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We have 3,000,000 automobiles in America to-day. We would not We would not have 500,000 if it were not for standardization. The automobile is a vehicle of fine construction, some of its parts being brought down to the one-thousandth of an inch. The cargo vessel is little more than a floating warehouse.

In time of rising costs of labor and material we have the spectacle of the largest manufacturer of automobiles cutting the price of his product nearly 20 per cent.. while shipbuilders increase the price of their goods 100 or 200 per cent.

To standardize American shipbuilding it is necessary first to ascertain the size and type of the vessel suitable for the broadest possible use a vessel. that can reach the ports of South America and the Orient, that is economical in service, not too expensive to manufacture and which at the same time will meet the highest insurance standards.

Having established such a standard vessel, it must be developed over and over again. Any plant in which the same part is made in large quantities can introduce machinery and eliminate hand labor. Regularity in shapes will bring lower cost of material and cheaper storage. Sales effort will be simplified and repairs for the ships greatly cheapened.

Henry Ford has carried this principle so far that the labor time in a Ford car is insignificant. To Ford, a wage scale averaging between five and six dollars per day is of little concern, because standardization has reduced the total labor cost at that rate to less than thirty-five dollars. The same principle of one model will eliminate

the one handicap to American shipbuilding-high labor costs.

No industry is more stabilized and standardized than that of the motor.

No industry is less stabilized and standardized than that of shipbuilding.

Because the welfare of America depends so much on the development of an American merchant marine; because without American ships there will be no broadening of America's foreign trade; because without a larger foreign trade every American industry, from that of the humblest farm to that of the greatest manufactory, will be affected, it is necessary that the shipbuilding business be made sound.

We must have a bank to finance ships.

J. P. Morgan, Frank A. Vanderlip, Jacob H. Schiff, Edward T. Stotesbury, George M. Reynolds and William H. Crocker could establish one on the British model within a month if they so desired. It should serve a great and patriotic purpose and would pay.

Will they do it?

We must have marine insurance companies of our own if we are to have a merchant marine. They should be operated honestly, not with the chicanery which the British companies have practiced since the war began.

The same gentlemen could create such companies and profit through them.

Will they do it?

We must have standardization. No one is better qualified to introduce this than Charles M. Schwab, who owns more shipyards than any other American. If he needs in

struction, which is not likely, an appeal will be made to Henry Ford, Howard E. Coffin, William S. Durant and others to give to him the benefit of their vast experience.

Will Mr. Schwab give an example to his fellow shipbuilders? It will pay more to the Bethlehem company in the long run than he appreciates.

This matter of American ships is of immense importance. It concerns every man, woman and child in the republic. It warrants the best thought and the best effort of which we are capable.

Morgan, Vanderlip, Schiff and men of that character can do no better service for the country than in this field to-day.-Aug. 28, 1916.

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The threat of a railroad strike and the partial embargo ordered by some of the great land lines may have halted freight somewhat, but not to the degree shown by the congregation of empty ships.

The fact is that Great Britain has caught up with her needs in many lines of production, and is making smaller and smaller drafts on this country for goods.

Crop movements, particularly the exports of cotton, wheat and perhaps a little corn, may keep ocean freights up for a few months, but we have seen the best of the war boom, and we had better accept this fact and fit ourselves to meet that condition.-Sept. 16, 1916.

OUR SHIPPING ON THE PACIFIC

The eastern part of the United States does not realize in what des

perate plight our trans-Pacific trade

has been the last nine months for lack of American ships to carry it. A partial remedy is just being found.

The seamen's act, put upon the country at the joint instigation of a Democratic Congress and Senator La Follette, of that great salt water state Wisconsin-the seamen's act forced our Pacific Mail Steamship Company to go out of business at the beginning of this year. The Pacific Mail had built up our Far Eastern trade. Through forty years it had kept the American flag flying on the Pacific. The seamen's act forced this company to employ white labor on their ships, while the competing Japanese could employ yellow. The result was not to send Californian labor to sea-i -it does not want to go to sea, even if the Pacific Mail could afford to pay the shore wages of such labor. The result of the seamen's act was to drive the Pacific Mail off the sea. It sold its ships and name.

The largest of the Pacific Mail ships were sold to Japan; others were bought by the Atlantic Transport Company and run from here to Europe. Only one of the smaller ships, the China, was operated once in three months across the Pacific by a Chinese-American company. American trade depended for accommodation on Japanese or British boats, and these refused accommodation until their own nationals were cared for. They carriel nothing for the large number of Americans on the British blacklist nor

for German firms in China who, cut off from Germany, were eager to become the outposts of American trade.

Warehouses in China and in our Pacific coast cities became stuffed with traffic for or from America, traffic which could get no transportation, either because British and Japanese ships refused to carry it or because they were already full of business of their own. Finally, the desperate merchants prevailed upon the American International Corporation and W. R. Grace & Co., joint owners of the Pacific Mail's trade name, to restore a sort of trans-Pacific service with four purchased Dutch vessels. The first of these boats has now sailed.

