REPORT OF AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE COMMISSION. 7

from the ocean. Our war fleets in the Mediterranean and South
American waters scarcely see a United States merchant flag from one
year to another, and our battle ships, cruisers, and gunboats on the
Asiatic station outnumber four-fold the merchant steamers that regularly
 ply from the United States to Eastern ports. Our sea power, in
the important point of a merchant reserve of ships and sailors, is as
empty as Russia’s naval might has proved to be in the war with vigilant
 and prepared Japan. Though proud of the greatest of naval historians,
 the United States has until now disregarded his admonitions.
which for half a dozen years have been heeded in Tokyo while seemingly
 forgotten in Washington. Says Captain Mahan:
When the day comes that shipping again pays, when the three sea frontiers find
that they are not only militarily weak, but poorer for lack of national shipping, their
united efforts may avail to lay again the foundations of our sea power.” Till then,
those who follow the limitations which lack of sea power placed upon the career of
France may mourn that their own country is being led, by a like redundancy of home
wealth, into the same neglect of that greatinstrument. (The Influence of Sea Power
upon History, Period 1660-1783, p. 39.)

HANDICAPS ON OUR SHIPPING.

Though the Commission in its inquiry throughout the country has
asked for specific suggestions of remedial legislation for the future
rather than explanations of the past, yet the causes that have brought
the decline of our merchant shipping have not been neglected at the
hearings throughout the United States. One, and a prime cause, is
clearly stated by the President of the United States in his annual message
 to Congress in 1901:
All our ships, sailing vessels and steamers alike, cargo carriers of slow speed and
mail carriers of high speed, have to meet the fact that the original cost of building
American ships is greater than is the case abroad; that the wages paid American
officers and seamen are very much higher than those paid the officers and seamen
of foreign competing countries; and that the standard of living on our ships is far
superior to the standard of living on the ships of our commercial rivals. Our Government
 should take such action as will remedy these inequalities. The American
merchant marine should be restored to the ocean.
These superior wages and superior conditions are undeniably a great
obstacle now to the growth.of our merchant fleet, just as at fiest
they were an obstacle to the growth of our manufacturing. Yet American
 enterprise and determination, long encouraged by the National
Government, have finally triumphed over these early disadvantages.
Evidence before the Commission, notably in the important hearing of
November 19, 1904, at Newport News, shows that wages in American
shipyards are from 50 to 100 per cent above wages of similar labor in
Europe. Yet the American-built ship does not always cost 50 or 100
per cent. more than the foreign ship. Indeed, such a wide difference as
60. per cent is temporary and exceptional. There seems to be no doubt
that even in the present difficult stage of the industry both the labor
and the administration in American shipyards are more efficient than
in foreign shipyards, though this superiority is far from brideing the
entire difference in cost.

AN AVERAGE OF FORTY PER CENT.

Mr. P. A. S. Franklin, of New York, vice-president of the International
 Mercantile Marine Company. which has had the largest