"The extraordinary fact which presses itself upon our notice from the foregoing details by trials consists in the difference in power required in the two vessels to produce nearly identical speed ... 2050 H. P., economized by the screw, propelled the _Himalaya_ at about the same speed as 3016 H. P., transmitted by paddles, propelled the _Atrato_." The _New York Journal of Commerce_ published the following warning in 1857:-- "While we are learning [to build steamships] England is using her advantages. Their merchants, captains, engineers, and sailors are carrying on our trade, and taking the bread from our mouths." Congressman Nelson Dingley, Jr., of Maine, a prominent advocate of the subsidy system, in an article in the _North American Review_, dated April, 1884, said:-- "At the time Great Britain accepted our invitation to participate, on equal terms in the business of" transportation (it was in 1849), "experiments in iron ship building and steam propulsion were going on in that country, which, _as early as 1855, began to work a revolution in marine architecture_.... _This revolution_ from wood to iron and sails to steam _at once_ began to deprive the American merchant marine of" the advantages it had enjoyed. The total number of British steamers receiving mail pay, or subsidy, in 1857, was 121, including the vessels plying to Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Orkneys, and other near-by points; among which was one line sending two steamers a day over its route. (See _Nautical Magazine_, September, 1857.) The total number of steamers under the British flag, in 1857, was 2132 (Rep. Com. of Nav. for 1901, p. 472). It is manifest that the mail pay aided the 121 steamers thus favored; it is equally manifest that the 2011 unsubsidized steamers were not only obliged to depend on their intrinsic merit for profit, but they were obliged to compete on unfair terms in all the trades (like that from Liverpool to New York) where the subsidized steamers were employed. The progress made by the British iron screw steamer thereafter was pointed out by John Roach, in the course of his testimony, quoted above, when he said (p. 177) he "had found out by personal examination that there were 119 iron steamships plying between the ports of America and Great Britain. Of that number 110 were running to the port of New York."