m the oceans great
navigable rivers, deep bays, and placid sounds, extend into the very heart
of the country. The Great Lakes are bordered by States more populous and
cities more busy and enterprising than those, which in the proudest days
of Rome, and Carthage and Venice skirted the Mediterranean and the
Adriatic. The traffic of all these trade highways is by legislation
reserved for American ships alone. On the Great Lakes has sprung up a
merchant marine rivaling that of some of the foremost maritime peoples,
and conducting a traffic that puts to shame the busiest maritime highways
of Europe. Long Island Sound bears on its placid bosom steamships that are
the marvel of the traveling public the world over. The Hudson, the Ohio,
the Mississippi, are all great arteries through which the life current of
trade is ceaselessly flowing. A book might be written on the one subject
of the part that river navigation has played in developing the interior
States of this Union. Another could well be devoted to the history of lake
navigation, which it is no overstatement to pronounce the most impressive
chapter in the history of the American merchant marine. In this volume,
however, but brief attention can be given to either.

The figures show how honorably our whole body of shipping compares in
volume to that operated by any maritime people. Our total registered
shipping engaged in the fisheries, coastwise, and lake traffic, and
foreign trade numbered at the beginning of 1902, 24,057 vessels, with an
aggregate tonnage of 5,524,218 tons. In domestic trade alone we had
4,582,683 tons, or an amount exceeding the total tonnage of Germany and
Norway combined, or of Germany and France. Only England excelled us, but
her lead, which in 1860 was inconsiderable, in 1901 was prodigious; the
British flag flying over no less than 14,261,254 tons of shipping, more
than three times our tonnage! It is proper to note that more than
two-thirds of our registered tonnage is of wood.

[Illustration: THERE ARE BUILDING IN AMERICAN YARDS ]

I have already given reasons why, in the natural course of things, this
disparity between the American and the British foreign-going merchant
marine will not long continue. And indeed, as this book is writing, it is
apparent that its end is near. Though shipyards have multiplied fast in
the last five years of the nineteenth century, the first years of the new
century found them all occupied up to the very limit of the