The Todd price is also extremely high compared with going prices on the venerable ships available here out of the American merchant marine. It represents something round $160 a ton, Agai ing prices for old tonnage here have been running somewhere between $40 and $60 a ton, and a recent batch of laid-up ships was obtained by a British shipping firm from the Maritime Commission' for something round $20 a ton. These ships can be re condi tioned in two or three months at only about $20 a ton, making a total cost—for ships perfectly seaworthy and quite able to keep up with present convoy speeds—of round $40 a ton, To put it differently, prices on an average 10,000-ton ship run something like this—old ships. $500,000; Todd Jcontract, $1,600,000; C-2 "ship, $2,000,000.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.