Daily Kennebec journal., 1879-02-05
to saw that we have endowed railroads in this
--...L c,snn ann npo


country with S500.00O,Oo0.
From 1916 to 1871 the Congress of the Uni
ted States passed ninety-onc acts for promot-
ing the building of railroads There has not
been much legislation since 1871. There has
been a reaction against the policy, but from
1916 to 1871, l repeat, period of twenty-five
wears the Congress of the United States
passed ninetv-ore different acts and endowed
the railroad system of this country with
$500. 600. 900 of money, and that s1op,oVu'-
900 of money produced more than S5.Wo,""'-
900 of money in this country. My judgment
Is that the Congress of the United States in
everything they did in that respect did wisely.
They cheapened frcights. Clintons ditch,
AS if used To be called. was sneered at when
il was an experiment. but the minute the wa
ter WAS let into il il reduced the freights that
had been slOO from Buffalo to New York down
TO 81 "A ton: and it is not an eXaggeratlon To
sav that at that day, before railroads were
among us the water that was let in from Lake
Erie 70 that canal added 500. .0OO, 600 to the
value of the farms west of it.
As individuals. cities, towns, counties,
states. nation, we have eXcrtcd ourselves to
the utmost point of enterprise and Nlgor TO
build up railroads. We have system that
outruns all the world, and with great trunk
lines threading the continent north. south.
east anu west. III tNfiN Niittti'ii. Nv wy
mnmen, we reach the ocean limit, we seem to
to think we have done our duty. and that
when We have got transportation to that point
il no longer interests us. and we can safely
give that over to the foreigner. Why, from
Chicago to Liverpool is one direct line.
wonder how it would sound if Mr.. Wander
bilt who is running line of steamships
manned by foreign men, commanded by TOR
eign officers, built in foreign yards. whose
money earnings 20 entirely outside of tins
country. were to apply that 10 the New York
Central Railroad and select all the brakcmen
and switchmcn and conductors and tenders
and officers on the Central Railroad from for
eigners tn put all the locomotives on 1t that
are made in England; to let all its earnings
be exported Such policy would not be one
particle more detrimental and destructive to
the interest, of this country than for us when
that Central Railroad had touched salt water
with all the countless products of the fertile
West to give up all the profits of partcipa-
ton in the transportation of them beyond.
From Chicago to Liverpool is a route of four
thousand miles. We operate one thousand
miles of it and give three thousand miles TO
the foreigner,
Mr.. President our ancestors of the last
generation were not 50 squeamlsh on the sub
iect They were not afflicted with theories :;
they were intensely practical. and after the
peace of 1873 following the war of 1872 our
commerce ran ahead of Great Britian's to
such an extent that absolute alarm seized
England. During the administration of John
Quincy Adams, in single year of the com
merce between this country and Europe, one
hundred and forty-fiye millions were
carried in American vessels and only
fourteen millions in those of other
la u,unuptal Ia
about one hundred and sixty millions
and American vessels carried one hundred
and forty-fiye millions of it; and | beg the
Senator from Connecticut to remember that
then in Parliament, and then through all the
chambers of commerce, and then throughout
all the commercial agencies of Great Britain
an agitation was made that they would import
free Ships from America. They did not do
it. They concluded that that would be their
utter and final ruin and that they never could
catch up with us if they did that, and they
resisted it. and they resisted it up to the point
and until the time when they had got so far
ahead by aid from government by the up
building of Il great commerce, that thoy could
successfully defy and laugh at competition
Then came in their free shipping act; and the
policy which the Senator from Connecticut
invites us to-day is precisely that which the
land will find that she took into consideration
and condemned and rejected in 1927 and 1928
and the English marine would never have
been what il is to-day had they not at that
time stood just where we ought to stand to-
dav.
referred to 1917, to the generation that
Immediately preceded US and | address my
remarks to that side of the chamber, because
they claim a more distinct inheritance from
the Jefferson and Madison and Monroe era.
Mr. Monroe in 1917 had just come to the
Presidency. We had passed an act which,
if it were passed to-day, would revive Amer
lean commerce with such rapidity and thrill
as would astonish people on both sides of the
water. We passed an act providing that the
products of no country should come into the
United States except in American vessels or
in the vessels of the producing country. and
we held it there for years and years. These
triangular voyages that sap the life out of our
commerce could not be made under that law.
Mr.. Eaton.-Will my friend allow me to
state that there is now bill before the Com
mittee on Commerce making diffcrential du-
ties in favor of American shipping?
Mr. Dlaine.-I am very much delighted to
hear it, and | am sure the committee that
should report that bill is in impossible danger
of reporting that we had better abandon the
art of ship-bulding in this country and get
our ships in Europe.
Mr.. Eaton.-That is another question.
Mr.. Blaine.-Not at all it is the same
question, if my friend will permit me.
Mr. Eaton-Not by any means.
Mr. Blainc.-It is exactly the same qncs.
tion. If you intend to encourage American
commerce by giving diiierential duties in
favor of American ships it would be
highly improbable that the bill should
say in the next section that we do not wan
ship-buiiding in the country, and if anybod,
sent over their old rubbish AM
trash and sold it at "a low price we would take
that and give it the benefit of an Ameri
can register. OF course I do not use tn,
phrase in any offensive sense, but | canno
conceive of Il greater fraud than to call a shiI
of that kind an American ship. There il
nothing in the history of the Government
there is nothing in any of its development
in which pride inhercs more than in the shin
1t carries the flag before all nations of tn,
earth. 1t is the manifestation of our nation
al power and the national existence
Mr.. Eaton.-One would suppose from tin
present reasoning of the Senator from Main
that that good ship over which the American
flag foated, commanded by Paul Jones, wa
A., pat; "a, L..