The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1872-02-02
TERMS $500 PER ANNUM, IN ADVANCE.

W., w oouiu ouiiu such vessels as they build
with their opportunities, for less than they do
Everything that they put into a vessa, H.
building, or on board in sailing is duty free
paid seven and quarter cents for chains: the,
oher them to me here for three cents and al
most everything in the same proportion Ii /,
OF no use for us to build vessels to compete
against such fearful odds"
Give us the relief asked for in this bill and
we can live. Practical and sensible men ties.
titled to this before the special committee
three years ago, and things are now in man,
regards more favorable than then. The diff
ference in the purchasing power of our money
is not so great as then. We can get laboI
cheaper, and four days of our labor are nearly
or quite as good as six days of the foreign la
Dorer, Our ingenuity is greater, cur nPtura
facilities are greater, but We must have the
load which the present tariff imposes lifted, OF
tage.
SO much for wooden vessels: and the dav
mas not yet come when the white sail is TO be
oanished from the sea. No doubt iron has
ioomed up in the last fifteen years, but we
nave listened too acquiescently to the talk of
the British iron-ship builder that the day OF
wooden ships is at an end. recognize the
advantage of the iron ship in short voyages,
where regularity of transit can be maintained,
and for many of the great products of the
bub NOOQ 10 W 1tL assert ltSc1 as no
mean rival of its weightier competitor and
for certain voyages and cargoes iron can new
or compete with it. The wooden sailing ves-
sci Offsets its free motive-power, the winds of
the heavens, against the greater speed and
regularity and longer life attained by the iron
steamer, or indeed the wooden steam-yessel.
And the comparison is not so entirely in favor
OF one side as many gentlemen may suppose.
nave lately heard of passage made by a
wooden sailing vessel owned by gentleman
largely interested in navigation, and living in
my own district, from the upper part of C6ili
ON the Pacific, to Falmouth, England, in sew
enty-two days. do not think steam and
iron could very much improve on that.
iron ships are to-day favorites with COM
mercial men undoubtedly, but they have their
weaknesses and dement's. The cost of ma
chlnery and fuel is great. They will not
stand the storm like wood. Mr.. Wetmore
told the special committee in 1869 that two or
three iron vessels were wrecked off Newfound-
land to one wooden vessel. The gentleman
from New York Mr.. Brooksl stated on this
1oor few days since that in the East, where
he has lately travelled, the fine symmetrical
fast-sailing wooden vessels that we have al
ways built here were constantly needed. /
hope to live to see the day when both wood
and iron will have their fitting place in i'm
portance upon the seas of the world, and /
certainly do not expect that that established
fitness will exclude either wood or iron.
But the bill which / am speaking for is
equally helpful to the iron and the wooden
shipbuilder; and who can doubt that we
should build for the world of both materials
The abolition of duties would give us cheap
iron from abroad, and would compel the
American iron manufacturer to sell his prod
uct at such reasonable price as would put it
In fair competition with the foreign article.
1t is, believe, considerably better material
than the iron brought from England, and this
difference would always give it the preference
at fairly-increased price, with the American
builder. With this fair field opened, should
look with interest to the experiment of con-
structing iron ships that in excellence and
cheapness would vie with those built to-day
upon the Clyde. Our enterprise would, ad-
start under disadvantages. The
British builder has the field; he has the skill
ed and practised mechanic; he has the pow-
er of doing a thing for the least money,
which comes from long practice in the best
and shortest way of doing that thing But
for the thirty years preceding 1860 we con-
stantly beat him in the building of wooden
ships-a trade that he had followed for CEN
turies. Our ships looked better, sailed faster,
and carried better cargoes. We can to-day
set the same God-given faculty at work on
iron vessels. Mr.. Stimmers, an experienced
man in building both iron and wooden YES
sells, says that when the change comes the
old wooden-shipbuilders will be found build
ing the iron ships. The iron ships needed in
our war were built in our own yards by our
own mechanics. A Green Point ship-builder
tried having British workmen from the Brit
ish yards, and kept eleven of them three
weeks. / never knew anybody else who tried
the experiment. Indeed, l am by no means
a skeptic as to the State of Maine building
our vessels with profit. We brought pine and
oak from the far South up to 1860, and with
them laid the keels and constructed the finest
ships in the world in our own yards, and the
men who did it are to-day alive, with the
same ready brain and willing head that they
worked with twelve years ago. But if we
cannot build there of iron, you can do it
in New York and New Jersey and Dellsas ware are
and Pennsylvania and Maryland and Virgin
la, and in every port on our western lakes and
upon the great rivers of the West.
Now, my friend from New York, [Mr. Cox,1
who is pure and undefiled free-trader, wants
to amend my bill so that foreign-built vessels
may be bought by our own citizens and
brought here and put under our flag, receiv-
ing American registers, He is little in
clined to complain that as a Democrat, and
his party, he alone should be
credited with an honest effort to revive Amer
the condition of the American ship-builder
on the coast of my own State. That ship
builder may well distrust the advocacy of the
gentleman from New York, or the sympathy
of any party whom he represents. For with
the adoption of the amendment by him pro-
posed l should bid goodbye, for many years
certainly, to the hope of seeing our ship
building again prosperous. And that is what
the country needs, large increase of our
kn.sl
stimulus given to all branches
of mechanical industry which are allied to
commercial enterprise. The advocates of
free ships would destroy all hope of this.
The refuse ships from abroad would be sold
cheap. Every sale there would stimulate the
work in their yards, and the American ship
builder would never see the day when he
could afford to start in the competition with
his rival, whose machinery, material, and la
Dor are already in prosperous operation.
Beside, we run counter to the experience
OF other nations in selecting such time as
the present to throw open our doors to for
eign built vessels. Great Britain, which is
set before us as an example of the prosperity
which comes from free trade in ships, jealous
ly guarded her navigation interests, until, by
long years of protection, she had so stimulat-
ed and fostered them that she could afford to
compete with the world in ship-building, but
she never took time to do this when war
had deranged her industries and her empire
on the seas had been encroached upon by ri
walls who had grown rich in the peace that
permitted them to furnish safe transportation
to the products of the world. Whoever will
study the commercial history of England, the
origin and continuance of her navigation
laws, will see this plainly.
Then, again, war set us back deplorably in
our commerce, and war may reestablish us.
In case of hostilities breaking out in Europe,
Ia contingency not improbable in the light of
all teachings of the past, in which Great Brit
ain might be involved, the bulk of her COM
mercial marine would be shifted, under nom-
inal sales, to relatives, partners, and agents
living here, and the spectacle be presented of
that nation engaged in war with some other
maritime Power, and yet doing the carrying
trade of the globe, and receiving and spending
the earnings of that trade, while we should be
looking on in utter helplessness, with the
power of repairing the injury which was in
hicted upon us during our great effort to put
down the rebellion by sea and land taken
away from us by our own folly.
Therefore have declined to allow the
amendment of the gentleman from New York,
and have steadily refused to complcate the
bill with any new features. The proposition
involved in it is simple. If it carries, L be-
lieye relief will come; If it fails, want to
know how it died, and that II has been killed
directly. If it is referred to the Committee
of Ways and Means, in accordance with the
motion of the gentleman from Massachusetts,
IMr. Dawes, l want his committee to con-
slider it ON its merits, Lnincumbered by other
propositions. But, if my premises are correct,
there is no need for reference, and the House
should come at once to vote upon the pas
sage of the bill.