38o ADDRESS OP HON. WILLIAM C. REDPIELD. 



my business and in yours the drift of events is one of the serious things, and 

 it cannot be taken as of to-day or yesterday, but must, as we do in Hfe 

 insurance, be taken in the large and over periods of time in order to judge it 

 accurately. Does it surprise you, therefore, to learn that in reading the 

 transactions of your society for 1909, and the discussion upon the subject 

 of this address, which is therein, the impression was left upon my mind of 

 assumptions that are incomplete and of omissions that are important, while 

 certain statements have already been outgrown? It is particularly the 

 things which are left unsaid that strike me forcibly, and with these the treat- 

 ing of facts as if they were permanent instead of being mere phases in evolu- 

 tion. May I add before discussing this that much of our theme has to do 

 with well-known elements of commercial and industrial life — such as the 

 problems of handling materials, or those of the employment of labor, or the 

 use of tools, or the adjustment of burden charges, or the relation of wage to 

 output. The essential principles of cost are not, I venture to think, different 

 in operating a ship from those which exist in operating a factory. The 

 application and the elements are not the same, but the principles are alike. 



What, then, are the major facts which affect to-day the subject of our 

 discussion? One is that the future of our merchant marine is still con- 

 sidered by most Americans a matter of local interest, in which shipbuilders 

 and shipowners, with their employees, have a predominant interest. It is 

 true that in our ports and along our coast states there is an awakening public 

 opinion upon the importance of this subject, but in our inland states and 

 among the great masses of our people there is apathy. I agree with him 

 who once said to you, that when this country realizes that it is a national 

 necessity that ships built in our own yards, officered and manned by our 

 own citizens, owned and operated by our men of affairs, shall represent us 

 in all ports of the world, there will be found a way to do it with profit to 

 all concerned. 



It seems probable that the demands for national subsidies to sustain a 

 business which otherwise could not sustain itself, coupled with the fact that 

 sufficiently clear explanation has not been given to the people of our interior 

 states of the ill effects upon us all of the lack of a merchant marine, accounts 

 for^muchj^of^'this indifference. Men in the Central West hearing me speak 

 in favor of a merchant marine have accused me from that simple fact of 



