The German railroads, which are owned by the government, not only give low rates on goods intended for export, but extremely low rates are provided for all materials used in building ships. The fact that special rates on railroads are used to promote the German merchant marine is worth serious consideration in the United States, even though such rates are here viewed with suspicion. The national laws governing our railroads, as enforced now (1910), are in some respects an incubus upon legitimate and praiseworthy enterprise. Through ignorance and prejudice the efforts of our transportation lines to increase our export trade have been seriously hampered. Unquestionably subsidies and special rates were provided to extend German influence by means of shipping. The payment of bounties has been one feature of the expansion of German shipping. To assert that the bounty has been the sole, or even the chief, cause of that expansion, however, is to misstate the facts. The experience of France, for instance, shows conclusively that a subsidy in itself is not enough to create a merchant marine. Although the French subsidy is so liberal that French cargo carriers are able to sail half-way around the world in ballast to get a cargo at rates that would be less than cost of maintenance for any other ship, the French merchant marine grows so slowly as to justify the assertion, made by the late Captain John Codman, that the French mariners are working against a fiat of nature. The tonnage of 1881, 914,000, was but 1,952,000 in 1908. Further than that the German subsidies have been less than those paid by the British (especially those paid to the Cunard Company), and yet German steamers are steadily encroaching upon those of the British. The reason for the progress of German shipping is readily found in the spirit and habits of the people. Consider the work of the patient, spectacled scientist in his laboratory--his methods and his aims; consider the growth of the factory system; consider the effect of the training which all men receive in the army or navy--how the whole people learn to move as one man, and as comrades, for the attainment of a worthy national object; consider how all the people--the men with the hoe as well as the men behind the guns--are stirred by an attack, or a seeming attack, upon the Fatherland. The effect of government bounties upon German shipping is like that seen when the spectacled German professor of agriculture applies inorganic fertilizers to crops planted in well-cultivated, humus-filled soils. The effect in France, and other nations not well prepared for expansion, is like that when those fertilizers are applied to arid, acid, uncultivated land. In Germany the soil for the production of shipping was in excellent condition before the fertilizer was applied. What is the condition of that soil in the United States?