SHIPPING, BOUNTIES
AND SUBSIDIES
.V
CAPTAIN JOHN ÇODMAN
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE MASSACHUSETTS TARIFF
REFORM LEAGUE, NOVEMBER 20, I889
BOSTON
MASSACHUSETTS TARIFF REFORM LEAGUE
66 STATE STREET
1890
COPVRieHT
1889
THE REFORM CLUB
Press of
G, P. Putnam's Sons
New York
SHIPPING SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES.
An article entitled " How to Restore American Shipping,"
in the North American Review for June, will have been ex¬
tensively read, because the public are aware that its author
has for several years, under Republican rule, held the posi¬
tion of chairman of the Shipping Committee in the national
House of Representatives. Everybody will say that he
ought to be fully conversant with the matter, that his state¬
ments ought to be undeniable, that his inferences ought to
be correct, and that his plans for restoring the merchant
marine to its former condition of prosperity ought to be
such that their value should be appreciated and their method
adopted. With all the deference due from a practical man
to a theorist, I propose to investigate the reliability of what
he considers to be facts, leaving his inferences to stand or
fall accordingly, and to discuss the value or the insufficiency
of his remedies. At the outset it is only just to define our
relative positions. Mr. Dingley happens to be a repre¬
sentative from a shipbuilding district of Maine, sadly in want
of rehabilitation. In his article he is, as he has always been
in all his speeches and writings, first and foremost the advo¬
cate of the domestic shipbuilding industry, which he con¬
siders to be a sine qua nan for the development of our com¬
merce and carrying trade. " The trade follows the flag " is
his stereotyped motto, and in order that it may follow it
successfully, it is with him a necessity that the ship over
which the flag floats should be built of American wood or
iron, and launched upon American waters. On the other
hand, having been a sailor, and the principal part of my life
i
á StílPPiNG SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES.
having been passed as a shipmaster and shipowner, I opine
that commerce and the carrying trade are of infinitely greater
importance than shipbuilding ; that the apothegm of
" the trade following the flag " is a fallacy demonstrated by
every-day experience, and that, although it is desirable that
we should build ships at home, it is poor policy as well as
gross injustice to our merchants and sailors to surrender our
carrying trade to other nations, whom we directly protect in
conducting it while nominally protecting our shipbuilders
who do not build the ships we need and to whom the stim¬
ulus of competition is wanting, which, if introduced by the
presence of " free ships " from abroad, would soon enable
them to supply all our demands.
No small part of Mr. Dingley's essay is devoted to com¬
mending to us the example of England of " fostering " her
domestic shipbuilding, and to giving us his own erroneous
impressions of that entirely imaginary process. He always
carefully abstains from referring to her wise policy in abol¬
ishing her restrictive navigation laws in the year 1849, when,
in order to prevent a condition like our own at present, and
to maintain her prestige in the world's carrying trade which
she rightly considered to be of more importance to her than
her shipbuilding, she repealed all her prohibitory statutes by
an act of Parliament, thus abrogating her old laws and per¬
mitting her merchants to supply themselves with ships
wherewith to carry on their business and to employ their
crews, from any source from which ships could be obtained
with advantage. Of course there came a howl from her
shipbuilders. It was louder than the wail for protection
which we are always hearing from ours, because the British
shipbuilders were more numerous. But the question before
Parliament was not how shall those individuals who are en¬
gaged in a particular industry be affected, but how shall the
supremacy of the British flag, then sorely threatened by the
competition of American clippers, be maintained ? These
SHIPPING SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES. 3
questions were asked : " Is it not better that British mer¬
chants should buy those American ships in order to carry
on their trade, than that they should abandon it in favor of
the Americans ? Is it not better that British officers and
seamen should have employment in vessels wherever built,
than that Americans of a similar calling should take the
bread from their mouths?" As to the shipbuilders, they
were told to bestir themselves, to build ships equal to those
about to be introduced, no fear being entertained by the
government that competition would not bring about that
result. It is a curious fact that whereas our American ship¬
builders of to-day are asking for charity because they say
that they are unable to compete with the " pauper labor " of
Great Britain, the English shipbuilders of that period re¬
monstrated against free ships from America, because, as
they said, " the labor on that side of the Atlantic is more
intelligent than our own, and consequently, cheaper as
well as better ships can be produced in America." A com¬
parison of labor statistics will show, however, that ship¬
building labor, as well as labor employed in sailing the ves¬
sels, was relatively higher in the United States than it is
now over that of the -English. Then we were living under
an exceptionally low tariff. Now the tariff is exceptionally
high. It would, therefore, certainly seem that if tariffs have
any effect on the price of labor, a low tariff enhances it and
a high tariff depreciates it.
The British shipbuilders of 1849 thought that they were
an ill-used set of men. But while they growled a great deal,
they accepted the inevitable. After the repeal of the pro¬
hibitory law, to their credit be it said, they did not petition
Parliament for a bounty to equalize their condition with
that of the Americans, but they followed the sound advice
that their government gave them. Thrown on their own
resources, they went to work. They developed a more in¬
telligent system of labor, The unprotected Britons soon
4 SHIPPING SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES.
surpassed the protected Americans. They improved upon
the pattern before them. First came the iron clipper ; then,
although the screw steamship was invented in America, the
Englishmen utilized the idea most, and now we have before
us the accomplishment of their perseverance, skill, and
adaptation of labor and machinery. The Clyde is lined
with shipyards. Thither go, not only all Englishmen, but
men of every nation (excepting of our own country, which
sees fit to protect itself out of competition in the world's
carrying trade), fçr their ships, precisely With the motive of
men who send to Cuba for their pineapples and bananas, be¬
cause it is cheaper to buy them there than to produce them
at home, unless, indeed, they can prevail upon their govern¬
ments to build for them hot-houses on the principle advo¬
cated by Mr. Dingley. The shipbuilders of the Clyde have
reason to be proud of their pre-eminence, and of their " pauper
labor," that from evolution and practice has become more
intelligent than our own, which from forced disuse has fallen
away from the high standard of which the English once
complained and which they have successfully sought to
imitate and surpass. Dumbarton Rock stands an everlast¬
ing monument of Scottish military glory in the olden time,
but Dumbarton town, built up by the enterprise of ship¬
building, where the clatter of machinery and the stalwart
blows on the anvil are constantly heard, where the mansions
of the employers and the no less comfortable though less
expensive cottages owned by their contented employés, the
library, high school, and park maintained by private munifi¬
cence, and all the concomitants of prosperity, may be seen,
is a monument in itself of success gained by the unrestricted
liberty of trade. In its churchyard may be seen a marble
slab with this inscription, written by one of the " pauper
workmen " in memory of his employer, once a " pauper
workman " himself, who became the founder of the great
industry of the place :
SHIPPING SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES. 5
Genius and worth are in this honored grave.
Here the quick brain, the active pulses lie ;
But his mind's offspring proudly breasts the wave
On every sea where Britain's colors fly.
The boast of this man well may have been, like the
boast of the house that he founded and of the men it has
employed, that they have made their money entirely by
their own " genius and worth," and that they have never
asked or received, directly or indirectly, one shilling from
their government to " foster " their industry. Mr. Dingley
ought to be aware of this, and he cannot be ignorant of it,
for he has been the chairman of the Shipping Committee in
Congress for years. It was his duty to keep himself informed
in every thing bearing upon the subject in regard to which
he desired to legislate, and yet he reiterates his old state¬
ments which have been again and again demonstrated to
possess no shadow of a foundation, that the great shipbuild¬
ing industry of England is directly " fostered " by the gov¬
ernment by means of subsidies and bounties. This falsely
presumed aid of the British government leads him to
remark :
"Our shipping in the past has been so long subjected to
the unequal competition of foreign rivals that the latter are
firmly intrenched in all the routes of commerce, and nothing
but the encouragement and assistance of our government
for a sufficient period to enable American vessels to obtain
a similar position is adequate to revive this branch of our
merchant marine." Again we have this astonishing asser¬
tion: " Nearly all the steamships in the leading British lines
have received a permanent bounty and are subject to be
taken by the government for war purposes."
