coast was reported from the lakes. If
lake builders could send their vessels easily and safely to the ocean, we
should not need subsidies and special legislation to reestablish the
American flag abroad. By the report already quoted, it is shown that
thirty-nine steel steamers were built in lake yards of a tonnage ranging
from 1089 tons to 5125. Wooden ship-building is practically dead on the
lakes. In June of that year twenty-six more steel steamers, with an
aggregate tonnage of 81,000 were on the stocks in the lake yards. Two of
these are being built for ocean service, but both will have to be cut in
two before they can get through the Canadian canals. It is not surprising
that there appears among the people living in the commonwealths which
border on the Great Lakes a certain doubt as to whether the expenditure by
the United States Government of $200,000,000 for a canal at the Isthmus
will afford so great a measure of encouragement to American shipping and
be of as immediate advantage to the American exporter, as a twenty-foot
channel from Duluth to tide-water.

Though the old salt may sneer at the freshwater sailor who scarcely need
know how to box the compass, to whom the art of navigation is in the main
the simple practise of steering from port to port guided by headlands and
lights, who is seldom long out of sight of land, and never far from aid,
yet the perils of the lakes are quite as real as those which confront the
ocean seaman, and the skill and courage necessary for withstanding them
quite as great as his. The sailor's greatest safeguard in time of tempest
is plenty of searoom. This the lake navigator never has. For him there is
always the dreaded lee shore only a few miles away. Anchorage on the sandy
bottom of the lakes is treacherous, and harbors are but few and most
difficult of access. Where the ocean sailor finds a great bay, perhaps
miles in extent, entered by a gateway thousands of yards across, offering
a harbor of refuge in time of storm, the lake navigator has to run into
the narrow mouth of a river, or round under the lee of a government
breakwater hidden from sight under the crested waves and offering but a
precarious shelter at best. Chicago, Cleveland, Milwaukee--most of the
lake ports have witnessed such scenes of shipwreck and death right at the
doorway of the harbor, as no ocean port could tell. At Chicago great
schooners have been cast far up upon the boulevard that skirts a waterside
park