SPECIAL MAY MEETING. 9 
active and influential men on the committee that has this subject of the rehabilitation of the 
merchant marine in its charge. I for one feel that we ought to take great encouragement 
from what he has said and look forward probably within a few months, or certainly within 
a year, to the passage of the bill. We know that the President has already committed him- 
self to standing ready to approve the bill when it is passed, so it is only a question of get- 
ting it through Congress. 
I feel that we owe a debt of gratitude to Congressman Edmonds for having come over 
from Washington to talk to us, and I am sure that in your behalf I may tender him our hearty 
thanks. 
Hon. Grorce W. Epmonps:—I am glad to be here. 
THE PRESIDENT :—It is always a pleasure in any organization when one of the old 
timers, a man who has made a big reputation, a man who has gone through the hard times 
and the good times, happens to drop in with the boys and is willing to say a word to them and 
tell them something about what he has been through and something about how he looks on 
existing conditions. 
There is a man here tonight whose name is known to everybody that has any interest in 
American shipping. He has been a ship operator for a great many years, and he has had the 
reputation of being one of the shrewdest and ablest men in the business. He has kindly con- 
sented to say a few words to us, and I have great pleasure in introducing to you Captain 
Robert Dollar. (Applause. ) 
Capratn Rosert Dotrar, Member:—Mr. Chairman, fellow members, I thank you very 
much for this high honor that you have conferred on me. I am not able to talk to you gentle- 
men, so to speak, in your own language. You are shipbuilders, you produce ships; but I can 
talk to you somewhat about a ship after she leaves the yard. 
The chairman has asked me to say just a few words; I do not know just exactly what 
to say to you. There is a great deal of discouragement in it. I addressed a banquet in 
Singapore a few months ago, and I said to them there, “My great grandfather wrote a letter 
from Singapore in 1796, in which he said that ‘I am pleased to report that this great big ship 
that I have has got a full cargo of 600 tons, and that she will be loaded in three weeks. We 
are getting good despatch.’”” (Laughter.) I said to them, “I came in here a couple of days 
ago, into your harbor, on a ship that required 16,000 tons, and I raised merry hell with one 
of your fellows because you only put a thousand tons in her the other day.” (Laughter.) 
It shows the great change that has taken place. If you think back, then you will be 
encouraged. 
Of course, I talk more particularly of the Pacific Ocean, because I am doing a little more 
there than I am on the Atlantic. It is only fifty years ago since the first steamship went 
across the Pacific, and now the commerce is tremendous. 
What I am going to say to you, you could not very well credit, so I will prefix it by 
stating this: What would the Phoenicians have said, when the center of the commerce of the 
world was in the Mediterranean, if someone had said that the center of the world’s com- 
merce is going to be in the Atlantic some time hence, when America even was unknown to 
them? But what I am going to say to you is this. We know that Asia is on the other side 
of the Pacific, and there are young men in this room here who are going to live to see the 
commerce of the world transferred from the Atlantic to the Pacific. That is a prediction, 
and I am not afraid to say it when I come to look at the progress that has been made. 
