horns and the clanging of bells, sound through the misty air, and now and then a ghostly schooner glides by, perhaps scraping the very gunwale and carrying away bits of rail and rigging to the accompaniment of New England profanity. This is the dangerous moment for every one on the Banks, for right through the center of the fishing ground lies the pathway of the great steel ocean steamships plying between England and the United States. Colossal engines force these great masses of steel through sea and fog. Each captain is eager to break a record; each one knows that a reputation for fast trips will make his ship popular and increase his usefulness to the company. In theory he is supposed to slow down in crossing the Banks; in fact his great 12,000-ton ship rushes

through at eighteen miles an hour. If she hits a dory and sends two men to their long rest, no one aboard the ocean leviathan will ever know it. If she strikes a schooner and shears through her like a knife through cheese, there will be a slight vibration of the steel fabric, but not enough to alarm the passengers; the lookout will have caught a hasty glimpse of a ghostly craft, and heard plaintive cries for help, then the fog shuts down on all, like the curtain on the last act of a tragedy. Even if the great steamship were stopped at once, her momentum would carry her a mile beyond the spot before a boat could be lowered, and then it would be almost impossible to find the floating wreckage in the fog. So, usually, the steamships press on with unchecked speed, their officers perhaps breathing a sigh of pity for the victims, but reflecting that it is a sailor's peril to which those on the biggest and staunchest of ships are exposed almost equally with the fishermen. For was it not on the Banks and in a fog that the blow was struck which sent "La Bourgogne" to the bottom with more than four hundred souls?

CHAPTER X

THE FUTURE OF OUR MERCHANT MARINE-HOW WAR STIMULATED IT-ACTION OF CONGRESS-DELAYS AND CONTROVERSIESWOOD OR STEEL? THE SHIPBUILDING PROGRAMME-THE INDUSTRIAL CITIES-THE PROBLEM OF LABOR-TWENTY THOUSAND TONS AFLOAT-INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION-COST OF MAINTAINING AMERICAN SHIPS-FINDING AND TRAINING THE SAILORS.

O much for the past of the United States afloat. What is its present outlook for the future?

The great war at first enormously stimulated the demand for ships. Had the Germans observed the earlier rules of international law, and respected neutral rights at sea, a neutral nation like the United States would have built up the greatest merchant fleet the world had ever known. As it was our existing shipyards were crowded with work and every "old hooker"—as the sailors call them could get a charter. Prices were amazing to old shipping men. Before the war began ships could be chartered for transatlantic service for one dollar a ton a month. After the war had been in progress for some months, and before we had entered upon it, this rate for service outside the war zone was $13.88 a ton a month, and for the war zone service the charge was twenty to twenty-one dollars. And it was difficult to get ships at those figures. Freight rates on cotton to Liverpool in 1914 averaged 35 cents per hundred

pounds. In 1912 they were $6.00. Ships salable at sixty to eighty dollars a ton before the war were eagerly sought at $300. It was not unusual for a ship to earn her cost on a single voyage. Naturally these prices caused a lively demand for ships, old and new, but it soon became apparent that it could not be met by unaided private enterprise. To establish a shipyard means a heavy expenditure of capital, running into tens of millions of dollars. To build a steel ship used to take well over a year, though war-time enterprise reduced this to an average of two months, while one vessel, the "Tuckahoe" was launched in 27 days and delivered ready for cargo in 37. But before the establishment of this record of speed and efficiency it appeared that a new comer in the shipbuilding trade would have to spend millions of dollars on his plant and not begin turning out completed vessels for nearly two years. Nobody could tell whether the war would last that long, and everybody knew that with the end of the war the charter value of ships would instantly drop. Naturally, therefore, private capital hesitated about embarking on so perilous an enterprise.

The situation attracted the attention of Congress even before our entrance upon the war, but with that event the creation of a merchant marine at any cost became imperative, and September, 1916, the Shipping Board was created with authority "to encourage, develop and create a naval auxiliary and naval reserve, and a merchant marine to meet the requirements of the commerce of the United States." In April of 1917 the United States being then actively at war, a subordinate corporation-The Emergency Fleet Corporation-was organized with a capital of $50,000,000 to build ships, and to cooperate with private yards in their construction.

Looking back upon the work then begun it is easy to discover grave faults in organization, instances of individual failure, seemingly wild extravagance, and a wide divergence from the highest forms of efficiency in the work of the Shipping Board, and its subordinate corporation. Much of this we may pass over hastily. Scandal is not history, and quarrels between otherwise eminent men over petty points of personal prerogative will be forgotten long before the ships the Government actually did build have begun to wear out. But it must be recorded that the nation was doomed to grave disappointment in the hopes it had formed of the rapid and business-like creation of a merchant fleet. The more eminent the men chosen for high service in this cause the more certain they seemed to quarrel among themselves over issues that seemed but trival to the public. There were repeated changes before an efficient organization could be formed and every change meant more delay. Very early in the history of the board came up the controversy between the advocates of wooden and of steel ships-and upon this rock of dissension the whole came near being wrecked.

In this controversy great interests were arrayed against each other, and, furthermore, the honest convictions of many who had no special interest to serve enlisted them strongly upon one side or the other. The problem was to get a serviceable merchant marine in the quickest time possible. The advocates of an all-steel fleet laid heaviest emphasis on the word "serviceable." They insisted that the wooden ship was a thing of the past, and that, once the war was over, the nation would suffer heavily financially if left with a large fleet of such craft in its hands, as they were not economical to operate, and cost higher premiums for insurance.