" Shipping " is a very comprehensive term. It comprises
sailing ships as well as steamships, and independent steam¬
ships as well as those of regular lines. In passing, it is
interesting to notice how rapidly sailing ships are being
6
SHIPPING SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES.
superseded by steamers. In a late number of the Glasgow
Herald we read : " A bulky blue-book was issued yester¬
day containing the annual statement of the navigation
and shipping of the United Kingdom for the year 1888.. It
shows amongst a vast amqunt of other information that
there were in that year registered in Scotland 1710 sailing
vessels of 862,829 gross tons, and 1521 steamers of 1,609,-
276 tons." It is evident that as this ratio is likely to go
on and to increase, the death of the sailing ship is an
eventual certainty, and that as what little we have of deep-
sea shipping is of that character, when it finally disappears
we shall be in a worse predicament, if possible, than we are
now. But in the meantime Mr. Dingley's attention may be
called to the fact that at the present day the sailing ships of
Great Britain vastly outnumber her steamships, and her
independent steamships vastly outnumber her steamships in
regular lines, and her steamships, in regular lines vastly out¬
number those steamships that carry the mails. Moreover,
as chairman of the shipping committee, it was the duty of
Mr. Dingley to pursue his investigations still farther, and
when he had discovered that only two per cent, of the whole
British steam fleet receive any compensation for carrying
the mails, and that being considerably less than one percent,
of British shipping altogether, he should have been obliged
to admit the total collapse of his argument that Great
Britain " fosters " and maintains her shipping interests by
" bounties and subsidies."
Nor is this all of its weakness. The pay given to this
small portion of the British shipping interest for carrying
mails has manifestly nothing to do with promoting ship¬
building, as it is evident that a subsidized line can no more
induce the building of unsubsidized ships than a subsidized
line of stage-coaches can induce people to build unsubsidized
stage-coaches to run in opposition to them. The New York
Evening Post lately addressed a letter to the British Treasury
SHIPPING SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES.
7
to which a courteous answer was returned giving full partic¬
ulars of its postal contracts. That reply may be found in
its issue of June 20th of this year, and it will afford interesting
reading for those people who have been led astray by the
oft repeated assertions of Mr. Dingley and his school of
political economists. I have space only for a recapitulation
of the sum disbursed by Great Britain for maintaining
regular postal service throughout her immense empire and
its connections.
Europe
America 202,700
Africa 13)924
Asia and Australia 434,800
Total ._;^669,i24
Less repaid by colonies :
West Indies ' ^^22,360
East Indies 63,000
Australia 75,000 160,360
Net payment by the imperial government for for¬
eign post-office packet service .^£^508,764
It may be added, as a clincher to the falsity of the
assumption that the English people of all occupations are
roundly taxed for the support of the one especial interest of
shipbuilding, that the British government receives in foreign
postages a sum considerably larger than it pays out for all
its foreign mail contracts. And yet Mr. Dingley, who
ought not to be ignorant of this, repeats his stale argument
at the close of the following paragraph :
" Among the methods adopted by England with this
object (the promotion of the shipbuilding) are the tendering
of liberal contracts for the construction of war ships and
transports to encourage the establishment and extension of
shipyards, direct subsidies to shipbuilders who would con-
8 SHIPPING SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES.
struct iron steamships after plans prepared by the Admiralty,
and enormous indirect subsidies for carrying the mails, to
encourage the establishment and maintenance of British
steamship lines."
There is no " liberality " in British contracts for war ships.
