384 ADDRESS OF HON. WILLIAM C. REDFIELD. 



the globe. Anyhow, the moving of the west coast of South America some 

 thousands of miles nearer our eastern coast, and the possibility of quick, 

 direct water intercourse between our eastern and western coasts is itself suffi- 

 cient to stimulate our ocean-borne traffic, both coastwise and otherwise, and 

 I venture to think that this effect is already apparent. 



A fifth fact bearing directly upon this problem is the growth in efficiency 

 of our own shipbuilding plants. If I am correctly informed, a battleship of, 

 say, 28,000 tons, is now constructed in thirty- three months as compared 

 with one of 14,000 tons in forty-eight months twenty years ago. Admit that 

 the progress is not all to be desired in comparison with work done elsewhere, 

 still it is marked progress. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the 

 advance has reached its limit. 



The American yards of ten years hence will be far more effective than 

 those of to-day. This growth in efficiency, however, has been held back 

 and is to-day delayed by a conservatism which takes its lessons from the 

 past of doubt instead of looking toward the future of hope. There are weak- 

 nesses existing in our shipbuilding plants which keen self-analysis, frank 

 searching of our own methods to see if they are right, would disclose and 

 remove. There has been, as there has been among our manufacturers, a 

 prevailing unbelief in their own power to compete which has held back the 

 growth of ability to compete. Few things are more expensive than unbelief. 

 A mine superintendent in Pennsylvania allowed a modern fan to lie six 

 months unused because it was so much smaller than its predecessor that 

 he did not believe it would work. A shipyard engineer refused for two 

 years even to have submitted to him apparatus that the navies and merchant 

 marine of European nations had in regular service. The chief engineer of 

 a steamship company had to die before the line was allowed to take advan- 

 tage of modern apparatus. Are not ships to-day rather too much the result 

 of the searching by draftsmen among old drawings than the deliberate plan- 

 ning of wise and free-minded progressive designing engineers? Just as the 

 shadow of the day when we could not compete with Europe still so projects 

 itself over many of our factories that they do not now know they can com- 

 pete, so in a measure the inability of the past in our shipyards still acts as 

 a bar on progress in many a plant in this country. What we did or do is no 

 sure measure of what can be done. 



