Accepting the Commission's statement that the subsidies would prove sufficient to place the more expensive American ships upon an equality with the foreign, and "a little more," as was said, it may be assumed that the new lines would eventually employ sixty or seventy ships. At $5 a ton the $10,000,000 might put afloat from 300 to 400 modern cargo carriers. Thus we should, at best, about double our present registered fleet, which, in 1908, numbered 478 ships. But if we compare that fleet with the German, which now numbers more than 2500 ships, or with the British, which now numbers more than 4000, we shall see that even under the best circumstances we should yet be a far cry from the supremacy of which we made boast in other days. Indeed, the fleet of liners would not number as many ships as the Standard Oil Company now employs to carry abroad its products, while the fleet of cargo carriers could not be compared, with any satisfaction, to the fleet now in use by the allied German companies of which mention has been made. And the ships thus to be set afloat, as they crossed the seas, would proclaim to the world that they were in the carrying trade, not by right of efficiency, but by grace of a subsidy. But now we are to consider whether any subsidy heretofore proposed would really be sufficient to sustain either liner or tramp. The effect of such ships upon freight rates, for instance, was stated before the Merchant Marine Commission, by B. N. Baker, formerly president of the Atlantic Transport Company, and an advocate of the subsidy system. He said:-- "If you added any more to the open sea traffic (the foreign traffic) of the United States than 100,000 tons a year you would so demoralize the general carrying business in rates, both as to freight and passengers, it would be so unprofitable that no one could go into it, _unless you would double, and triple that compensation_." The effect of that building programme upon the organized mechanics of our shipyards--the strikes for higher wages, and the consequent increase of prices--need only be mentioned. Then figure up the expense of the war between the lines from New York to South Africa in 1902, wherein ships lost $15,000 in a single voyage. Manifestly the American liners would need all of their subsidy ($15,625, per voyage) to meet the reductions in freight rates which the opposition would make. They would thus be no better off than they would be if they were permitted to enter the trade on even terms with the present lines--without war and without subsidy. The line to Brazil would yet have to face the disadvantages due to the triangular service which British ships maintain, though the decreasing exports of American food products would reduce those disadvantages somewhat.