The islander. [volume] (Friday Harbor, Wash.) 1891-1899, 1897-05-20

For our imports we pay the foreign mar
ket price plus the freight.
No fne-spun theory of any clustered or
collegiate doctrinaire can wipe out these
facts.
The fact that so long as the freight is
paid to foreign ship-owner, so long will
it be foreign profit on a foreign product,
is fundamental and unanswerable.
The English steamship is foreign pro-
duct, and it's earnings, which we pay, are
a foreign profit.
No sane man will argue that foreign
profit on a foreign product can be do
nestle benefit.
Add to this the fact, equally important,
that the carrier of commerce controls its
exchanges and the conditions of CONNER
cal financial and industrial subjugation is
complete. Such is our condition to-day.
Great Britain has many outlying col
onies and dependencies.
The greatest two are India and the
United States.
by her control of that country costs her
something. She had to pay something for
her financial and commercial drainage of
India.
She holds the United States by the folly
of its own people, whereby her control of
this country costs her nothing. She has
to pay nothing for her financial and COM
mercial drainage of the United States.
But the amount of her annual drainage
of gold from the United States far ex
ceeds that from India.
Therefore, the United States is by far
the most valuable of all dependencies of
Great Britain.
In the relation of England to India there
is something pitiable because India is
helpless.
In the relation of the United States to
England there is nothing that is not con-
temptible, because it is the willing servi-
tude of a nation that could help herself
if she would
England is wide awake to these condi-
tons and keenly appreciates their price
less value to her.
The United States blnks at them. half
dazed, half asleep, insensible of their ire
mendous damage to her.
England clearly seeing that, in this age,
more than ever before, ocean-empire is
world-empire, strains every nerve to per-
petuate her sea power and exhausts her
resources to double rivet the letters which
it fastens upon mankind.
Though in 1885 England already had
navy superior to those of any two and
equal to those of any three other powers,
her new navy, with what remains most
available of the old one, overshadows the
world and makes the sea as much British
territory as the county of Middlesex.
Since 1885 England has expended $751;
100000 for new ships of war and their
armament During eleven years she has
built thirty eight frst-class battleships,
three second-class battleships, nine ar
mored cruisers, twenty frst-class cruis-
ers, ffty-one second-class cruisers: thir-
ty-three third-class cruisers; thirty gun
boats; twelve composite sloops, and sew
enty-four torpedo destroyers, including
the vessels authorized in the current
years program.
The aggregate is 27O vessels of 1885,
SIS tons total displacement, 1874, 100
horse power.
OF the navy England already had in
1885, there remain available AZ armored
ships, "a cruisers, II sloops, 10 gunboats
and 90 torpedo boats, which she is re-en-
ginning, rearming and otherwise modern
izing as rapidly as she can.
In personnel afoat she has augmented
her force from 81, 800 in 1885 to 100, 800
in the estimates for 1897.
In other words, England has doubled
her navy in personnel and material and
more than quadrupled it in warlike eff
cheney during eleven years of the pro-
foundest peace the world ever saw.
Even greater exertions has England put
forth in the augmentation of her mer-
chant marine. During the calendar year
1896 she added 1,3SO,O tons of new
steel steam shipping to her merchant
fleet, breaking up meantime $4,000 tons
of old and obsolete shipping which could
no longer be operated profitably; a net
addition of $4,000 tons to the total of her
merchant marine by the register. but a
practical addition of the whole 1850, 600
tons, because the $40, 900 tons broken up
had doae iu work for her aggrandiza- !