The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-10-30

'gress which created the Merchant Marine Commission to investigate and report upon tk.S subject"
 That Is as nearly an endorsement of the ship subsidy bill of the United States Senate as the Republican party dared to venture. The taking of one mans property and giving it to another is a cardinal principle of the Republi- can party, and the ship subsidy only means that the government shall take from the man in rural New York, who grows hops, or produces butter, or has a vinyard, or an orchard, and give 1t to a man in Maine. who build ships. That is the ship subsidy, and 1t is funda mental Republican doctrine. The Re- publican Convention when it made that platform knew exactly what the Mer chant Marine Commission intends to re- port, and what 1t was created to re- port-that the taxpayers of America shall be required to swell the profits of an industry, confessedly pauper, and no better than any other industry that the Republican party intends to tax for this beggar's benefit.
 And MT. Roosevelt. in his letter of acceptance. has this to say about 1t:
 "In closing, what have to say about the system of promoting American in- dustry, let me add a word of cordial agreement with the policy of In some way including within Its benefits, by appropriate legislation, the American merchant marine. It is not credftable to us as a nation that our great ex- port and import trade should bes well nigh exclusively in the hands of for- eigners."
 That may mean everything, or noth- ing. but in view of the fact that the only cure for a prostrate merchant ma rine the Republican Party has ever suggested is a subsidy paid to our ship builders. out of the public treasury, it is not very violent to presume that MT. Roosevelt Is in favor of the sub sidy.
 You can't eat your cake and have 1t you can't indulge in guilty love and be wise. No more can you adopt a policy of radical protective tariff and have merchant marine. What is a merehant ship made for? To carry the products of one country to the parts of another country. What is a protective tariff made for? To discourage, restrain and prohibit the carrying of products from 1t Is, then, to make a high tariff to restrain trade and then pay a large subsidy to shipmasters to build ships to promote trade! It is childish; 1t Is absurd; 1t Is stupid.
 There was a time when we had the most extensive merchant marine in the world which carried our flag to every part where merchants adventured on what James G. Blaine called the free trade tariff of 1S46." Return to such a tariff and the merchant marine will follow as the dawn of morn succeeds the dusk of eve, and there will be no occasion for an illegal an unconstitu- tional and an immoral subsidy to bring 1t about
 What do they say? That owing to our navigation laws, we cannot buy cheap ships abroad, and sail them un- der an American registry, and owing to our tariff laws, we cannot build cheap ships because of the high duties on raw materials, and thus the Ameri- can farmer and the American laborer must be taxed to pay the American shipwright the difference in the cost of ship, exactly like 1t, on the Clyde. CT the benefit of as cheap raw w-material as can be had at Glasgow, Scotland. or Belfast, Ireland? That Is the best way, and the only way to make cheap ship, but that would defeat ana overthrow the great Republican dogma and pa ternaiism and favoritism. With the triumph of the Republican Party. in November, the ship subsidy IS as cer- tain of adoption as the policy or ex- tortionate protection is certain to con-
 Here is one of its workings. For some of the purposes of citizenship, the man in Kentucky. grazing peeves for the foreign market Is as deserving and is considered as patriotic as the man in Massachusetts engaged in catching fish for the American market, and so Is the man Tn iowa, IeeulnB hogs to be turned into bacon; but for taxing purposes there Is great diff ference. Nobody can supply the Amer ican market with beef or bacon as eheaply as the American farmer and grazier can supply them, and as conseduence, 1t Is an economic impossl- bnity to protect" them by tarin, though it were high enough to be a6- solutely prohibitory; but somebody can supply the American market with | fish cheaper than the Massachusetts l fisherman can supply It, and so ne IS protected by an exorbitant tarim that Is practically prohibitory. Nor IS that all he is favored with free salt to cure | his catch; but the Iowa farmer must | pay tax to the salt trust before ne can cure his bacon.
 The moderate man would say that | there are advantages enough for the Massachusetts fisherman-taxed nsh
 for his customers and free salt for him
 self; but not so. The ship suosidy
 promises him s2 a ton on the entire
 measurement of all deep-sea hshing
 vessels, though they are engaged In carrying nohody's goods but their own
 CTS How is that for robbtng?
 One thing is certain, and that is that
 merchant marine and a protective tarin are as inconsistent and no more | in accord than the tune of Green ! Sleeves and Old Hundred. We cannot | have both at the same time. When you gather figs from missiles you may