He was a great and successful manufacturer, a man of broad and keen business instincts, and he thought that any scheme calculated to disburse about seven million dollars among the workingmen and steel mills of the United States was well worthy the earnest attention and the best officers of the most dignified Ambassador. Imbued with such ideas, Mr. Hitchcock helped Mr. Cramp all he could. He may not have been as noisy about it as the German Ambassador or as strenuously in evidence as the French Ambassador, but he was none the less active or effective in his efforts to subserve and promote the interests of his country and her citizens. The maw-worm doctrine of Buchanan and the raven-like croaking of Bayard were lost upon such a man. Taking the situation altogether, it is safe to say, so far as diplomatic representation was concerned, the commercial and industrial interests of the United States and of American citizens in the Russian Empire were quite as well guarded in 1898 as were those of France and Germany. The third element of opposition which Mr. Cramp had to encounter and overcome was of a purely technical or mechanical character. His plans involved installation of water-tube boilers of the Niclausse type. But up to that moment, ever since the adoption of the water-tube system by the Russian navy, the Belleville type of boiler had held undisputed sway there. The enormous wealth of the Belleville people, their straightway, open-handed mode of doing business with naval officials, not only in Russia but in England as well, and their aptness in placing valuable things where they would do the most good, were all notorious. They had for some time admitted that the Niclausse system was their most formidable rival, and naturally they were ready to exhaust their resources to prevent its introduction into the Russian navy, where their monopoly, up to that time, had been perfect and invulnerable. This discussion was, of course, carried on wholly between Mr. Cramp and the Russian technical authorities. It was a subject that could not be touched by diplomacy or by personal influence; a contest to be fought out wholly on the mechanical merits of the respective systems and decided entirely by skilled judgment. In this kind of contest Mr. Cramp was at home, and he won. His staple argument was that for any naval power to surrender itself to a single type of proprietary boiler, thereby creating a monopoly against itself, could not be else than unwise; that the era of water-tube boilers was still in the experimental stage, that perfection was yet to be developed, and was doubtless a long way off. Exhaustive trials already made had demonstrated a wide range of efficiency and consequent merit in the Niclausse system, and while it was no part of his contention to decry or depreciate the rival type, comparative performances of official record beyond dispute argued that sound marine engineering policy would forbid the exclusion of the Niclausse system.