Mr. Lynch’s bill, although it may be described as the pioneer effort for the resurrection of the American merchant marine, proposed in concise form and plain, easily comprehensible terms, without any unnecessary verbiage or circumlocution, as practical and as sensible a system of subvention as has ever been put forward since. It was comprehensive in its scope, universal in its application, and liberal in its provisions. Later bills, more elaborately framed and more diffuse in their verbiage, have hardly improved upon the simple matter of fact form in which Mr. Lynch embodied his proposed policy. This was the beginning of a Parliamentary war between American ship-owners on the one hand and the influence of foreign steamship companies on the other; a war which has at this writing lasted more than thirty years. One subsidy was granted by Congress at this early date, that of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company; but hardly had that subsidy begun to operate, when an exposure of certain methods by which it was procured brought about a great public scandal, which for the time-being put a peremptory end to the whole policy. Whether the charge that the Pacific Mail subsidy was obtained by corrupt methods was true or not, the means in obtaining it were no more corrupt than those which have been employed by foreign steamship interests to defeat legislation in Congress favorable to American shipping from time to time ever since. Notwithstanding these discouraging conditions, a group of Pennsylvania capitalists formed “the American Steamship Company,” and decided in 1871 to try the experiment of an American Line to Liverpool. They contracted with the Cramp firm for four first-class steamships, to be superior in sea speed, comfort, and other desirable qualities to any foreign steamship then in service. These four ships were designed by Mr. Cramp, and built under his superintendence between 1871 and 1873 inclusive, and were put in service under the names of the “Indiana,” “Illinois,” “Pennsylvania,” and “Ohio,” now commonly known as the old American Line. That these ships were designed with the highest degree of ability and constructed with the utmost skill is sufficiently attested by the fact that they are all in serviceable condition at this writing (1903), over thirty years old. These ships broke the record in speed which was held by the “City of Brussels,” and consumed less than half of the coal in doing it. As soon as the construction of these ships had been awarded to his Company, Mr. Cramp determined to examine the conditions of marine-engine development abroad, and with that object in view sailed immediately for Europe. His narrative of the trip and its results are as follows: VISIT TO BRITISH SHIPYARDS.