Sacramento daily record-union., 1889-08-30
ENGLAND's SUBSIDY POLICY.
Demand for Measures Strengthening Our
Steamship Lines.

steamship Lines.
From the New York Tribune
The British Government has served
American Free Traders an i'll turn. Their
dogmatic explanation of the decline of the
commercial marine of the United States
has been 1.-The burdens. evils and system
atized folly of the tariff" Let there be un-
restricted commercial intercourse with all
nations, they have said, and the American
flag will be Immediately restored to all
seas. When reminded that the strongest
free-trade country in the world finds it
necessary to subsidize steamship lines by
mail contracts. they have furnished incom-
plete statistics, and passionately denied
that this was England's policy. The action
of the British Government in granting a
ten-year subsidy of $500, 900 for the estab-
lishment of mail service between Van
cOuver and Hongkong is practical refuta-
ton of these denials. The Canadian
Parliament, has already voted subsidy for
the same line, which will soon be in posi-
ton to compete with the San Francisco
steamers in the transportation of tea and
Chinese wares to the United States market
A subsidy voted by the British Commons
for strengthening the commercial marine
of free-trade Empire would seem to fur
nish an unanswerable precedent for the
adoption of similar policy in the United
States under the high-tariff system. 1t GER
tainly disposes of the stale free-trade argu-
ment that the American flag can be restored
to the seas by the abolition of the tariff
Canadian ambition, however, does not
make the establishment of the Hongkong
line its sole objective point. Efforts are to
be put forth at once to divert the Australian
and New Zealand mails from San Francisco
to Vancouver, and by competition, aided
by liberal Government support, to crush
out the American line now operating in the
south seas. The British Government has
not yet granted subsidy for this purpose.
but it will inevitably do so before long.
The mails are now carried under the
American flag; but the larger share of the
mail remuneration or subsidy by which the
line is kept afioat comes from the New Zea-
land and Australian Governments, which
have justly complained of so one sided an
arrangement. The Canadian Pacific will
have an excellent chance of obtaining the
mails and trade. With subsidized steamers
plying from Vancouver to China, Japan,
New Zealand and Australia, and with fast
steamers between Quebec and Halifax and
European ports supported at the expense
OF the Governments of the Dominion and
Great Britain, that railway will become one
OF the chief military and trade routes of
the free-trade empire. Subsidies will ac-
complish this result and Americans will
then have the privilege of witnessing the
decline of their few remaining Pacific lines
and OF importing their Australian mails,
their tea, silks and Japanese wares from
Vancouver and Winnipeg.
This subsidy policy by which England
and Canada are largely profting, ought TO
warn Congress OF the necessity for coun-
teracting competition that will be ruinous
to American commerce. The time is op-
perfume for radical departure in policy at
Washington. The Pan American Congress
meeting in October will revive interest in
the development of trade with other coun-
tries on this Continent. A large measure
for encouraging the establishment and
strengthening of steamship lines running
from American ports to Brazil, the Argen-
tine Republic, the west coast countries of
South America, Australia and China will
do much to restore the flag to the seas and
to open foreign markets for the export
trade. In this way an auxiliary navy can
be rapidly built for the mail steamers may
be constructed and armed so as to be en-
ployed by the Government as cruisers and
transports whenever the occasion arises.
This is one of the conditions under which
the English subsidy has been granted to
the Hongkong and Vancouver Line. 1t
can properly be made the basis of similar
isslsiauoH oy tne next congress Tor the re-
vival of the American commercial marine.
What is needed is large measure, dealing
not with one or two corporations, but with
all competitors for enlarging trade relations
with foreign countries. In this way the
whole question of restoring American
prestige on the seas will be lifted out of the
low levels of corporation interests to the
high ground of National policy. The Brit
ish free-irade subsidy for vessels thst may
be converted into cruisers points out the
way