REPORT OF AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE COMMISSION. 45

mental stage. When it is remembered that steam was first pracilely
applied to the driving of both war ships and merchant s ips in the
United States, that the first steamer that crossed the Atlantic was
American, that the first satisfactory use of the screw propeller on a
large scale was made here, and that as late as 1860 American-built
steamships held on the North Atlantic the same relative postion
toward other ships as the huge twin Cunarders will hold if hey are
Successful —when all this is recalled, it is not unreasonable to expect
that the best marine turbine may yet prove to be wrought out by
American technical skill and boldness of invention.
Moreover, the enormous new Cunard subvention of $1,100,000 for
twenty years, combined with the extraordinary liberality of the
British Government in loaning to the company at a nominal rate the
$13,000,000 required to build the new ships, introduces another factor
that forbids an immediate recommendation to Congress. It is estimated
 that with the other generous terms of the contract this subvention
 is worth to the Cunard Line the equivalent of $2,000,000 or
$2,500,000 a year, which would have to be more than offset in amount
to produce a corresponding American ocean mail service—covering
the higher range of American ship wages and cost of construction,
Manifest]y the American people, whatever their final decision may be,
would hesitate to embark on such a scale of expenditure as this while
the imperative technical question of whether the turbine is to supplant
 reciprocating engines as the screw propeller supplanted the side
wheel is still undetermined.
Therefore the Commission, though fully realizing the commercial
and political importance of the fast North Atlantic mail service and the
value of these great ‘“merchant cruisers” to the national defense, is
unwilling at this time to recommend any specific legislation to Congress.
But the Commission does insist with the utmost earnestness that the
United States can not afford to disregard the mighty transition that
Seems to be impending in the North Atlantic; a change which, if
1gnored by our rE may result in the complete loss of even
our present inadequate share of the noblest field of ocean navigation.
Congress owes it to the commercial welfare and the naval security
of the country to make provision at once for an especial, vigilant study
of the North Atlantic steamship service as affected not only by the
extraordinary new British subventions, but by the approaching 1ntroduction
 of the turbine high-speed engines on the all-important mail
and passenger routes between America and Europe.

URGENT NEED OF IMMEDIATE RELIEF.

In the midst of a general condition of buoyant prosperity the
American merchant marine in over-seas trade alone of our great
National industries is, and long has been, depressed and declining. The
slight temporary increase of registered tonnage, due in large part to
‘auses growing out of the Spanish war, has now come to an end, and the
absolute cessation of shipbuilding for ocean commerce shows that the
country is on the verge of a swift and heavy shrinkage in the small
registered fleet still left to it—a fleet actually smaller by 100,000 tons
than that of 1810. If there is to be remedial legislation it must he