the net tonnage on which dues are collected. They also include the numerous fleets of cargo boats and tramps, the navigation of which is governed by economy rather than speed. Relatively fast mail steamships comprise one-fourth of the vessels and of the tonnage passing through the Suez Canal.

Appendix Q contains a statement of 40 German steamships, well known as a rule at American seaports, in which passenger steamers predominate. The gross and net tonnage of these vessels are given as measured in Germany and also for Suez Canal purposes. The German gross tonnage is 344,766, net 214,765, and the Suez gross is 358,564, net 250,933. Where the German law permits a deduction of 37 per cent in fixing the assessable tonnage, the Suez regulations allow a deduction of only 30 per cent for these vessels. The net tonnage on which many of them paid tonnage dues in the United States, mainly at New York, is also printed for comparison. The same appendix shows the gross and net tonnage of the 40 steamships of the German Hansa Line, almost wholly devoted to cargo, and the largest German fleet passing Suez. Against a German gross tonnage of 206,627, the Suez gross is increased to 218,738, an addition of about 12,000 gross tons for shelter-deck spaces. The German net tonnage is 130,718, the Suez net on which tolls are assessed is 157,288, an increase of nearly 27,000 tons, of which, as shown, 12,000 tons in round numbers is attributed to shelter decks, the balance of 15,000 to the "Danube rule." The German law allowed a deduction of 36 per cent from the gross, compared with 37 per cent for the fleet of 40 German steamships, mainly passenger ships of various types already referred to. The Suez deduction for the Hansa Line is only 28 per cent, compared with 30 per cent for the other German types named. The Suez measurement system necessarily bears more heavily upon cargo boats than on mail and passenger steamers.

SUMMARY.

After deductions have been made, the balance or net tonnage represents the assessable tonnage of a ship. Subject to qualifications suggested, it may be said, roughly, that at the rate, for simplicity, of $1 a net ton, 100 gross tons would pay charges at Suez, Panama, New York, or Liverpool, of $61 as the world's average net measurement and the British and German average net measurement goes, of $66 as American average net measurement goes, and of $72 as Suez average net measurement goes. The Suez system remains virtually what it was in 1873. The nations which conduct the world's sea-borne commerce have advanced beyond that system, not solely or chiefly for the purpose of benefiting international trade by a reduction in the general basis of tonnage taxation, though that would not tell against the change, but because more seaworthy types of ships have developed since 1873, and it is not a good policy to penalize seaworthiness. A slight change in the law of the United States, the enactment of the deck-cargo provision referred to, would bring our laws abreast of the laws of the strongest maritime powers. Such a step would be forward and in the line of uniform regulation of commerce here and abroad. It is not overlooked that the direct pecuniary benefit would go almost wholly to foreign ships, for we have few American shelter-deck cargo steamers. As indicated, the difference, roughly, would be the

substitution of 61 units for 66 units as the basis of taxation. Our entire revenue from tonnage taxes averages now almost exactly $1,075,000. The percentage reduction if applied throughout would be $77,000, but it would not have general application because in express passenger ships and other types no change would be involved. It is difficult to see how the loss of revenue could exceed the estimate already given.

While it would be desirable for some obvious reasons to have the Panama ship-measurement system the same as the amended American system proposed, such identity would involve, doubtless, some administrative difficulties. The proper enforcement of the deckcargo rule calls for inspection on every entry of a ship and the actual measurement by measuring rods of the occupied spaces in shelter decks. The time required might not be long, but the voyage through the canal will be short. The Suez Canal is almost exactly twice as long as the Panama Canal, and last year the average transit time through the Suez Canal (Appendix P) was 16 hours 54 minutes. Before the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce last June Colonel Goethals stated that when the Panama Canal is in full operation a steamer will be put through in eight hours, and his performance thus far has uniformly surpassed promise. The Suez authorities in effect tax all shelter decks. The objections to that course have been suggested, and should suffice in a harbor where a ship comes to anchor or to the dock. They may perhaps be outweighed by the need for expedition and for affording no ground for dispute during the brief transit through the Panama Canal. While Suez navigation is made up to a great extent of regular and longestablished steamship lines which have their dock facilities, agencies, coaling arrangements, etc., all along the route, and are not likely to change to the Panama route, nevertheless, many cargo boats are already furnished with Suez measurement certificates and might find the use of those certificates convenient if accepted at Panama. The owners of such boats, however, have always objected to the arbitrary rule that a shelter deck once with deck cargo always with deck cargo for taxing purposes. It is assumed that the basis of Panama tolls for merchant vessels will be the net ton of the Moorsom system and that the usual deduction rule for machinery will be the so-called British or "Board of Trade" rule, now generally used except at Suez. If that much be affirmed by Congress, a substantial basis on which shipowners may make calculations will have been fixed, and the treatment to be accorded to shelter decks and deck cargoes might perhaps be left to administration and regulation, as is to a very great extent the general maritime practice. The development of the shelter deck for cattle-carrying purposes would have been tardy and unsatisfactory under the rigid terms of a statute. In any event the preparation of a Panama Canal certificate of measurement for a like purpose as the Suez Canal certificate will be necessary, and administrative officers must pass on some of its details. The kind of cargoes to go through the canal will have a bearing on conclusions.

