Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-01-29

buy foreign ships, and bring them under
our flag. Germany has bought English
ships in this way, and though she has very
little foreign commerce OF her own she has
succeeded in carrying the goods of other
countries, and has made it pay well. We
have great and ever increasing foreign
trade vet we refuse to allow our own peo-
pie either to build ships or to buy them
As to subsidies moreover, it has been found
already that the English unsubsidized ships
can beat our subsidized lines. And this
Will continue to be the case unless
Congress is prepared to pay bountles sui
fciently large to induce American builders
to construct iron ships capable of compel
ing with the Clyde built vessels in spite of
the tariff. To do that would cost the
country almost as much as to build the
ships and make presents of them to the
nominal owners and we do not think the
country is prepared for that yet. To
subsidize one or two mail lines
can do no good except to the
particular owners of those lines. 1t
does not stimulate ship-building,
all it does is to stimulate fruitless rivalry
between inferior and superior ships.
There are no American steamships at pres
emit capable Of competing on equal terms
with the English lines, and there are not
likely to be any while the existing laws re-
main in force. Nj. Blaine has an inde-
feasible position, and we are compelled to
say that a bad cause was never more feebly
and illogically defended than By him on
this occasion. In fact he gave up every
point of consequence to his antagonist,
and his presentation of the subsidy propo-
sition was perfunctory, tame and spirit
less.
If the carrying trade is to be restored to
American bottoms it is very certain that
free trade in ships, if not in ship building,
will have to be conceded. The subsidy
method has been already tried, and has
failed. 1t is in truth as ridiculous an idea
as offering tortoise so much a mile il he
will undertake to run faster than hare.
The tortoise would quite probably take the
money, but he certainly would not be able
to fulfill he contract, and that is the case
with our ship builders. Free ships, how
ever, can be conceded without touching the
tariff, and since it has been conclusively
shown that this concession cannot injure
any American ship building interest, since
Americans no longer build foreign-going
vessels of any kind, the old objections are
no longer reliable. There is most incon-
sistent Indifference to American interests
on the part of the Protectionists, how
ever. They think nothing of destroying
an immense trade in order to benefit an
imaginary interest, but the spectacle of
$l20, 100000 a year being poured into the
purses of foreigners does not suggest to
them the idea of any corresponding loss to
their own counsrymen. Never was Pro-
lection more mischievous, more indefensi-
bic, more opposed to reason, than in this
case. In fact, anyone who will attempt
seriously to defend the policy by which
our mercantile marine has been driven
from the ocean and our great carrying
trade thrown into foreign bottoms, at the
same time that the industry to which these
sacrifices have been made has dwindled
steadily, must possess a hardihood or an
inaccessibility to reason altogether phe-
nomeaal.