Admiral Bowles testified before the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs at its hearing on submarine boats. He was at that time chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repair of the Navy Department, and his statement at that time is entitled to the serious consideration of your committee, because it was that of a government expert, and is true in every respect. This hearing before the Senate committee is printed and the hearing took place on May 29, 1902. Admiral Bowles's testimony can be found in Senate Document 395, 1st Session, 57th Congress, page 82. He said that the Holland boats ought not to cost more than $89,489, and in this sum he said he had allowed an ample profit, and in addition had included $11,000 for experiments and tests. Admiral Bowles is now president of the Fore River Shipbuilding Company, and is building the submarine boats that the Navy contracted for last year, and they are now being built under my old plans and patents, so alleged. If your committee will call upon the present Chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repairs, he will undoubtedly inform you that he can build in the Brooklyn Navy Yard my submarine boats as quickly and as expeditiously as they can be built by the Fore River Shipbuilding Company. I am a poor man, while the Electric Boat Company has among its principal stockholders three or four millionaires, including August Belmont, Isaac L. Rice, and others. The capital stock of that company is ten million dollars. They have deprived me, by their flimsy lawsuit, from getting capital to build a boat under my new inventions and patents, and are now asking Congress to pass a law which will prevent the Navy Department from adopting my new plans and inventions, even should the entire department consider that they are far superior in every way to the plans now being used by that department. I do not believe that your committee will commit itself to this monopoly which is against the interest of the government. I am advised by my attorneys that as soon as the suits of the Electric Boat Company can be reached and tried the Court will undoubtedly dismiss them, but in the meanwhile they act as an injunction against me, as they prevent my enlisting capital which is timid and dreads a lawsuit. Very respectfully,