The Evening statesman. [volume] (Walla Walla, Wash.) 1903-1910, 1904-08-03
luce Americans to build ships and sail

From a reasonable point of view,
however, it doesn't seem so injurious
to our producers and exporters that
freight rates are low. It is indeed a
most singular complaint and objec-
ton. 1t is assumed at the beginning
that the rates are lower than ships
without loss; yet this loss is to be made
up out of the treasury. The country
shouldn't be satisfied, we are told, with
low rates for freight on the high seas,
but should invent some way, adopt
some plan, to make them higher. The
ready way is subsidy, bounty, sub
vention," to be paid out of the treasury.
through taxation, direct or indirect, one
way or another. So let us run foreign
ships out Of the trade and pay higher
rates to our own.
Theer can be no question, The Ore
gonian thinks, how the producers of the
J,
for export, will receive this proposal.
Prices of their cotton, corn. wheat,
flour. tobacco and meats will not be
enhanced to them by this scheme. 1t
will furnish no more markets, no better
markets, than they have now. But the
money to pay the subsidy will be taken
largely out Of their pockets for pay
ment to those rich enough to own and
build ships-thereby increasing our
stock of trust millionaires, one of
whose favorite methods is subsidy and
subvention. Mighty few trusts would
exist. if government in one way or an
other hadn't aided them to plumber
the public. Subsidies, grants, railway
and municipal favors, cunningly de-
vised tariff laws, of which only few
were in position to take advantage.
have been the principal agencies in
building up the oppressive trusts of
which the country complains.
The Oregonan wishes to be respect
full to the commission now making this
inquiry. but it must make it's protest
against any extension of the subsidy
system.
1t would seem as if everything on
land had been exploited to the full.
through grants and monopolies: and
that hope of further exploitation
through these methods now turning
towards the sea, We're ready with new
Probabilities for taxation of the many
for benefit of the few. Railway land
grants have taken the public domain.
and lien land jobs nave been used to
the utmost. aggravating the evil: and
now there is talk that the sea may be
made the scene of similar or kindred
exploits, with money taken from the
public treasury and paid into private
hands, on the plea that foreign ships
are carrying our products at too low a
rate to oversee markets. The Ore
CONAN must protest against this
scheme, or be recreant to public duty.
A real reason why American capital
has been withheld from shipbuilding
our country could be made out of OPP
portunities on land. aided by grants of
rin ri, 10 NV
perts in the art of 'organizing" indus
try for enrichment of the few at the
expense of the many. A probable rea-
son why our country is so far behind
in shipbuilding is the belief long enter
tanned that the treasury could be
worked for subsidies, and men have
held aloof from marine enterprises, in
the hope of obtaining them.
Formerly it was urged that subsidies
must be paid. in order to reduce or
equalize the freight rate charged by
foreign vessels, so that our people
could get more for their products. Now,
the argument is that the subsidy must
be paid because the freight rate is SO
ruinously low that our SHIPS can do
nothing. This argument may be worked
either end foremost, as you please.
1t should be unnecessary, but per-
haps it is not, to remind all whom it
may concern-especially including
those of our people who talk so glibly
about subsidies for everything-that
the public treasury has no money ex
cept what it takes from the people. The
treasury is not a magical reservoir of
wealth, to be tapped by those VINO want
it's contents for support of their per-
sonal business or purposes of private
gain. And as the treasury has moth
ing except what has been taken from
the people, SO there is no miraculous
way of restoring to it what the sub
sidy has taken out of it, The only
way to replenish it is by more taxa
ton; and everything that subsidy takes