The British government, like our own in this respect, acts in
a business-like manner. It gives its contracts to the lowest
bidder of the requisite qualifications. Mr. Dingley founds
this broad assertion on some special contracts made by the
British Admiralty in its own interest, which, so far from prov¬
ing that the government protects the shipyards, proves the
exact opposite, namely, that the unprotected shipyards aid
the government. The British Admiralty looks after its own
business, as our Secretary of the Navy and his advisers look
after theirs, and they would have done well to have imitated the
English officials in this respect. If Congress had authorized
private American steamship companies to build such ships as
the Boston, Chicago, and other " fast cruisers," and had paid
them sufficient to compensate them for the extra cost in
constructing and running them, it would have been more
economical for the government than to commission them
outright as men-of-war. But with the present prices
demanded by our shipbuilders it could not have made as
good a bargain as has been made by the British Admiralty.
Nobody would expect ships thus heavily built and fitted to
be constructed as cheaply as ordinary merchant steamers, or
to carry as much cargo by at least twenty per cent. The in¬
ducements are not too much, and the Admiralty is finding it
out, for since it has lately reduced its offers, few companies
care to accept them. Moreover, there is no condition made
that these vessels shall be built in British shipyards. The
bargain is made with the steamship companies, and if the
Messrs. Cramp of Philadelphia will build the ships for them
cheaper than they can be built upon the Clyde, they will be
equally entitled to the advantage. But what an infinitesimal
SHIPPING SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES.
9
part of the British commercial marine these few quasi men-
of-war are ! How small a part of its steam fleet plying even
between England and America ! How small a part even of
the regular lines that ply between England and the one port
of New York, without any bounty, subsid}'^, or government
emolument whatever ! The Anchor, the Guion, the Monarch,
the National, the Wilson, the Sumner, the Beaver, the
Bristol, the State, the Arrow, and other regular direct lines
between New York and England, besides the " triangular "
lines and almost innumerable independent steamships, some
owned by companies and some by private individuals,—
where are their subsidies, bounties, mail contracts, or even
letter postages ?
It has been made evident that the English practice extolled
by Mr. Dingley does not exist. It has been made evident
that the British Admiralty looks only after the interests of
the navy, the Post-offlce Department takes care of the mails
and the British shipbuilding and carrying trades take care of
themselves. It would have been difflcult for Mr. Dingley
to construct a paragraph more misleading in every respect.
The private shipyards on the Clyde were already firmly
established. They had turned out hundreds of thousands
of tons of steamships before the government had given
them a single order, and the great majority, some of them
the most prosperous of all, have not made a contract with
the government to this day, although it has always been in
their power to do so, as there was an open market for their
bids. "P'ostering" is an American word. The English
have no use for it. It is a synonym for protection, and
protection is a synonym for robbery. It is taking the
money of other people to confer its benefit upon one. It is
an injury to the recipient as well as to the contributors. It
destroys a man's energy by quenching his spirit of self-
reliance. Upon the instant that protection was taken away
from the British shipbuilders, they aroused themselves to
lO SHIPPING SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES.
action, and now they stand foremost in the world. The
American shipbuilders still crouch under its wings, and not
satisfied with their entire monopoly of the coasting trade,
whereby they are enabled to charge their countrymen thirty
per cent, more than they ought to pay for ships, they come
to Washington every year begging for a bounty or a sub¬
sidy, when it is owing solely to their influence there that our
merchant marine has come to destruction !
It is painful to follow Mr. Dingley in his tortuous wind¬
ings of argument. He says: "Thé French government
offers a bounty of thirty cents per registered ton for every
thousand miles sailed by a French vessel actually engaged
in the foreign trade. The bill approved by the American
Shipping League and introduced at the Forty-ninth Con¬
gress by General Negley of Pennsylvania, is substantially
the same as the French law." This is a part of the truth,
but not the whole truth. If he had told the whole truth he
would have demonstrated my argument that commerce and
shipowning are regarded by France also, as of greater import¬
ance than shipbuilding. The bounty of thirty cents per ton
applies to all vessels under the French flag if the vessel is built
in France, and a ship is entitled to one half of that amount
if she is built abroad, so that it is often cheaper for French¬
men to build their ships in England and obtain half the
bounty than to get the whole of it by building them at
home. This shows that the acquisition of ships and not the
protection of domestic shipbuilding is the main object of the
French law.
