Morning journal and courier., 1881-05-19
Thursday Msr,.ing, May I9. 1881.
OUR FOR EIGN snIPPING,

Thirty years ago, as Hon. Hugh McCul- loch points out in the current number of the North American Reoieao, the United States ranked among the great maritime nations, with fair prospects of soon becoming the greatest. Now, as far as the foreign trade is concerned, she is among the least. Nations then quite unknown maritime nations are now outstripping her. We have but single steamship line to Europe, and that is largely sustained by great railroad company. We have also single line to Brazil bravely con tending with British competition which threatens to destroy it. In this competition the British have great advantage. The same ships take British goods ts Bra gil coffee from Brazil to New York, and wheat and other United States productions from New York to British ports. And soon another competitor for the carry ing trade between Brazil and the United States is to appear in Canadian and Brazil ian subsidized line of steamships. On the Pacific ocean we have not only European competition, but new competitor also, the Chinese. One year ago the opinion that the Chi nese would ever be competitors with the United States on the Pacific ocean would have been scoffed at. Now it is fact, and with their initiative skill, low wages, and cheap living, their competition will be for midable, if not overpowering. So that, were it not for the protection which our naviga- tion acts gi ve to our coastwise trade, we should be virtually driven from the ocean, while at the same time we furnish the lading by which foreign ships are chiefly sustained. Nearly all of the enormous productions sent from our Atlantic ports to Europe is taken in foreign steamships. The immigrants who come to us by thousands, the pleasure-seek- BITS and business men who are constantly crossing the Atlantic (seven- -eighths of whom are Americans), go and come in the same 
 These facts are depressing and humiliating. provided it is considered advantageous for the people of the United States to have 8 | share in the foreign carrying trade. MT. Mo l Culloch thinks we should have, and says 1 the method of reviving and re- 1 storing this interest: ''Until quite recently l have thought that it might be done by giv- l ing the protection of our register and flag to 1
  pealing the acts which prevent free trade in | them, by relieving from import duties all l material used in the construction of ships, 1 and all ships from State taxation; but l think so no longer. Such measures l might have been efectual some | years ago; they would not be now. It is too late. The foreign carrying is in the l hands of Europeans, who have large capi- tai invested in their ships Efforts to divide l ists would be met by competition too pow erful to be resisted without loss Without | aid from the government no such efforts will | be made. If this be so, the revival and res- l toration of our foreign shipping interest de- l pepd upon the granting of subsidies. We l must do what has been done by other na- lions. We must subsidiae American steana- aap 6ases. He declares that the interest on | the amount advanced by the government in | bonds (now selling at thirty per cent. pre- l mium) to the Union and Central Pacific rail l road companies, or one half the interest on | the amount paid annually to foreigners for | freights and fares, would be enough, perhaps l more than enough, to infuse new life into | our foreign shipping interest, which, although l not absolutely dead, is gasping in the throes 1 of dissolution and he pertinently asks: Is | there any substantial reason why the gov srnment should have been so liberal as it has | been in donations to railroad companies, and | have been unwilling to give substantial aid ! to steamship companies?
 AOn the other hand, Professor William G. | Sumner forcibly argues that it is not essen tial that Americans shall own ships. He is of the opinion that the decline in shipbuild- ing in this country during the last twenty five years seems to indicate that somebody ships for the present. because somebody else can do it more cheaply. And he says: ''The only question which is of importance is this Are the people of the United States better l employed now than they would be if engaged | n owning and sailing ships? If they were under no restraints or interferences, that | question also would answer itself. If Amer cans owned no ships and sailed no ships, but hired people of other countries to do their ply prove that Americans had some better smployment for their capital and labor. They would get their transportation accomplished as ,heanly possible. That is all they care for, and it would be as foolish for any nation 0 insist on doing its own ocean transports ion, devoting to this use capital and labor which might be otherwise more profitably employed, as it would be for merchant to insist on doing his own carting, when some person engaged in carting offered him con- tract on more advantageous terms than those on which he could do the york;
 EDITORIAL NOTES.