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Show H Failed As A Prophet THOMAS POWNALL was governor of Massa- chusetts Bay, New Jersey, and South Caro- Hj Una, successively, in the old colonial days. B He was a soldier, writer, diplomat and statesman H 1 --an all around great man in his day, hut when H it came to prophecy, he was a failure. After B the Revolutionary war, he wrote: H "The now state will be an active naval power, H exercising a peculiar influence on commerce, and H; through commerce, on the political system of the H old world becoming the arbitress of commerce H; ' and, perhaps, the mediatrix of peace." H 0 course that was before the days of steam- B . ships; he only estimated the natural trend of H ' B events. All the ships in his day were built of wood, and depended upon-the winds for motive powor. Under that view, perhaps, his prediction was justified, for timber was plenty in America and our ship builders were more, deft than those abroad. That he had a clear idea of the effects of a commanding commercial power upon the nations there is no doubt, but had he but possessed pos-sessed the spirit of prophecy, he would have said something like this: "After about eighty years, a new kind of ship will sail the seas, and grow to be the bearer of the world's ocean commerce. Those ships will be ships of fire, propelled by steam, and will burn, the biggest of them, as much as 1,100 tons of coal per day. They will carry 3,000 passengers passen-gers on a voyage and 10,000 tons of freight, and will cross the Atlantic in five days. When that time comes America will lay down, her flag will practically disappear from the ocean; she will nearly or quite be eliminated as a factor in the world's commerce. She will be filled with newspapers news-papers and statesmen, who will fight every proposition prop-osition looking to the restoration of her merchant marine. She will pay out for ocean passengers and freight for her own people, $250,000,000 annually; an-nually; she will be a great coach running on three wheels, without even a rail under the axle of the fourth wheel. But she will continue a generous nation; she will build a $600,000,000 canal through the Isthmus of Darien, for the commerce com-merce of the ships of other nations, having none of her own. She will be a bigger country than any other, and have some of the biggest fools ever seen on earth. |