OTHER BEARINGS.

Measurement has been considered thus far in its relations to foreign trade. It has, however, many bearings on domestic commerce. Various State, municipal, and private charges on shipping are based on

Federal measurement, and these are much heavier than the light Federal customhouse charges imposed on that basis. To an extent the amount of life-saving and fire-fighting apparatus required on board of inspected vessels by Federal law is determined by gross tonnage, and tonnage is a factor in determining the ratings of licensed officers by the steamboat-inspection regulations. State taxes in some instances on shipping as property are based on tonnage, and licenses to dredge oysters in Maryland are restricted within small tonnage limits. By the act of July 5, 1884, the Commissioner of Navigation is charged with the supervision of the laws relating to the admeasurement of vessels. The experience of some years has demonstrated that the preparation of uniform regulations and instructions is not an easy task and that the execution of efforts to give them uniform effect is difficult. The situation could be improved if the appointment of an inspector were authorized who should be familiar with the laws and regulations not only of our own country but of other countries and who should be constantly in the field, visiting seaports. The United States, with its coasts on two oceans, its Great Lakes, and its Mississippi River system requires for water transportation more types of vessels than any other country in the world, and the uniform adjustment in actual practice of all these types of vessels to the nine pages of statutes devoted to measurement in the Navigation Laws (1911, pp. 22-31) is ample work, and it is believed will be recognized as necessary work, for one man assigned to the purpose.

COASTWISE PASSENGER TRADE.

In reports for 1909 and 1910 attention was invited to the unsatisfactory state of the law regulating the transportation of passengers coastwise. By the act of February 17, 1898, section 4347 of the Revised Statutes was amended to read as follows:

No foreign vessel shall transport passengers between ports or places in the United States, either directly or by way of a foreign port, under a penalty of two hundred dollars for each passenger so transported and landed.

The purpose of that law was to reserve to American vessels the transportation of passengers between domestic ports. So far as cargo is concerned, the law is effectual. The substance of that law (Navigation Laws, 1911, p. 238) is:

No merchandise shall be transported by water under penalty of forfeiture thereof from one port of the United States to another port of the United States, either directly or via a foreign port, or for any part of the voyage, in any other vessel than a vessel of the United States.

The act of 1898, of which both quotations are a part, was satisfactory in its operations for some years. Within the past few years, however, a loophole has been found in it by the Canadian Pacific Railway Co., operating a fleet of passenger steamers on the Pacific coast, and by other Canadian companies, which has been steadily enlarged so that at the present time about 50 per cent of the passenger business between our Pacific Coast States and Alaska is done by these foreign companies. The courts have held (Princess Beatrice case, and United States v. 250 Kegs of Nails, 61 Fed., 210) that while one foreign ship can not transport passengers between domestic ports the same result can be attained by two foreign ships working together. Thus, a passenger from Seattle to Nome, Alaska, may take a British

vessel from Seattle to Victoria or Vancouver, at that point crossing the dock to take another foreign steamer for Nome. The practice has become so common that it is freely advertised.

Although not a violation of law, it thwarts the assumed purpose of Congress. While it has not yet been done, there is no reason why passengers desiring to go from Seattle or Tacoma to San Francisco, for example, should not proceed to Victoria or Vancouver by a foreign steamer and there take another foreign steamer for San Francisco. The fact is too well known to need more than mention that our foreign trade in American ships is almost extinct. Wherever there is an opportunity to circumvent the reservation of the coasting trade and the fisheries to American vessels, the disposition to do so and to acquire those trades for foreign shipping is too often manifested to escape this Bureau's observation. The facts are again set forth in the renewed hope that legislation will be enacted to carry out the spirit of the laws. Allied to this subject is the desirability of more exact legislation to meet the situation caused by the effort of foreignbuilt steam trawlers to engage in the American fisheries off the New England coast. Even a partial abandonment, by neglect, of our fisheries would be inexplicable, in view of the fact that with the sanction of every President from Washington to Lincoln, from 1793 to 1866, the United States uninterruptedly followed the policy of paying bounties to the men and vessels engaged in sea fisheries. In the early days of the Republic when the resources of the Treasury were scant, indeed, these bounties sometimes amounted to $100,000 a year, and up to 1851 aggregated $10,055,877. The proceeds of the Halifax award, $160,000 annually, which we paid to Canada, are still sedulously devoted to subsidizing the Canadian fisheries.

