the flying of a foreign flag.  For example, the Atlantic Transport line is owned wholly by citizens of the United States, although at the present moment all its ships fly the British flag.  Two new ships are, however, being completed for this line in American shipyards, the “Minnetonka” and “Minnewaska,” of 13,401 tons each.  This line, started by Americans in 1887, was the first to use the so-called bilge keels, or parallel keels along each side of the hull to prevent rolling.  It now has a fleet of twenty-three vessels, with a total tonnage of about 90,000, and does a heavy passenger business despite the fact that its ships were primarily designed to carry cattle.  Quite as striking an illustration of the fact that capital is international, and will be invested in ships or other enterprises which promise profit quite heedless of sentimental considerations of flags, was afforded by the purchase in 1901 of the Leyland line of British steamships by an American.  Immediately following this came the consolidation of ownership, or merger, of the principal British-American lines, in one great corporation, a majority of the stock of which is held by Americans.  Despite their ownership on this side of the water, these ships will still fly the British flag, and a part of the contract of merger is that a British shipyard shall for ten years build all new vessels needed by the consolidated lines this situation will persist.  This suggests that the actual participation of Americans in the ocean-carrying trade of the world is not to be estimated by the frequency or infrequency with which the Stars and Stripes are to be met on the ocean.  It furthermore gives some indication of the rapidity with which the American flag would reappear if the law to register only ships built in American yards were repealed.

Indeed, it would appear that the law protecting American ship-builders, while apparently effective for that purpose, has destroyed American shipping.  Our ship-building industry has attained respectable and even impressive proportions; but our shipping, wherever brought into competition with foreign ships, has vanished.  One transatlantic line only, in 1902 displayed the American flag, and that line enjoyed special and unusual privileges, without which it probably could not have existed.  In consideration of building two ships in American yards, this line, the International Navigation Company, was permitted to transfer two foreign-built ships to American registry, and a ten years’ postal contract was awarded it, which guaranteed in advance the cost of construction of all the ships it was required to build.  It is a fact worth noting that, while the foreign lines have been vying with each other in the construction of faster and bigger ships each year, this one has built none since its initial construction, more than a decade ago.  Ten years ago its American-built ships, the “New York” and the “Paris,” were the largest ships afloat; now there are eighteen larger in commission, and many building.  Besides this, there are only two American lines on the Atlantic which ply to other than coastwise ports—­the Pacific Mail, which is run in connection with the Panama railway, and the Admiral line, which plies between New York and the West Indies.  Indeed, the Commissioner of Navigation, in his report for 1901, said: