Evening star., 1901-06-08

industry are ready. capital 10 resdy-and
1 perhaps capital now is making actually the
/ first move.
In any case. the conviction that the pur-
| chases OF the Red Star. Leyland and At
| lantic transport lines. taken In connection,
+, with the surveys OF the Brest and Lisbon
| routes. constitute a first act In the forma-
! tion of a gigantic maritime trust. in which
French capital is to have its part, is some
thing now well fixed in the Paris mind. IL
would be more difficult .5 iicorner" al the
steamship lines Of the world. France has:
FEench and English Lines.
The Messageries Maritimes CMarseiles
and Bordeaux. serving the Mediterranean.
the Black Sea. Indo-China the Indian
ocean. Australia. Brazil and the Plata
The Compagnis Generate TransatIantiaue
tHavre and Marseiiies). serving North
America. Central America and Algiers. IL
mas forty-eight passenger boats. ten cargo
boats and ten steam launches.
The Compagnie Fraissinet tMarsaillas,
serving Algiers. Italy and Greece.
The Compagnie des Chargeurs Reunis
serving Brazil. The Plata, the west coast
or Africa, the Transvaal and Madagascar.
The Compagnie Cyprien Fabre and sixty
seven other French companies whose liners
world. '
1t would be impracticable to give a list
OF the 1so British maritime companies
There is the Peninsular and Oriental Steam
Navigation Company. whose feet comprises
nity-four liners. from the Persia (s opO tons
anu anu iioeo horse power) to the Osiris C2,oOO
tons ana $3.50 horse powerl. This COMPANY
mas In construction six new liners of tan,
tons each and 1890 horse power each
Apart from the well-known transatlantic
mes England has the Orient line, the
British India Steam Navigation Company
the Pacific Steam Navigation Company
and all the fleets that ply to South Amer
lea, Australia Africa and India.
Many Other Companies.
germany Is credited with thirty-three
maritime companies, the most of them hav-
ing their seats in Hamburg and Bremen.
The Hamburg-American line alone has
hlnety-three boats, at the head of whose
list Is the record-holding Deutschland with
her l6.oo2 tons. There is the Nord-
Deutscher Lloyd the Deutsch Dampfschif
fahrt Gesellchaft Hansa of Bremen. the
Hamburg-South American Company which
possesses thirty-two boats of between 1000
ana 1900 tons each; the Deutsch- Dampf-
Schinahrts Gesellschaft kosmos with its
twenty-eight boats: the Woermann line
with its twenty-five boats not to mention
tramp steamer business almost as COM
plicated as that of Great Britain.
Even little Spain has twenty-three navi-
cation companies. Italy has nine of which
the Florio and Rubattno fleets are the
richest and most important. Belgium has
twelve companies. nearly all having their
seats in Antwerp. Austria has four COM
panies, one of which, the Austrian Lloyd
has great renown in the orient Trieste
and Fiume are the Austrian ports. Holland
mas twenty-five companies. Portugal three,
Russia four, Greece two, Norway and Swe-
den thirteen and Denmark four. The
United States is put down as having forty
two maritime lines, serving the Atlantic
and Pacific. Canada has four lines and Aus
tralia five. There are also three Japanese
companies-the Nippon Yusen, Kaisha the
Osaka Nosen Kwaisha. and the Toyo Risen.
Il lNltS hi afSkNa Ono
Roumanian company. The trust that would
be capable of dealing with such a vast
amount of material has not yet been
formed.
In Striking Contrast.
When Sir Arthur Phillip. in 17Ss. con-
Quoted the first convoy OF convicts to Aus
tralia he navigated seven months and a
half before casting anchor in Botany Bay.
Today the Messageries Maritimes make the
voyage between Marseilles and Sydney in
thirty-four days and certain English liners
make even better time. At the time of the
restoration the passage between New York
and Liverpool took twenty-eight days, and
contrary winds would delay still more.
This year the record holding transatlantic
liner. leaving New York, sighted Plymouth
in a few hours over five days The racers
of the new Lisbon-New York route will
sight land (FayaD within three days after
losing sight of land on the home side.
A learned delegate of the Academy of
Moral Sciences, Monsieur Levasseur bas
been moralizing on these things. Steam has
transformed our manners and ways of fy
ing, he says. Note, in the first place, that
IL II has brought commercial rates to a
dead level it has done the same thing for
certain social conditions. In the middle
ages the common man went a-foot and the
gentleman went on horseback. In the times
of the diligences the majority of peasants
and workingmen still went on foot. because
stage coaches were rare and prices were
high. The middle classes Travelled urcom-
fOrtably packed inside and outside the
coaches while the wealthy and noble, loid-
ing 1t from their pOst-chaises, threw coun-
try taverns into excitement by the fact of
their arrival Today rich and poor profit
by the same railway speed. while the poor
have a manifest advantage in the cheap
steerage rates of the great ocean liners.
most the same security. The difference OF
class is only in the spaci0usness Of cabins,
the variety of food. the luxury Of fittings
and decoration and the sOftneSS of cushions
Ellie de Beaumont writing three-quarters
of a century ago. declared that popula-
tion born and living the granite soil of
Lim0usin could not think like that of the
1le-de-France. Such distinctions are almost
worn away Thanks to the great maritime
lines of the world, western civilization is
colonizing every land and leveling all diff
ferences. Monsieur Levasseur estimates
that If, in the year 1900, there Were living
outside of Europe only 100000 born Eu-
ropeans and their descendants, there were
in 1900 more than 120,eO0,0O such. The
Morgan syndicate may therefore go ahead.
1t can only do Well, even though its object
should be selfish. STERLING HETLIG.