to
Tahiti.

The total cost of the service for the year on these seven subsidized
routes was $1,114,603.47, a net excess over the amount allowable at
present rates to steamers not under contract of $346,677.39, or,
deducting the amount would have been paid non-contract steamers for the
despatch of the foreign closed mails which these steamers carry without
additional cost to the department, a total excess of $293,013.40.[IQ]
"All other mail service between the United States and foreign
countries," the postmaster-general regretfully reported, is "wholly
dependent on steamships over whose sailings the department has no
control."[IR]

* * * * *

The total tonnage of the United States in 1910 as given by Lloyd's was
5,058,678 tons:

No. of vessels. Tons.

Sea 2774 2,761,605
Northern Lakes 606 2,256,619
Philippine Islands 89 40,454
---- ---------
Total 3469 5,058,678

The number of ships on the lakes as given does not include wooden
vessels trading on the Great Lakes. While the ocean tonnage has declined
from more than two and a half million tons in 1861 to some eight hundred
thousand tons, that engaged in the coastwise and inland trade has
steadily increased for many years.[IS] On the Great Lakes especially is
employed a fine and powerful merchant fleet.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote IN: Registry law of 1792, in Revised Statutes, sec. 4132.]

[Footnote IO: Revised Statutes, see. 4131.]

[Footnote IP: Tariff act of Aug. 5, 1909, sec. 19.]

[Footnote IQ: Postoffice Department report, 1910.]

[Footnote IR: Postmaster-general Hitchcock, report, 1910.]

[Footnote IS: American Year Book, 1911.]

INDEX

_Adriatic_, the steamer,

American Shipping League,

American Steamship Company,

American Year Book, _reference to_,

Anderson, Com. Gen. George E., _reference to_,

_Arctic_, the steamer,

_Argentina_, use of subsidies in,

Aspinwall, W.H.,

_Atlantic_, the steamer,

Atlantic Transport line,

_Auguste Victoria_, the steamer,

Australasia line,

Australian line,

Austria-Hungary, history of the use of subsidies in,
provisions for two classes of subsidies in,
increase in the proportion of steamers built in