But its close connection with the Mercantile Marine prosperity can be seen at once. For one steamship line alone used to take from there 30,000 emigrants annually. They used to run three steamships a month during the winters when bad harvests had caused the people to leave their homes for the New World, and each of these ships was carrying most of 2000. Then, having made $500 in America, they would for the most part return, and thus there was still further traffic for the shipping. The Austrian Lloyd Company owned about eighty steamships, though chiefly of small tonnage, but some were built in Trieste of about 4000 tons. With one steamship company the Hungarian Government actually entered into a contract, to last ten years, by which the former were to be guaranteed 30,000 emigrants a year; and a bonus of a hundred francs was to be paid for every passenger short of that number. It cannot be too much emphasised that the emigrant traffic has been one of the foundations of some steamship companies. During the war the direct services from Scandinavia to America were strengthened; but the French emigrant traffic has never been great. Before the war the Italian steamship lines were largely under German influence. No emigrants could be carried to or from Italy except in a licensed ship; and a vessel more than three years old, not previously employed in the Italian service, could not receive a licence unless her speed was at least eighteen knots. But from the European continent by far the greatest emigrant traffic went from Bremen and Rotterdam in the two big German lines. The present position of Holland and Spain, almost at the bottom of the list, shows pathetically that a country which in its day has been the greatest sea-carrier, which owned and built the finest ships in the world, may in a century or more be pushed out of the struggle unless her fighting fleet is able to secure free passage for the merchant vessels. Holland, at least, owns a small fleet of first-class liners, principally for the North American trade and to the Dutch East Indies. With regard to the former, Rotterdam has been to them a useful port for attracting a good many emigrants every year. Prior to the war the German lines were too wise to compete against the Dutch, preferring not to separate forces in concentrating against the Cunard and White Star Lines. Most Dutch steamship lines enjoy a measure of support from the Dutch railways, but in the past there was also a good deal of support from Germany. [Illustration: [_Photo, Henry Hughes & Son, Ltd._ A FAST-DISAPPEARING SHIP TYPE. Steam and motors have almost banished the full-rigged ship from the Mercantile Marine, but a very few still survive.]