10th Aprit.
Tun world generally must have read with some amusement the enthusiastic accounts published in the American papers of te hoisting of the Stars and Stripes on one of the steamers of the former Inman line in New York harbour on Washington's birthday. One of the few remaining days of President Harrison's power was devoted to a special journey to New York for the purpose there was a grand waving of bunting and blowing of steam whistles, and a United States man-of-war fired a salute as the flag went up. What the man-of-war's officers thought of this, and of the President's ingenuous remark that he was hoisting the flag on the finest specimen of marine architecture afloat, is not mentioned. We could understand the enthusiasm excited if the ship thus honoured by the President had been American-built as well as Auerican-owned. Since the collapse of the Collins line, which attempted a rivalry with the Cunarders so many years ago, there has not been a first-class line of passenger steamers on the transAtlantic route under the American flag. here was indeed a line running from Philadelphia, some of whose steamers flew the Stars and Stripes, but practically for some thirty years the whole of the steam passenger and freight traffic across the Atlantic has been conducted in English bottoms and but for the fiction that the voyage between New York and San Francisco was a coasting voyage, there would have been still fewer American ocean steamers ufloat now. 'I'he Inman line has for a long time been largely and is now almost entirely owned in the States, and its managers have succeeded in getting their two fast steamers admitted to Auerican registry on condition of building twice their tonnage in the States, which they are now doing; while at the same time, they are having some four steamers built in Great Britain.
We have made several extracts of late from the New York Maritime Register, in which the new departure is hailed as one that will be rapidly followed, and in which it is prophesied that our shipbuilders will soon be outdone by their rivals in the United States, and that the carrying trafic is destined before long to pass from the British to the US. the. The Bconomist, however, as we have already mentioned, still holds that " the United States cannot for a moment hope to compete with British-owned and British-manned ships on their merits." The materials employed in modern shipbuilding are about twice as dear on the Delaware and the Schuylkill as they are on the
United States to practical shipbuilders Clyde. Ihe average wages paid in the are just about 70 per cent. more than there is no American line even now to the average rate of wages paid to the any continental port same class of labour on the Clyde or at' irish American Belfast. 'I'he new Cunard liners Cam-Tonnage. paula and Lucania are to cost complete about half a million sterling each, and 000 if the Inman line have to pay, as they 613,000 will have, about 50 per cent. more for 247,000 their new vessels of the same size, the 242,000 interest which they will have to pay on We are not sorry to see the American this first cost will go far to eat up the flag competing with ours on the Atlantic, government subsidy they are to receive, for competition will stimulate impro-and it has to be remembered that by cements in the service; but we fear their contract, all new machinery and that the new line, even with South-all repairs required have to be made on ampton instead of Liverpool as_ its American soil and by American labour.
English port, will have hard work to Again, American steamers cannot begin maintain. itself without an enormous to compete with English steamers in the 1 subsidy; but this the advantage of cost of running. he average pay of United States sailors on steamships is having the vale to use an auxiliary cruisers may in nce Congress to pay. nearly double the average pay on English steamships. It is sometimes said, and with some justice, that the extra wages
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.