In further apology for soliciting public charity for ship¬
builders, Mr. Dingley continues : " The increased cost of
running an American steamship, mainly in consequence of
higher wages paid the large number of officers and men, is
a constant burden which renders competition with British
steamships difficult, and which the ' free ships ' remedy does
not reach." Does Mr. Dingley need to be informed that
SHIPPING SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES. II
the Inman and Red Star steamships are American in every
thing but the flag? They are officered and manned indis¬
criminately, as much as our coasting vessels are, by Ameri¬
cans and foreigners, while they are owned almost entirely
by our own countrymen. Will he seriously maintain that
the mere hoisting of the English or Belgian bunting at their
peaks cah make the difference of a single penny in the cost
of sailing them ? The wages paid on the Atlantic fleet of
steamships to their seamen (;¿'4 per month) are as high as
those paid in our coasting trade, and yet to establish his
point Mr. Dingley quotes the report of an American consul,
that crews receive thirty-eight per cent, higher wages, and
demand twenty-seven per cent, better fare on American than
on British ships. I apprehend that if this backwoods official
could dine in the forecastle of a British ocean steamship he
would find that his singular estimate of twenty-seven per
cent, might apply more nearly to the superiority of his food
over that to which he has been accustomed at home. Does
not Mr. Dingley know that many iron sailing vessels and
steamships besides those just mentioned, officered and
manned^by Americans as much as any of our coasting ves¬
sels, are sailed under the British flag, because their own flag
is denied them, and may it not strike him as an unpleasant
consequence of this practice, forced upon our countrymen
by prohibition, that some of them are under contract in case
of war to put their ships at the disposition of the British
government, even if it should happen to be a war with the
United States? It would indeed be a singular spectacle,
for which "he and his adherents would be responsible, to
behold the guns of these American fast cruisers turned
against our own countrymen.
Mr. Dingley continues : " It is far more difficult now to
devise a policy to enable our shipping in the foreign trade
to compete successfully with the British and other foreign
vessel3 than it would have been thirty-four years ago, when
12 SHIPPING SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES.
the revolution from wood to iron and from sails to steam
first began to place our vessels at disadvantage." Here at
least is a candid confession, and it is better to mend late
than never. In these thirty-four years we have paid more
than $4,000,000,000 freight money to foreigners, a great part
of which might have been appropriated by our own citizens
but for the opposition of Maine and Delaware shipbuilders.
It is, indeed, more difficult to succeed now than it would
have been thirty-four years ago, because our neglect to
adopt a true policy has given our rivals the superiority of
experience in a calling which our government has forced us
to abandon. So it is proposed to hire men to gain a new
experience in ships needlessly expensive. It is admitted by
his own figures that so long as the cost of ships was about
the same in England and in the United States, we were at
no disadvantage whatever. On the contrary, we were con¬
stantly gaining, notwithstanding that the relative difference
in the cost of sailing vessels was no more nor no less than it
is now. When the revolution in shipbuilding took place
there was not a single nation on the globe, excepting the
Chinese and our own, that was precluded from availing itself
of the opportunity to profit by it. Even China soon saw
the folly of a policy of restriction. The importance of the
occasion justified her in abrogating a law that had existed
from time immemorial, while we adhered to ours that had
been enacted in the last century, and had hitherto been pro¬
ductive neither of harm nor of good, but which at last be¬
came a dead weight on our future progress. The results
are before us. The foreign carrying trade of every nation,
excepting our own, has greatly increased during the last
thirty-four years. Ours has been extinguished. Theories
may fail, figures even may lie, but facts cannot be con¬
tradicted.
