The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1899-10-07

tive genius Of our people-nowhere equal
ed-would be applied in large degree to
the more and more economical construc-
tion-the safer and more enduring con-
struction-of ships. Still more; the
economies that would result in ship con-
struction for merchant purposes would
have a corresponding effect upon the
cost of building our warships, and which
saving, thus effected, our people would
enjoy
In comparatively few years we
would have multiplied our modern ship
yards, over and over again, until, finally,
we would become the builders of the
ships of war and of commerce for all
the world. Great Britain now builds
80 per cent of all the merchant ships and
an almost equal number of all the war
ships. This country possesses the ma
terials that are used in the construc-
ton OF ships, in greater abundance, and
they are cheaper of access, than in the
case Of Great Britain. But the people
Of that country are tntrenched and ex-
perienced in the business of building
and running ships; they possess that in
tangible but potential factor known as
the good will of the ship buying and
ship-employing world. For us to ex-
pect to supplant them, even in the car
rying Of our foreign commerce in home
a task, nevertheless, from which we
must not, from which we cannot, shrink.
And we shall Surely succeed. Our labor,
to be sure, is dearer but it is more in
telligent. 1t needs to become skilled:
and it can only become skilled through
steady pplication-constant employ
ment
GOVERNMENT AID NEEDED.
"Our government must step in and
give the needed impetus to the con-
struction of American-built ships for our
foreign trade. At present it costs more
to build and 1t costs more to run Amer
lean ships in the foreign trade than for
eign ships cost. But that is only a tenn
porary condition, If it is our will to make
it so. In ten or twenty years we shall
be able to build ships as cheaply as else
where, but unless the food and wages
given to the men employed on foreign
ships rises to the present high standard
found on board American ships, I hope
the time will never come when we shall
be able to run our ships as cheaply
as our rivals do theirs
'It may always cost our government
something to enable our people to main
tain the American standard of wages
and Of food as high on board of our
ships in the foreign trade as that stand
ard is upon the land. But the money
thus expended will come back to our
people over and over again, in the power
and the prestige the ships and the sea-
men will give us in our Intercourse with
the world. We shall be less subject to
the threats or the interference of other
nations, if we build and own and run
ships in our foreign carrying trade; we
shall find the doors of foreign coun-
tries open much more readily to our
products If it is an American seaman
who lifts the latch, and that seaman IS
on board a ship flying the stars and
stripes.
NATIONAL DEFENSE.
''For the national defense, we need
home-built ships and citizen seamen.
Jefferson said so more than a hundred
years ago in a great state paper. Our
great national Weakness-our only nation
al weakness--today is upon the sea. It
is there that we are unknown. 1t is there
that we lack both prestige and power.
Our own home-built ships, made out of
our own native materials, by our own
citizens, the ships owned and manned
by our own citizens, and carrying our
products all over the world, will give us
a proper standing among the nations of
the world, a greater command of the
trade Of the world, a much greater for
eign maket for our surplus products, and
provide at home a much larger market
for the non-competitive products of other
nations than ever before.
But this nation cannot enjoy the bless
ings, the strength, the prestige, and the
power, as we'll as the inherent protection
Of home-built, citizen-manned merchant
marine unless it pays for it, just as other
nations pay for it. Foreign nations spend
$25. 900 every year in subsidies and
bounties to their merchant ships and sea-
men; besides that, as 1 have told you,
they build and run their ships cheaper
than we do ours BY the cheaper cost
of operation, and through the aid of sub
sides and bounties, these foreign ma
tons enable their merchant ships to
crowd ours off the seas; our foreign COM
merce, then, becomes the means of effect
ing the construction of foreign ships and
of educating foreign seamen, both of
which may, at any moment, in time of
war, be turned against US. 1t is well
worth the subsidies and the bounties they
pay for foreign governments to make
our commerce pay the cost of building
their ships and educating their seamen.
MUST BE PROFITABLE
''In order that American capital may be
attracted into American-built merchant |
ships, there must be an assured profit |
knowingly, embark in an enterprise sure
to result In loss For the strength and |
prestige upon the sea that it would give |
the United States, it would be we'll worth |
the while of our government to make |
whatever expenditure may be necessary |
to attract enough capital into American |
ships to enable our people, in time, to |
do their own foreign carrying, and thus |
keep at home for the employment of our
own people the $500 000, 900 a year that we |
now spend on foreign ships, the $400, 0OO- |
600 We may be spending on them every
year quarter Of a century from now, if
nothing is done. We must, by effective
national legislation, put an end to the
policy of taking all of the money we col
lect every year at our custom houses |
and turning 1t over to foreign ship |
owners to pay our freight charges on our
foreign commerce, and the farmers of |
the United States have 1t in their power,
by giving their approval and lending
their advocacy to the upbuilding of a |
great American merchant marine to not !
only save vast sums of money each wear |
for themselves and the rest of the peo- |
pie but to place this nation upon a !
basis in its intercourse with the rest of |
the world that shall assure it and its |
people increased and increasing pros |
perity. The shipping interest of the |
United States appeals to the farmers of |
the nation to urge upon the national |
government the extension of whatever |
aid may be found necessary for the up /
building Of our mercantile marine In the
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