WIRELESS-SHIP ACT.

During the last quarter of the fiscal year preparations were made for the enforcement of the wireless-ship act of June 24, 1910. The essential section of that act provides:

From and after the first day of July, nineteen hundred and eleven, it shall be unlawful for any ocean-going steamer of the United States, or of any foreign country, carrying passengers and carrying fifty or more persons, including passengers and crew, to leave or attempt to leave any port of the United States unless such steamer shall be equipped with an efficient apparatus for radio-communication, in good working order, in charge of a person skilled in the use of such apparatus, which apparatus shall be capable of transmitting and receiving messages over a distance of at least one hundred miles, night or day: Provided, That the provisions of this Act shall not apply to steamers plying only between ports less than two hundred miles apart.

Three wireless-ship inspectors were selected from the classified service on the basis of practical experience in telegraphy, knowledge of electricity and wireless apparatus, and administrative ability. The three inspectors were then sent to the Bureau of Standards for a course of further technical training, and they began active work, respectively, at New York on July 3, at San Francisco on July 8, and at Baltimore on July 21.

During the three months ended September 30 they made 524 personal inspections of the wireless apparatus on steamships subject to the act, visiting for the purpose the following additional ports: Boston, Savannah, Charleston, S. C., Brunswick, Ga., Jacksonville, Key West, Tampa, Mobile, New Orleans, Galveston, Portland, Oreg., Tacoma, Seattle, and Port Townsend.

The inspections have covered the various details of wireless appȧratus on shipboard. An idea of their scope may be formed from brief extracts from inspectors' reports in Appendix M. Besides these details the inspectors have also examined ships' operators, advised officers of customs, masters of vessels, and wireless operators, and performed the usual amount of extra work required in the administration of a new law, for which procedure, methods and forms have to be established. In most respects the three months' work has been well done; the steamship companies and the wireless companies concerned, with slight exceptions, have cooperated willingly in the enforcement of the law, and have commended its enactment and administration; masters of vessels, especially in a position to appreciate the usefulness of wireless apparatus, have welcomed the inspection as an aid in securing efficient apparatus and skilled operators.

SCOPE OF APPLICATION.

On September 1, 1910, before the act took effect, collectors of customs reported that 370 ocean passenger steamships departing from ports of the United States were equipped with wireless apparatus. Appendix M shows that at the present time 488 such ocean passenger steamships subject to the act are now equipped with wireless apparatus. Lloyd's Register this year records 1,013 vessels equipped with wireless throughout the world. The increase is not wholly due to the law, for some shipowners would have continued the practice already voluntarily begun of thus equipping their vessels. In other instances, however, the equipment has been in obedience to law. Besides the vessels equipped under the act of 1910, there are already in the United States 142 vessels, including 15 yachts, voluntarily equipped with wireless. Economies in dispatch, in securing pilots, and loading berths, as well as the demands of the public traveling by sea on small steamers, have impelled owners to incur the expense involved in equipment. Thus far the marine insurance companies have not specifically made a distinct difference in marine rates on hulls and cargoes on account of wireless, but the subject has been under consideration by insurance companies and underwriters and the time doubtless is not remote when part at least of the expense of equipment will be offset by recognition in insurance rates. The fact that a vessel at sea which can communicate at will with other vessels or shore stations hundreds of miles distant is in less risk of total or heavy loss than one out of touch with the rest of the world is not now entirely ignored in insurance. Doubtless the newness and imperfections of the apparatus and uncertainty as to the skill of operators have retarded recognition. Inspection under the wirelessship act ought to aid in securing thoroughly efficient apparatus and competent operators. At this time it is more desirable to aim at these results than to extend the scope of the act, and to secure a thorough understanding and enforcement of the law as it stands rather than to increase the classes of vessels on which wireless installations are obligatory. A year or two of actual experience under the present law and of observation of the normal increase in the use of the apparatus will furnish safe guides for future legislation.

The efficiency of wireless apparatus and the skill of operators on shipboard concerns the wireless company which leases the apparatus