Mr. Dingley is partly right and partly wrong in saying
that a protective tariff is not the cause of the decadence.
SHIPPING SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES.
13
It is not the whole cause, although it cannot be denied that
in the industry of shipbuilding, protection has stood in the
way, and Mr. Dingley, it is scarcely necessary to repeat, of
course considers this the point at issue all the time. All
other nations, among whom all sorts of tariffs, high or low,
for protection or for revenue, prevail, have in these thirty-
four years been increasing their carrying trade, irrespective
of the policy that has guided them in their domestic affairs,
simply because they have had the wisdom to acknowledge
that the ocean is the common property of the world, over
which their internal laws had no control, and they have had
the ordinary intelligence to see that the cheapest and best
ships upon it command its business. Therefore, if they cannot
build such ships, they buy them. Many of these nations,
having first become shipowners, are now their own ship¬
builders. Germany is a notable instance of this. Although
still having the liberty to purchase, she builds nearly all her
own ships. The introduction of foreign-built ships necessi¬
tated repair shops, and these soon developed into shipyards,
precisely as the introduction of railroad engines into the
United States led to the building of our own engines; which
we have for years not only built for ourselves, but have ex¬
ported. Give the American shipbuilders the same incentive
of competition that the American engine builders had, and
they, too, will do as well. The engine builders have been
treated with a stimulant ; the shipbuilders have had a pro-^
tective sedative administered to them. Each medicine
shows its natural effect.
Mr. Dingley proposes this question, and proceeds to an¬
swer it himself, although he does not state it fairly : " If we
should adopt the policy of relying upon the Clyde and the
Tyne to build our vessels, what would be our situation
if Great Britain should become involved in a war with some
great naval power ? " In the first place, he knows very well
that no advocate of free ships has ever made any such propo-
14
SHIPPING SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES.
sition. Some injudicious friends of the measure have sug¬
gested the purchase of foreign ships, to be engaged only in
the foreign trade. A moment's reflection will expose the
futility of such a method. No American would avail him¬
self of it, because we already have all the advantages it
would confer by owning our vessels, as the Inman and Red
Star lines own theirs. What we desire is to own ships that
are to all intents and purposes American, and that can be
used anywhere and everywhere. At the same time we
intend to interfere as little as possible with the monopoly
now existing of building ships for the coasting trade, and
virtually existing for that purpose alone. When the ques¬
tion was first agitated in Congress, twenty-eight years ago,
this was our simple bill which we have steadfastly adhered
to ever since : " Be it enacted that ships of not less than
3,000 tons, wherever built, may be enrolled under the Ameri¬
can flag, enjoying all the privileges it confers, and that all
the materials to be used in shipbuilding of any kind shall be
admitted duty free." Had such a bill been passed at that
time, we should to-day divide the carrying trade of the world
with Great Britain, and we should not be under the necessity
of ordering from the Clyde ships of any size whatever.
Mr. Dingley says truly : " The tonnage of our shipping
in the domestic trade has increased from a sail equipment of
1,639,314 tons in 1869 to 6,177,475 tons on the 30th of June,
1888. This gives the United States a home fleet which has
increased more rapidly than the similar fleet of any other na¬
tion, and with a tonnage more than three times that of the
United Kingdom, and five times that of any other nation."
Can it be imagined that a shipbuilding industry like that
which has supplied this immense increase of coastwise ton¬
nage, and which would still not be practically interfered
with by the scheme proposed, would not be able to keep up
the supply for ocean purposes in case our trade with Eng¬
land should be cut off ? On the other hand, as we now are,
SHIPPING SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES. Ig
" in case Great Britain should become involved in a war with
some great naval power," what then ? Why, her great mer¬
cantile fleet would be in the market at almost any price.
Any Swede, Portuguese, or Italian could buy her ships and
take her carrying trade, while we who furnish its commerce
would be obliged tamely to look on and see them growing
rich through our stupidity.
