it can build them much more cheaply and much quicker in Britain than in the United States. President Roosevelt has accordingly instructed the commission to buy them where they can be procured the cheapest. Now the president of the United States well knows that this is not giving the American ship builder the shadow of a chance. It was at President Roosevelt's instigation that the Merchant Marine Commission was appointed to make a tour of the country to inquire into the gen- eral state of American shipping in the foreign field. There is reason to expect from what the president stated prior to the appointment of the commission and what he has stated in his messages since that he would assume a friendly interest for the American ship builder and that he would be in favor of the extension of any reasonable help to that field of industry. But to order the canal commission to buy ships where it can buy them cheapest while everyone knows that owing to the fiscal policy of the country it is impossible to build them as cheaply in this country as abroad, is certainly R E& Vo AL ee OY not a friendly act. The president must know that ma- terial is higher in this country than it is in England ; he must know that wages are higher here than there. Therefore, how can he expect the American shipbuilder to compete. It is not fair play to protect every industry and leave one important part of industrial enterprise unprotected. To employ the president's own words, it isn't a square deal. Protection should either be ex- tended to all or be abolished altogether. There isn't any talk of changing this policy, however, and there- fore the injustice which it exercises to ship building should be recognized and compensated for in other ways. A great deal of noise was made over the fact that the American ship builders could not promise de- livery within a less period than eighteen months. On the great lakes a 10,000-ton ship will be delivered com- plete to its owners four months after the contract for - its construction has been let. How is this possible? Because ship building on the great lakes has been specialized ; because ships are really manufactured and not built on the great lakes. The cause of this expert- ness is practice ; the shipbuilders of the great lakes have had abundant opportunity to perfect themselves in the art of ship building. They are peculiarly protected and are ftee from ruinous foreign competition. The ship building industry of the coast. if permitted to specialize through an abundance of orders, would speedily build ships quite as quickly as they are built on the great lakes. The trouble is they do not have the chance to build them and it is just such action as has 'been taken by the president that prevents them from having a chance. The government is really hostile to the American ship. The three volumes prepared by the Merchant Marine Commission from its tour shows very clearly the nature of this handicap. The Panama canal is not going to be built within the next eighteen months. They will be working on it for ten years or more. Why not give these contracts to the American ship builder even if it is going to take eighteen months and charter tonnage meanwhile? Surely there is enough tonnage in the coasting trade to take care of the shipments to Panama. In his annual report which has just been printed, United States Consul John J. Kehl of Stettin, Ger- many, states that 3,485 vessels entered and 3,438 cleared from Stettin in 1904, not one of which carried the American flag and he pertinently adds: 'The sole right of carrying 90 per cent of our exports seems to be deeded over to foreign ship owners who are thus paid a subsidy in the form of freight charges of $100,- 000,000 a year. The marine freight paid by the United States together with passage money paid by American travelers will reach 50 per cent of the gross earnings of all ocean going vessels." Is it not about time that the United States came to its senses and did something for the American ship?