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 CONTROVERSIES— WOOD 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