Already other European nations, having learned to build
ships by buying them from England, are threatening her
maritime supremacy. ■ The inertness of our Congress, and
its subservience to the influence of our shipbuilders in not
permitting us to buy English ships, is indeed astounding to
them, and it is not surprising to read in the St. James Gazette
a criticism upon what that journal considers the impolitic
liberty which England has given to her shipbuilders, to sell
ships to any people outside of the United Kingdom. It is
an evidence that British statesmen look upon free ships for
Americans with the same fear with which they regard our
advance toward free trade. Free ships will interfere with
their carrying trade, and free trade will interfere with their
commerce. Thus reasons this influential London journal;
" Our commercial marine is exposed to formidable compe¬
tition on the part of Germany, France, and Belgium, and
the statistics of Hamburg, Antwerp, and Havre show a
greater advance in trade than Liverpool and London have
made during the last twenty years. The time is not far
distant zvhen the United States will join in the ocean race,
as the agitation for a repeal of the laws which forbid A meri-
can citizens to buy English ships, is becoming more strenuous
every year at Washington^
What is that but an admission that Englishmen regard the
only method by which we can compete with them upon the
ocean, with distrust ? If some of our Anglophobist poli¬
ticians can grasp that idea, it may have an effect upon their
tariff and free-trade legislation.
l6 SHIPPING SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES.
This is not the first time that there has been an organized
effort made to raid upon the public purse by subsidy and
bounty seekers. Subsidy has reared its head in every ses¬
sion of Congress for nearly thirty years, and every time
it has been struck with a brick. It now counts upon success,
because it has contrived the advent of the Pan-American
Conference, and we are grateful to it that it will thereby
afford a demonstration that, under our present tariff, trade
with South America is impossible.
The " Pan-American Conference," by the by, is a mis¬
nomer, as any student of Greek and geography will testify,
inasmuch as it cannot be " all American " without including
Canada. Mr. H. K. Thurber, the president and principal
owner of the "United States and Brazil Mail Steamship Com¬
pany," is credited with the original conception and successful
effort of bringing the South American members of this body
to our shores. Concisely stated, the object of the scheme
is a subsidy for his steamship line. Mr. Thurber is a rich
man. Millions of dollars stand to his credit in account. But
he is not content. His steamship enterprise is not so profit¬
able as his grocery business has been. He knows as well as
anybody knows, the reason. His ships, protected by the
monopoly enjoyed by American shipbuilders, which prevents
him from buying cheaper and better vessels elsewhere, cost
him 30 per cent, too much. The outward freight of mer¬
chandise they might carry is handicapped by an average
tariff extortion of 47 per cent. He desires to extend his
voyages to the Argentine Republic, and his homeward
freight of wool would be burdened by a duty running from
60 to 90 per cent, ad valorem, according to the amount of
dirt and grease on which this duty is levied equally with the
wool.
It does not occur to the patriotic Mr. Thurber to ask our
government to repeal the restrictive navigation laws so that
hé can own ships on the same terms with his rivals, nor to
SHIPPING SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES.
17
ask for the removal of the duties on iron, lumber, and chem¬
icals, so that he can ship goods at no greater cost than theirs,
nor to demand free wool, so that it may be brought to our
ports as readily as to those of England. -He is willing that
all these burdens on his fellow-countrymen should still be
borne by them, and he desires to add to them by taxing them
to contribute money for a subsidy so that he may endeavor to
neutralize the difficulties that stand in his way. Mr. Thurber
knows well enough, for it has been repeatedly demonstrated,
that even if his line should be subsidized to the extent of
enabling him to carry goods both out and home absolutely
gratis, he could not compete with Englishmen, who, not
being hampered in any of these directions as we are, could
still carry on their business as successfully as they now do,
continuing to pay their customary charges of freight. But
independent of the merchandise mentioned there are certain
articles of our production which can be profitably exported
without subsidy, such as flour, petroleum, and agricultural
implements, and he can bring back coffee from Brazil, and
hides from Buenos Ayres, because these articles are not
dutiable. Still, as there is not enough of this legiti¬
mate business to make his line as profitable as he could
wish, he wants a subsidy of one or two or three hundred
thousand dollars per annum, the more the better, to supple¬
ment it.
