The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 18??-1935, 1902-03-28
the SHIP SUBSIDY BILL.
shovelling Out Public Money to
Party Favorites.

shovelling Out Public Money Il
Party Favorites.
Mi .ons of dOllars-just how many
millions nobody has been able, OF
willing 70 cOPfsss-are to be handed
over TO a few rich ship owners BY
the Republican Congress without
return in service 10 the Government.
This Ship Subsidy bill is denounced
by some of It's Democratic opponents
in the Senate as class legislation.
This is a mild characterization. II
is worse than class legislation, worse
than group legislation. 1t is ring
legislation-a plain steal of public
money for the benefit of a handful of
men whose only real claim to the loot
is that they want it.
This raid on the Treasury is made by
Senator Hanna and his accomplices
under the pretence that its purpose is
to "build up American merchant
Experience in our own and other
countries goes TO show that the mer-
chant marine cannot be built up by
the bounty system.
But even if it be true that, with the
United States Treasury to draw on
without limit. ships can be multiplied,
why should these ships be owned by
private personsr
If the public is to pay for the ships,
why shouldn't the public own Ihem2
Mr. Hanna will be Mortified at the
suggestion. To his enlightened and
conservative mind, government-owned
merchant ships would mean so
cialism.
But 1T is not Socialism, in Mr..
Hanna's view to buy ships with the
peoples money and then give them to
his friends.
And he is right. That is not Social
ism. 1t is robbery.
There is every indication that in
spite of the thorough exposure made
of this ship subsidy outrage by the
Democratic Senators. it will be passed
by the Republican Congress.
Every wage-earner in the United
will be taxed to supply the millions
bestowed under the bill upon such |
deserving objects of charity as j. Pier
pont Morgan.
The wage earners of the United
States number about fifteen millions
men, women, and boys and girls of ten
years of age and over. Their average
arnings are 800 year, and on the
average each wage-earner supports
two dependents. That is TO say, three
persons must live on 3d. 80 a month.
About quarter of the workingman s
wages goes for rent and about half for
food and fuel. That leaves him about
30 month for clothing, medicine,
recreation and a savings bank account.
Professor Robert E. Ely, secretary of
he League for Political Education,
III considering these figures, taken from
The Federal Census, justly says that
,annot be solved by thrift alone
meaning that the poor in the mass can
lot lift themselves out of poverty by
aving, since on the average they
lon't earn enough to enable them to
ave anything.
And yet this Republican Congress,
ed by Mr.. Hanna, who lately has
,een aiming to figure as special
riend of the workingman, proposes
o take the scarce pennies from the
ockets of the working men, women
nd children and put them. to the
mount of many millions of dollars,
nto the pockets of few men who are
n the transportation business men
)r the most part already enormously
ich.
1t is scheme of pillage at which
ne whole country would rise in indig-
ant establishment had not the whole
ountry become used under the protec-
We system to seeing everybody taxed
/ order to Ell rich somebody. New
ork Journal.