The St. Johns herald., 1900-03-31
The Demand for Them Now Fax
 Exceeds the Supply.
Germany Suffers frem . GreaAeS Shortage Than Any Other Ma. tion-What Has Caused the
 Scarcity.


 number of men in the service of the German navy was 23, 400, including the officers and engineers and few sur geons, guOsmiths and paymasters- From Berlin it is reported that with the rapid growth and proposed further increase of the German navy there has been an increasing scarcity of trained young sailors. A few years ago Ger many furnished a large part of the crews of English vessels, but to-day the crews of German vessels are partly composed of foreigners. With the doub- ling of the German navy, as contem- plated, this difficulty will increase and steps are being taken to meet it. At Bremen the North German Lloyd com pany is organizing cadet school to train young men for the company. service.
 The demand for additional sailors in Germany, is not limited to the govern meDt service, however, for the two chief German lines of ocean steam ships have, collectively, crewC of 4,s00 sailors, exclusive of the lines connect ing German ports with other countries in the enormous and constantly in- creasing German shipping trade. Here tofore country supplying many other countries with sailors has been Sweden, but the increase of foreign commerce of that country and the demand for Swedish sailors for Russian ships has diminished the number of such sailors available. Moreover, Germany is only one of the countries in which there has recently been an extensive development of the naval armament and an enlarged demand in consequence for sailors.
 At the beginning Of the year 1898 the total number of men in the naval serv- ice of Great Britain was 100000, of whom 70,000 were officially described as officers and seamen." and 10000 were marines" Since then a further in- crease of COCO naval men has been au- thorized and the transport service of the English government to South Af- rica has made necessary the increase in the number of sailors.
 There has been a very considerable increase of sailors in consequence of the enlargement and improvement of the United States navy, and the demand for them in the merchant marine of the country has been increasing core spondiprly. The American line eni- ploys 2,5O0 sailors, GRd the enlargement of ocean travel this next summer to and from the Paris exposition will make further demands upon the service of sailors in all transatlantic lines. Two European countries which are adding considerable to their naval equipment are France and Russia, and the in- creased Dutch commerce makes neces- sary the employment of consider able number of D. 'ch seamen under the home flag, Dutch sailors having excellent repute and numbering in all more than 10000, of whom less than 10000 are in the naval service of the country.
 Sailors almost uniformly, it is an axiom of the sea, come from countries having a large water coast and from parts of the country nearest to the coast line. There are, it is computed, quarter of million sailors connect ed with the nayies of the various countries and 750,0O0 sailors employed iH commercial navigation, England, the United States and Sweden ranking in this order in that regard. Ger many, France, Italy and Holland are large commercial nations, too, and 1t has been observed generally that Ger man sailors come from the northern provinces of the country, particularly the Baltic and the North sea, while French sailors almost uniformly are drawn from the two provinces of Brit tany and Normandy.
 The threatened dearth of available sailors, which some German compa- nies are seeking to provide against by the establishment of cadet school, affects other countries as we'll, and unless all indications are at fault the demand for sailors next summer will be more extensive than ever before in the worlds history.-N. '. Sun.