AMERICAN BATTLESHIPS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 15 November 1913, Page 12

AMERICAN BATTLESHIPS.

The action of the Navy Department in accepting the tender of an English firm to furnish the battleship New York with turbine casings, and thereby save the American . Exchequer nearly £20,000, which the acceptance of the American tender would have involved, has (says the New York correspondent of the Daily Telegraph) elicited warm praise, as well as denunciation. "Patriotism which robs the American Government is very poor patriotism indeed," says Representative Cullop, of Indiana. "This is a clear case where trusts have been extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars from the American Government by combination, collusion, and protective tariff. The English firm certainly makes a profit, and the American firm would make and enormously swollen profit at the figures it bid. It is a reminder of the contracts for hio, steel cranes for the Panama Canal. When the tenders were opened' it was found that an English firm had cut under American tenders by about onehalf. An English firm would have received the contract had there .not been a howl all over the country that ■nething but American steel should be used. The tenders were cast out, and an American firm at a high price got thj order."