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

July, 1920 a distant country is advised by cable of her departure and by radio of her prog- ress and expected hour of arrival at her destination. Yet the shipping business is vastly more complex than in the good old days of the sail, when every owner was for himself. Costs are extraordi- narily high. Rates in all cases are not adequate to meet those costs, as for example in the coastwise trade. The relations of the ship operator and the men employed on his ships are subject to negotiation and agrce- ments into which numerous trouble- some elements enter that were not present in earlier times. Insur- ance is a complicated and diff- cult branch of the shipping business; navigation laws, long in need of revision, in many instances are a burden on the shipowner; vast amounts of capital are invested in ships, and to earn adequate returns for these great sums, even with business active, the shipowner must be always on the alert, and must know the ebb and flow of trade in all parts of the world. A community of interests among shipping men, therefore, is logi- cal and inevitable. By such means the shipping men of the country avail themselves of their combined strength and resources in solving the many problems, economic in the main, that arise in a business so vast as theirs and so newly grown to _ its present proportions. The coun- try invested between $3,000,000,- 000 and $4,000,000,000 in ships between 1917 and 1920. This great investment is now subject to the test of competition with the mercantile services of other countries. The task of making the investment permanent rests upon the shoulders of the Americans who own and operate ships. Fortunately for the American mer- chant marine, the shipowners of the country when the Vice war began were hot without an organization, -of- a uational character, equipped to take the lead in concerted action by ship- Ping interests in behalf of the new- fledged fleet and for the protection 61 the great investment it repre- sented. This was the American Steamship association, a body _ in- Cluding in its membership the leading 'ompanies owning ard operating nes under the American flag. Be cae in 1906 by a number of Ge steamship companies, the that 2 0 had grown so steadily cna 17, when the United States the world war and embarked THE: MARINE" REVinw upon the great shipbuilding program that resulted in its present merchant fieet (which by the end of 1921 will embrace 18,000,000 deadweight tons of oceangoing ships), the American Steamship association included in its membership the principal companies engaged in overseas trade under the American flag. As new companies were formed in the era of rapid shipping expansion that now set in, many obtained mem- bership in the association, which in September, 1919, found an expansion of its organization necessary to carry cn its varied and rapidly growing WINTHROP L. MARVIN president and general manager, American Steamship Owners' association activities. At that time 'the word "owners" was added to the associa- tion's title, and the executive com- niittee, the governinig board, was. en- larged to 25 to make it "more thor- oughly representative of the increased membership of the association. H. H. Raymond, president of the Clyde and Mallory lines and at once a leading figure in the coastwise trade and conspicuous in overseas carrying, who had served as the president of the association for several years, was unanimously re-elected to the presi- head of dency. Edward J. Barber, the Barber Steamship Lines, Inc., onerating to the River Plate, the Crient and transatlantic ports, was re-clected vice president, while Win-. throp L. Marvin was elected to the pee new office of vice president and gen- eral manager. Mr. Marvin brought to the office a profound knowledge of shipping problems, and wide experi- ence in securing - co-ordination of effort by large business interests. At the same time, the important office of general counsel of the association was assumed by J. Parker Kirlin, one of the foremost admiralty the United States. President Raymond in the strength- ened organization has been able to avail himself of the voluntary services of many able men in the shipping lawyers in business, who, seeing the need of concerted effort by American shipowners, have consented to serve on. various committees formed to deal with the vital problems of the merchant marine. Thus in a short time there has been built up an effi- cient and highly specialized as- sociation for dealing with the practical, every-day questions of prime importance that confront shipowners and _ operators in their regular line of affairs. Now in the summer of 1920, the association's members repre- sent an ownership of not less than 3,000,000 gross tons of steamships under the American flag, or more than three times the amount of the - nation's tonnage engaged in overseas trade at the beginning of the war. In addition to this ton- nage, the association members operate as agents for the United States shipping board between 4,000,000 .and 5,000,000 dead- weight tons of the war-built cargo fleet. The aggregate ton- nage thus controlled by the as- sociation's members (between 6,000,000 and 7,000,000 gross) is nearly equal to the nation's total tonnage, including all ships of the Great Lakes, in 1914. With the shipping board the nominal ewner of the government-built ships, constant and often exhaustive con- ferences between the board and the shipowners and operators are neces- sary. With legislation before con- giess, involving fundamental princi- ples of shipping policy and the future of the merchant marine as a whole, while the new fleet was not yet com- pleted, the shipowners found it ad- visable to present their views col- lectively and with unity, clearness and precision. This has been accomplished through common counsel by the association's members and by' sustained and inten- sive work by its committees. A brief summary of the functions of a few