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largest profits now come from the traffic below second class, and the steamship companies have discovered that the volume of low-class traffic may be largely increased.

A recent statement issued by the Cunard Steamship Company in advertising the Caronia, a ship of twenty thousand tons gross, put into service in 1905, may be cited to illustrate the policy of one of the companies that is making special efforts to develop third-class traffic. "For some years past," the company states, "the business of the Atlantic ferry has been changing in character. There has been a growing demand for second-class accommodation.

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ARRANGEMENT OF THE ENGINES, SHAFTS, AND PROPELLERS OF THE Carmania.

Luxurious travel for those who can afford to pay high prices, very unluxurious travel for those whose means run only to steerage fares, with a somewhat timid and indifferent concession to the intermediate clientele, will no longer meet the case. Like the railway companies ashore, so the steamship companies afloat have discovered that it is to their interest to cultivate the second- and third-class passenger" traffic.

In the Caronia and its sister ship, the Carmania, the second-class passengers are given accommodations but slightly less comfortable than those provided the first class. However, it is in the third class that the most important

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step has been taken. The Cunard Company has recognized the fact that "there is a large class of steerage passengers who are not emigrants, and that this traffic is capable of great expansion." To accommodate the steerage passengers who are not emigrants in such a way as to make the voyage attractive to them, the Cunard Company has divided the steerage into two classes, one class being for the emigrants, and a higher class being for

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steerage passengers who are not emigrants. Accommodation is provided for one thousand emigrants and one thousand third-class passengers. The third-class passengers may engage reserved berths in staterooms. Their accommodations are provided with bathrooms and with a separate dining saloon, and their quarters are equipped with electric fans to provide adequate ventilation.

The competition of ocean steamship companies with

each other to secure the passenger traffic has resulted-as has been true with interrailway competition in the United States in the development of a faster and more luxurious service, but has not brought about a decrease in the fares charged for the first and second classes. European railways have long since recognized that the greater profits were to be obtained by making attractive the service provided for passengers traveling in classes below the second, and foreign railway companies have catered to the lower classes of traffic with the result that there has been an enormous increase in the persons traveling in the third and lower class. The ocean steamship lines are apparently adopting the policy of the European railway companies, by catering to the lower classes of traffic, where there are the greatest possibilities of increasing the volume of business. The general adoption of this policy by ocean steamship companies will doubtless have the same effect that the policy has had in the railway passenger traffic, where the trend of traffic has been from the upper to the lower classes.

REFERENCE FOR FURTHER READING

"The Statistical Abstract of the United States," prepared by the Bureau of Statistics, Department of Commerce and Labor. (This annual publication gives the figures regarding ocean passenger travel and immigration.)

CHAPTER VII

THE OCEAN MAIL SERVICE

DURING the year ending June 30, 1905, there were 12,684,821 pounds (6,342 tons) of mail dispatched by sea from the United States, and it is probable that the weight of incoming mail matter was nearly as much. About one fourth of our outbound over-sea mail went to three countries Great Britain, Germany, and France-and over half of the total went to European countries. It is estimated that the number of pieces of mail matter sent and received in the foreign mails (including those carried by rail to and from Canada and Mexico) during the fiscal year 1905 was 441,774,494. The rapidity of the growth of the foreign-mail service may be indicated by comparing the figures just given with those for 1890, when the weight of mail matter dispatched over-sea was but 4,330,073 pounds, and the total number of pieces in our inbound and outbound foreign mails was 191,413,760.

The total cost of transporting our foreign mails to other countries during 1905 was $2,899,005. We paid foreign governments about one fifth of a million dollars for forwarding our mails within their countries, and received from other countries nearly the same amount for carrying inbound foreign mails across our country, or to interior points of destination within the United States. The actual cost of our foreign mail service, exclusive of the cost of transporting our outbound mail from interior points to the seaboard post offices, was slightly over two and one half

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