To go back a little, it may be worth while to remark here that the national misfortune did not even end with the failure of these bills, and the consequent continued depression or paralysis of the American foreign carrying trade. There was from time to time sufficient prospect, or at least possibility, of the passage of a practical and effective law for the aid and encouragement of American shipping to induce the investment of a large amount of capital by sanguine persons in new ship-building plants of considerable magnitude, whereby the trade as it stood was not only greatly overdone, but the skilled ship-building labor of the country was overdrawn. There seemed to be a theory that plenty of money to invest in plant or to sink in unprofitable enterprises could be depended on to make up for the lack of experience in the management of shipyards and want of skill in ship-building labor. The result was disastrous not only to the investors in the stock and bonds of the new shipyards, but also to the entire ship-building industry, as it had been developed on a practical and legitimate basis. With the final failure of all legislation to promote American commerce in the foreign carrying trade, there was no resource left for either the new shipyards or the old except such work as the coastwise trade might provide and the construction of naval vessels. As for the coastwise trade, it was already well provided with new and highly serviceable steamships likely to fill the demands of the traffic for several years to come, so that little or no new work could be expected from that quarter. The naval programme did not in any year put forward as many ships as there were ship-yards. The government itself seemed to adopt the policy of fostering and promoting the new shipyards at the expense of the old, whereby the former were overloaded with work which they could not do, and they invariably became so hopelessly delinquent as to make the time clause of the contracts an utter farce. New shipyards, which had never completed a ship of any description, were loaded with 15,000 and 16,000-ton battleships of the most complex and difficult construction, requiring the highest skill and the most approved experience in every respect to carry on the work required for their completion.