marks. Thus Germany's grand total of annual payments in postal
subventions had reached six million nine hundred and forty thousand
marks.

Besides these postal subventions and the free entry to materials used in
ship-construction and equipment, and the preferential railway rates on
long hauls of the heavy domestic materials, barely covering the cost of
handling and transportation,[CS] the Government bestows a special form
of indirect bounty upon the subsidized steamship lines in the shape of
largely reduced through freight rates. These include substantial
reductions on merchandise exported from inland Germany to East Africa
and the Levant. Thus the combined land and sea through rates are brought
considerably below those in force on goods sent to German ports for
direct importation.[CT]

Under these and other favoring conditions the German merchant marine has
advanced in total tonnage from an insignificant place in 1880 to the
third in rank among the maritime nations in 1911. Between 1885 and
1900, a period of only fifteen years, its growth was tenfold.[CU] In
1890 the gross tonnage stood at 928,911 tons: in 1900 it had reached a
total of 2,159,919 tons. Steamers and sailing-ships were nearly equal in
tonnage. German-built steamships had won the speed record in ocean
liners. Thereafter the output of steamships became much the larger, and
in 1906 the Government was taking measures to revive the sailing-ship
trade, because of its value as a training-school for seamen for the
navy.[CV] In 1910-11 the total tonnage was recorded at 4,333,186
tons.[CW]

The other influences contributing to this extraordinary growth are
variously stated according to the observer's point of view. The United