have led people in all
lands to form organizations for his aid, protection, and guidance,
hospitals to care for him in illness, asylums and homes to provide for the
days of his old age and decrepitude. Best known of all these charitable
institutions for the good of Jack Tar is the Sailor's Snug Harbor, whose
dignified buildings on Staten Island look out across the finest harbor in
the world to where New York's tall buildings tower high above the
maintop-gallant mast of the biggest ship ever built. This institution,
founded just one hundred years ago by the will of Captain Robert R.
Randall, himself an American sailor of the old type, who amassed his
fortune trading to all the countries on the globe, now has an income of
$400,000 annually, and cares for 900 old sailors, each of whom must have
sailed for at least five years under the American flag.

* * * * *

A new chapter in the story of the American sailor is opening as this book
is closed. The period of the decadence of the American merchant marine is
clearly ended, and everything gives assurance that the first quarter of
this new century will do as much toward re-establishing the United States
flag on the high seas as the first quarter of the nineteenth century did
toward first putting it there. As these words are being written, every
shipyard in the United States is busy, and some have orders that will tax
their capacity for three years to come. New yards are being planned and
small establishments, designed only to build pleasure craft, are reaching
out after greater things. The two biggest steamships ever planned are
building near New London, where four years ago was no sign of shipyard or
factory. The Great Lakes and the Pacific coast ring with the sound of the
steel ship-builder's hammer.

But will the American sailor share in the new life of the American ship?
The question is no easy one to answer. Modern shipping methods offer
little opportunity for ambitious lads to make their way from the
forecastle to the owner's desk. The methods by which the Cleavelands,
Crowninshields, Lows, and their fellows in the early shipping trade won
their success, have no place in modern economy. As I write, the actual
head of the greatest shipping concern the world has ever known, is a Wall
Street banker, whose knowledge of the sea was gained from the deck of a
private steam yacht or the cabin _de luxe_ of a fast liner, and who has
applied to the