ADDRESS OF HON. WILLIAM C. REDFIELD. 387 



East. It is also a fact that the price of material and of shipping is very much 

 higher abroad than it has been for long. An English company on the Lakes, 

 which has had its ships built abroad, is now having two built in Canada 

 because of the high foreign price. Possibly this condition may be temporary, 

 but the fact that it is here shows its possibility beyond all doubt and should 

 be a stimulus for those to whom it is an advantage. Given the progress 

 already made while our shipbuilding work w^as done at retail, for which our 

 builders are to be highly commended ; add to it the greater progress that 

 may come from standardized ships, for which four important orders are 

 already under way, as we have seen; given the fact that steel costs less to 

 make here than it does abroad, of which fact there should be no doubt — nor as 

 to its continuance, when we are exporting two hundred and fifty million 

 dollars' worth of steel each year — there is room, in my judgment as a manu- 

 facturer, for the belief that, with the normal allowance of time necessary 

 for such a development, we shall build ships here as cheaply as anywhere. 

 I think it is reasonable to expect this — not to-day, but in the near future — as 

 a normal evolution out of past and present facts. 



But now arises the bogey of operating cost, and we are told that the 

 cost of wages paid on American ships is such as to prohibit their use in sea- 

 borne traffic. Here again, if we are told it does so prohibit, that is a fact 

 we may accept, but it is a very different thing to say therefore it need so pro- 

 hibit. If five years ago we could not make engines cheaply enough to sell 

 them abroad, that was no reason for beUeving we never could do so. We 

 do it now, and I may be permitted to point out that the ratio of wages to cost 

 is not a fixed but a flexible fact. It is large or small in proportion to the out- 

 put. There are no elements here that do not apply in manufacturing. A 

 man at $4 per day, if he be properly equipped, produces goods more cheaply 

 far than a man at $2 a day who has not the means of efficiency, and the latter, 

 if he becomes efficient, speedily rises in his wage rate but not in the cost of his 

 products. Whether, therefore, the wage rate of running an American ship is 

 to be controlling or not depends upon other matters besides the wage rate — 

 namely, upon the output you get in the goods the ship produces — that is, 

 transportation. I believe it is true that one of the lowest, if not the lowest, 

 freight rate in the world is in American ships with highly paid labor. 



Ore is carried on the Great Lakes at the rate of .05 of a cent per ton-mile. 



