For the riches of the country were only beginning to be developed. Mines and manufactures, railroads and so on were now needing all the available capital. The New England shipyards, which for many years had been so valuable owing to the ample supplies of timber ready to hand, became unwanted in proportion as the Clyde, with its adjacent coalfields, was becoming more important for building ships of iron and then steel. It would be untrue to say that America ignored the building of iron ships, and in the early ’seventies she was interested in a mild way. The ’eighties passed without much enthusiasm for the subject, and then in 1894 and following year the Cramp shipyard launched the two fine transatlantic liners _St. Louis_ and _St. Paul_, both being constructed of steel. There were many other steel ships built, and orders were received from abroad, but, broadly speaking, and in strict reference to merchant ships and not warships, America was not even now a shipbuilding country. Those splendid schooners with which the port of Gloucester is for ever associated, and those other sailing craft along the American coast do not alter the statement, nor do the vessels on the American lakes and rivers. We are thinking of ocean-going ships, which are the essential feature of any Mercantile Marine. The trade between the Atlantic and Pacific ports still remained for the old full-rigged clippers, because there were not enough cargoes east-bound to make it worth while for the steamship. And so America went on, content to allow her Merchant Service to be comparatively small and unprogressive. But once again it required a war to call the national mind to consider what a Mercantile Marine means to a country. The Spanish war of 1898 did this to the extent that there was aroused a strong support for the Panama Canal project. The Act permitting this dates from 1892, and it is really from this year that the new phase begins, though only gradually. If you make direct and shorter roads on land leading to important trading centres, you obviously at once attract trade. If in the same manner you shorten communications by sea, it will have a similar effect. Quite apart from its warlike strategic value, which is outside our subject, the theory of the Panama Canal was based on the fact that it would reduce the sea route from New York to San Francisco by most of 8000 miles, and to Sydney and Yokohama by about 4000 miles. The 1892 Act also authorised admission to American registry of foreign-built vessels not more than five years old.