To-day a great steamship may well cost $2,000,000.

It must have the favor of railway companies for cargoes, must possess expensive wharves at each end of its route, must have an army of agents and solicitors ever engaged upon its business.

The boy who ships before the mast on one of them, is less likely to rise to the position of owner, than the switchman is to become railroad president--the latter progress has been known, but of the former I can not find a trace.

So comparatively few young Americans choose the sea for their workshop in this day of steam.
If this book were the story of the merchant marine of all lands and all peoples, a chapter on the development of the steamship would be, perhaps, the most important, and certainly the most considerable part of it.

But with the adoption of steam for ocean carriage began the decline of American shipping, a decline hastened by the use of iron, and then steel, for hulls.