Evening journal., 1889-03-19
LETTERS FROM THe PEOPLE.

"Protection" Has Killed ship Building.
To the Editor OF EVENING JOURNAL.
In those long vanished days before our
hatred Of England was so great that in
order to spite her, we do all the trading
we do with the world through her, the
United States had foreign commerce.
America had not learned to hide them
selves behind fence Of protective duties
and shudder with dread at the idea of
having to compete with foreigners. In
these good old times, the fame of the
American clipper ships was world wide.
Their superiority over the vessels of
other nations was unquestionable' 1t
was no idle boast that we of this country
could build better ships and make better
passages in them than the builders and
sailors of other nations could pretend to
do. In the East Indian, Chinese and
Australian ports Yankee ship and
Yankee crew, commanded higher freights
and found quicker dispatch than compet-
ing Englishmen. Foreign merchants sent
TO our yards for the ships their own
builders could not produce. An Ameri-
can vessel offered for sale found dozen
ready purchasers in whatever foreign
port she might be lying, American ship
builders led the world Amer
lean sailors regarded the marines
OF other nations with contempt
and religiously lived up to the faith that
single Yankee tar could whip two
Englishmen and an unlimited number OF
Continental Europeans. II was a vain
glorious boasting, but il rested on a solid
foundation of actual superiority. In
those days what American boy didn't
know the Dreadnaught, peerless among
ships, and think her captain greater than
king To be a boy on board Of her was
better than cadetship at West Point.
She was a ship that justified
the pride we took in her.
She beat the Cunard steamer Canada
from Liverpool TO Boston. She ran from
Sandy Hook TO the Mersey in thirteen
days, eight hours. And as II that were
not enough she made the passage from
Sandy Hook to Queenstown in niRe days,
seventeen hours. Storms head winds,
calms, seemed all alike to the Dread
naught. Whenever she lay in the
Mersey crowds fiocked to visit her.
Foreign builders crossed the ocean to see
her in the dry dock and study the secret
of her model Yet foreign builders could
never match her. For though they
might duplicate the wood and iron, and
copy the clean, graceful sweep of the
lines, and reproduce the spars and
rigging, yet always the soul was want.
ing. The restless, energetic, driving
American sailor spirit that he'd the ship
to her duty and never failed to get from
her the fullest possible effort Those
were days of pride for our seamen
What would have been thought of the
man who should have dared to hint then
that American ship owners aud sailors
needed protection against foreign com
petition. And now a brief newspaper
paragraph announces that the old Dread
naught has been lost, foundered off the
banks of Newfoundland, and to Ameri-
cans the views bring no regretful sigh
for the days when Americans built ships
and sailed them and scornfully defed the
world. Our shipbuilders Of to-day shiver
as they watch the triumphs Of the Eng
lish yards and whinincly protest that
without the aid OF public charity Ameri-
can keels can never enter foreign ports
Protection to American labor" has
killed one branch Of American labor
most etfcctually.