INTRODUCTORY PROCEEDINGS. xli 
brief the financial conditions abroad. As it is confidently predicted on both sides that the 
war will last at least another year, these conditions will not change for the better. 
On the other hand, the United States has within its borders 30 per cent of the world’s 
monetary stock of gold and 2,000 millions of American securities have been returned. 
Financial conditions are, therefore, reversed and, as a distinguished financial writer truly 
says, “Within a period of two years New York has assumed a place among international 
money markets that was undreamed of before.” 
Foreign nations have thus become debtor nations and our own a creditor nation, but 
while this condition will last certainly so long as the war continues, it is to be remembered 
that great nations, as the same financial writer says, “have (after other wars) recovered 
with amazing rapidity from the devastating effects of war. . . . Great as this war has 
been and destructive, and wasteful, may it not develop as heretofore that economy, science, 
invention, education, industrial organization and developments in transportation and bank- 
ing, applied with stern devotion, will counterbalance its legacy and permit Europe and the 
rest of the world to grow as it grew in the past?” 
This is undoubtedly true, and it applies with especial force to our own land, for we have 
no direct war legacy to counterbalance. 
We again find that necessity is the mother of invention and so science and invention go 
hand in hand developing processes which render unnecessary certain importations upon 
which we heretofore depended. Are not our educational institutions developing in a mar- 
velous degree? We certainly can claim a faculty for mechanical invention and for indus- 
trial organization second to none. Our capital in a large and broad-minded way is now 
interested in fostering and extending foreign trade, in a truly American merchant marine, 
and in a marine insurance that will protect owners and shippers; and as means of travel has 
always increased travel, so means of trade will increase our trade. Our Federal Reserve 
banking system will prove an inestimable benefit to our whole country. 
There only remains economic efficiency in all of these endeavors to be proven, and, 
while as a nation we are certainly most extravagant, it cannot be denied that there is a 
great tendency to economic efficiency in all of our industries. 
So far as shipbuilding is concerned, the figures already given for merchant vessels now 
being constructed and to be hereafter built prove that we are on the eve of great prosperity. 
Make from the statistics herein given your own analysis. Mine is to the effect that 
there is before us a prosperous period of at least five years in which we can improve our 
facilities and methods so much that there will be no question of our shipyard efficiency and 
ability to meet competition; provided that our Government and Shipping Board really rea- 
son together face to face with our shipowners, shipbuilders and shippers, and determine to 
adopt the best policy to advance that most necessary and beneficial feature of our industries, 
an American merchant marine. Let there be no more periods when our grain and produce 
cannot be delivered for want of American ships, or times when any foreign government 
shall say what non-contraband can or cannot be shipped from our own ports. 
Only the merchant marine service has thus far been considered, but the Navy must not 
be forgotten. Add to the merchant ships which must be built in our yards the proposed in- 
crease in the Navy, for which sixty-six ships of various classes are soon to be contracted 
for, at an estimated expenditure of $185,560,000, with armor, armament or navy ammuni- 
tion, for which $66,595,000 more is required. Consider that included in this appropriation 
are the new battle cruisers, designed by members of this Society. The design of these battle 
