would be justified in cadging subsidies for training every branch of their trades, and thereby work their concerns at the expense of a public who are not directly connected with them.  But no one has ever heard of these people making any such demand on national generosity.  I believe I am right in stating that there are only very few shipowners who advocate such a parochial view.  The great bulk of them regard it with disfavour, first, because it smacks of peddling dealing; and, secondly, even if it were right they know that State aid means State interference, and State interference savours too much of working commerce on strictly algebraic lines, which only an executive with a wealthy, indulgent nation behind it could stand.  The Chamber of Shipping last year vigorously declared against subsidies of this kind; and the way in which the proposal was strangled leaves small hope of it ever being successfully revived.

An encouraging feature of the situation is that the Shipping Federation has at last taken the matter up.  The late Mr. George Laws was always in favour of doing so, but unfortunately he got scant support from his members.  Since his death, and the pronouncement the Chamber of Shipping gave in its favour at the last annual meeting, Mr. Cuthbert Laws, who succeeded his gifted father, has with commendable energy and marked ability undertaken the task of reviving the old system of every vessel carrying so many apprentices.  He is penetrating every part of Great Britain with the information that the Federated Shipowners are prepared to give suitable respectable lads of the poor and middle class a chance to enter the merchant service on terms of which even the poorest boy can avail himself, without pecuniary disability; and I wish the able young manager of the most powerful trade combination in the world all the success he deserves in his effort, not only to keep up the supply of seamen, but to raise the standard of the mercantile marine.

In the early years of the last century, right up to the seventies, north-country owners placed three to four apprentices on each vessel, and never less than three.  Many of them came from Scotland, Shetland, Norfolk, Denmark and Sweden.  There were few desertions, and they always settled down in the port that they served their time from.  If any attempt was made at engaging what was known as a “half-marrow"[2] there was rebellion at once; and I have known instances where lads positively refused to sail in a vessel where one of these had been shipped instead of an apprentice.  Impertinent intrusion was never permitted in those days.  As soon as they were out of their time the majority of the lads joined the local union.  One of the conditions of membership was that each applicant should pass an examination in seamanship before a committee of the finest sailors in the world.  They had to know how to put a clew into a square and fore-and-aft sail, to turn up a shroud, to make every conceivable knot and splice, to graft a bucket-rope,