War in the current issue of " Ship-' ping and Engineering" traces the history of the Trans-Pacific rift Bureau, which appears to be strained to breaking point, from its earliest inception through ita period of reconstruction, to the present when the difficulty) over tea freights threatens the conference with destruc' Our corttemporary prophesies that, with the opening of the Panama Canal, most of the present conferences will be found to be unworkable. The opening of new and untried trade routes will, the journal thinks, prove too much for any of the present agreements until some time has elapsed permitting fresh bases of agreement to be found. Touching on the part played by the shipping of America, "Shipping and Engineering" points out how the mercantile marine of the United States has dwindled from the days when it carried 33 per cent. of the country's trade, in the early seventies, to the present time, when Jess than two per cent of the largely augmented trade is transported in American bottoms.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.