It is suicidal to trust to other merchant marines than our own. It is ridiculous to expect other nations to take care of us; they are occupied in pursuing their own interests.

and defeating ours when ours come into conflict with them.

Indeed, it is the duty of every nation first to take care of itself; certainly to do that before prating about espousing the cause of humanity, joining leagues to enforce peace and assuming other jobs fit for none but those who are selfsufficient.

This shipping need has stared us in the face since the war broke out. The problem has been acute for two years. They were years of unexampled opportunity. The best the administration has been able to do was to appropriate $50,000,000 for government merchant ships to provide unfair competition for private enterprise.

We need a new deal, or rather a new man at Washington, to play the magnificent cards we still hold. Too many of them have been thrown away already.-Sept. 21, 1916.

A Protective Tariff

THE DYESTUFFS FAMINE To-day dyeing establishments in this country are running shorthanded because we have no dyes from Germany, upon whom we have so long been dependent. In 1913, the last peaceful year, we bought from Germany $21,617,000 of dyes and chemicals.

The talk of establishing an American dyestuff industry has so far come to nothing. The difficulty seems to be that the Germans, by patents, secret processes and the development of by-products, produce and sell dyes here so cheaply that our own manufacturers do not dare to start a dye industry now, unless the. government will promise them a high pro*tective tariff to keep out the Germans after the war. This the Democratic congress seems in no wise inclined to do.

Congress may be right. It may be that Germany's acquired advantages in the matter of producing dyes are such that it pays us to go on buying them from her and paying her with goods in the production of which our climate or our inventive genius give us an advantage, such as cotton and agricultural implements.

But this does not help the present emergency. Dyeing and printing works are shutting down. Paint, wallpaper and ink industries face disaster because of lack of colors. Except for a special dispensation by

the German and British governments allowing a small quantity of German dyes to come through for our federal authorities-except for this the colors of our postage stamps and of the very uniforms of our army and navy might have to be changed.

England is now maintaining against all goods from Germany to the United States what our administration characterizes as an illegal and indefensible blockade. Germany can ship dyes on the high seas to Sweden, for British warships dare not enter the Baltic. Sweden can Germany in return. export her lumber and iron ore to

England is "willing" to give permission for an occasional shipment of dyes to America to come through the blockade, which we have never recognized. The reason is simple. Experience has taught her that she can get for herself, re-exported from America, part of the German dyes she lets come through to us. However, England is not "willing" that we should ship through this same illegal blockade cotton for peaceful German industries or milk for starving German children to pay for the dyes.

Germany maintains an embargo on the export of dyes until we assert our rights to ship to her. She is following a policy of keeping from us what we want until we send her what she wants. She is plainly unwilling to send us dyes "by leave of

England" and will send them only as part of a free interchange of goods now unlawfully obstructed by the abuse of sea power.

The dyestuffs famine will be solved as a part of the larger problem of the rights of neutral trade on the high seas, to which Washington will now turn.-March 11, 1916.

DUMPING

Everybody knows what dumping means. It means selling goods in a foreign market cheaper than they are sold in the home market. It means selling abroad at or near the cost of production, while selling for a good profit at home.

Our own corporations have expanded our foreign trade by dumping. Congressmen have returned from abroad to complain of finding that sewing machines, or watches, or steel rails, made in America, were sold cheaper in Europe or South America than at home. They often say that the home consumer should buy American goods as cheaply as the foreign consumer, and that if the sewing machine maker can afford to sell machines cheap in Brazil he can afford to sell them as cheap here.

Not necessarily. A railroad carries much low grade traffic, like brick and lumber, at a ton-mile rate so low that if this rate were applied to all traffic carried, the road would be bankrupt. But the brick could not be had for transportation if a higher rate were charged. If the brick did not move, that would not allow high class goods to be transported any cheaper. The brick rate nets the railroad enough to pay for

the extra cost of moving it and also earns a small amount to apply to payment of fixed charges on the railroad investment, charges which run on no matter how much traffic is carried. By earning a part of the fixed charges, the brick business decreases the amount that must be earned on high class traffic.

The railroads call this "charging what the traffic will bear." When a corporation sells abroad at less than the home price, we call it "dumping." The principle is exactly the same. If an American corporation sells cheaply abroad, it is because that cheap price is all that the foreign traffic "will bear." If the foreign business were refused because the manufacturer could not get the American price for it, the American consumers would not benefit, any more than the shippers of peaches would benefit if the railroads refused to carry brick because they could not charge for carrying it the carload rate on peaches.

In countries with developed export trade, this policy of charging on export goods what the traffic will bear is one of the axioms of business. It gives the export trade an element of flexibility which, especially in periods of slack markets at home or in periods of severe competition abroad, enables the manufacturer to keep his plant in full operation.

Dumping creates no serious problems for the country which does the dumping; the land which need worry is the one that is dumped upon. A tariff, designed to protect home manufacturers against normal prices of foreign producers may wholly fail when these foreign producers dump their goods. Logically, anti-dumping legislation is the cor

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