The effrontery of his demand is more conspicuous when
it is considered that the title of this steamship line is also a
misnomer. It is, in fact, a slow Brazilian coasting line,
subsidized by the Brazilian Government to run between
the ports of Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Pernambuco, Maranham,
and Para, before it leaves for the United States, touching
on its way at Martinique and St. Thomas ; so that the most
speedy and direct correspondence between New York and
the southern provinces of Brazil, and the Argentine Re¬
public, is by way of England,
l8 SHIPPING SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES.
It is safe to predict that the subsidy scheme will not suc¬
ceed now any better than it has done heretofore. Bounty
has not been so impudent and so persevering as subsidy.
It has never openly shown its face but once before, and that
was nineteen years ago, when it was championed by another
Maine Representative anxious to be re-elected from his
" deestrik." Congress was so ignorant at that time that in
its appointment of the Lynch committee to investigate the
decadence of the carrying trade, they called it the decadence
of commerce, and Mr. Lynch and his associates concluded,
like Mr. Dingley, that both terms signified shipbuilding.
They brought in a voluminous report to prove that the
Alabama destroyed shipbuilding by furnishing shipbuilders
with employment of which they would have had all the
more had new wooden ships been needed to replace those
that had been burned. When Mr. Lynch's report came be¬
fore the Senate and it was proposed to lay it on the table.
Senator Davis moved an amendment that it be kicked be¬
neath it.
Mr. Dingley is somewhat in advance of his illustrious
predecessor. He recognizes the fact that in a great degree
steel has superseded wood, and steam has superseded sails.
He knows, as we all know, that wooden sailing ships will
soon become things of the past, and yet he proposes to
effect restoration by including the old hulks of his con¬
stituents in his bounty bill ; they are to run all over the
world with lumber, coal, petroleum, or in ballast, and they
are to get their 30 cents per ton for every thousand miles
they can log! If the membership of the " Shipping and In¬
dustrial League " is examined, it will be found that the most
prominent men in the concern are owners of wooden sailing
ships. In a moment of confidence, which I will not violate
by revealing his name, one of them told me frankly that his
object was to create a market for his old ships and to get
rid of them.
SHIPPING SUBSIDIES AND BOUNTIES.
19
Now, what would be the effect of this bounty on iron
shipbuilding? Whereas the free importation of ships
would force our iron shipbuilders to produce others as
good and as cheap as those we should obtain from abroad,
this gift would be a premium on their disposition to
stand still in the march of progress. Worst of all, to my
mind, would be the humiliating confession it implies—that
the American sailor has lost his energy, his pluck, his man¬
hood. It has been his pride that he has English blood run¬
ning in his veins. It is in his memory that, in times past,
when ships were owned on equal terms, as they might be
again, he competed with Englishmen on the seas, asking for
no favors, as Englishmen ask for none, as Germans, men of
the same stock, ask for none. And now—I mean no disre¬
spect to a people whom I admire for their military prowess,
their fine arts, among which culinary skill is not the least,
their literature, their social amenities and general intelli¬
gence,—and now Mr. Dingley tells us that because France is
hiring her people who are so pre-eminent on their natural
element the land, to become what God never intended them
to be on the sea, the American sailor is to be treated like¬
wise as an object of national charity ! Let the government,
if it pleases, still enable the protected manufacturer to dwell
in luxury and ease at the expense of the toiling millions
until, like the men of Ohio and Iowa, they throw off the
yoke, but let it permit the American sailor to remain a man.
He wants no subsidy, no bounty; all that he asks is the
liberty to protect himself.
THE END