28 Alec Wilson on 



fill Glasgow firm started by the inventions of Lord Kelvin, 

 himself a Beifastman by birth and early education ; and then — 

 well, it must be confessed that veiy commonly the final ceremony 

 is closely connected with a whiskey-and-soda and a cigar I 



Let us, as we see her now, leaving the Lough, floating high 

 in the water since she has no cargo on board, estimate 

 in a rough fashion what this great industry means to Belfast 

 and to L^eland. A boat like this takes about two and a 

 half year-s to build. She costs her owners about £1,500,000, of 

 which sum a very large ijroi>ortion goes to pay the wages of 

 Belfast artizans. Nor is the smaller class of vessel negligible. 

 The average annual output of the two Belfast yards may exceed 

 160,000 tons, made up of boats of very various sizes. Taking the 

 two firms together the wages sheets must run up to about £35,000 

 per week, or not much less than £2,000,000 a year, In very round 

 figures we see that the Belfast working man gets somewhere 

 about £10 in wages for every ton gross built in the yards. 

 The rest of the cost is of course the price of raw materials, wood, 

 steel, &c., and of fittings and machinery not made locally, as well 

 as builders' standing charges and profits, — and the amount of 

 these items again, of course, varies continually. 



Li the variovis branches of the industry, employment is 

 given, often very highly skilled and highly paid, to members 

 of something like 150 different trades ; and, since the great 

 majority of the employees are the family breadwinners, it is 

 probable that about one-fourth of the population of Belfast lives 

 directly upon the work of the yards. Indirectly, a large 

 l»roportion of the other inhabitants of the city and district 

 lives by supplying the wants of those who actually earn money 

 in the yards. Taking Ireland only, if by some catastrophe the 

 shipbuilding industry were to cease, it would mean the ruin or 

 emigration of probably not less than 250,000 souls. 



Let us watch a well-known scene in Belfast. When the 

 horn bloAVS to quit work the roads, leading away from the various 



