"The ocean freight market has been so low during the past two years that at times the ship agents have offered to transport grain to Liverpool and London for nothing, to take it as ballast. Recently we have shipped corn from Boston to London at a price less than that ... less than nothing, owing to duties the port dues in London, which absorbed more than the freight rate received." The conditions described by Mr. Patton are out of the ordinary, of course, but conditions which have kept the dividends of the well-subsidized Cunard Company under 3 per cent have prevailed for thirteen years. The company was able to earn the 8 per cent dividend in 1900 only because the war with the Boers created an extraordinary demand for ships to be used as transports, and these having been taken from the general carrying-trade freight rates rose to an abnormal point. Leaving out the abnormal dividend of 1900, the average distribution has been but 2.8 per cent. The ocean carrying-trade is performed by two distinct classes of services; the line traffic, like that of the Cunard Company, and the independent cargo carrier or tramp service. The tramp will go anywhere and at any time for a charter price. The income received by the tramps is as uncertain as that of a prospector in the mining region. In spite of the ease with which the demand for tonnage is telegraphed around the world the tramps accumulate on this or that coast in numbers far beyond all needs of the trade, and rates drop to a point where many of them are glad to get away in ballast. At such a time, however, a lucky (perhaps a far-seeing) owner has a ship at a port barren of tonnage, and receives for a cargo that must go quickly a price that pays half the cost of the ship. It is the lucky stroke that keeps the seafaring people hoping against hope, just as the prospector remembers how Creede, of Colorado, made a million out of the Amethyst.