When that contract is out of the way the yard will enter the business of building merchant vessels, just as several yards, which long had their only support from naval contracts, are now doing.
There were built in the year ending June 30, 1901, in American yards, 112 vessels of over 1000 tons each, or a total of 311,778.

Many of these were lake vessels; some were wooden ships.

Of modern steel steamers, built on the seaboard, there were but sixteen.

At the present moment there are building in American yards, or contracted for, almost 255,325 tons of steel steamships, to be launched within a year--or 89 vessels, more than twice the output of any year in our history, and an impressive earnest for the future.

Nor is this rapid increase in the ship-building activity of the United States accompanied by any reduction in the wages of the American working men.