Staunton spectator and vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1896-1916, 1907-09-20
THE LESSON OF THE lUsITAMIA.


The Lusltania. the greatest of ocean
liners, which with a crew of 900 officers
and men, has just carried 5000 people
across the Atlantic in five days is the
marvel of the age. She is the most
t alked of ship that has ever been built
and when we contemplate that she can
pick up the whole population of small
city on one side of the ocean and set it
down on the other side In FIVE days it
is not surprising that she is marvel.
This great ship Ii 100 feet long, which
is 235 higher than the Washington
monument if placed on her beam ends.
Her smoke stacks, of which there are
four, are each "a feet in diameter and
$50 feet high. She has five stories and
persons 60 from one story to another
by elevators, there are 100 furnaces to
be fed by coal, and her speed is nearly
equal to al express train, being over
% miles per hour. We are not attempt
ing to give in detail the proportions OF
this great ship. we only give enough to
put our readers on enquiry and if pos
sible interest them in this newest and
most enormous leviathan Of the deep.
What we wish to emphasize is our
own littleDess in this affair, our weas.
en- dwa1 fishness in ship building. There
exists an idea among the ignorant, as
well as some who think they know it
all, that there is not very much of any
thing beyond the confines of the United
States, that we are the whole show,
that all the world iouAs with awe Oh
US, and that We have more money,
better clothes, wiser men, more usef ul
brains, can distance everybody In
everything, whip the earth, and not
start perspiration. in short that we
the American nation bestride the globe,
and the effete mOnarchies flee in ter.
ror when they hear We are coming.
All this is good for Fourth OF July
blowhards and few other demagOgues
and for inmates of asylums for the
feeble minded, but this ship should
make us ashamed of ourselves. We
have all the raw material necessary to
build it. We have iron, steel. brass,
yes brass. in abundance, wood, and
all other things entering into it. But
we did not build 1T. we never have built
anything of the kind. We have no
such ship and We cannot maintain
such If We had 1t. Had this ship been
built in our docks by our sbipbuilders.
designed by our engineers, and run
with American coal, Differed by an
American crew, and owned by an
American Company We would need
bands to keep us from bursting. Why
in America We can hardly build a
ferry boat. We can build some battle
ships, but who wants battleships They
only make US poor. We have scarcely
a steamship compsny-we are at the
tail end of all such great enterprises.
We poor Insignificant creatures in the
commercial world. AT once we may
be asked why is this :? The answer is
the Tariff-the Internal Tariff-the
impOverisher of our country, the thing
in our laws which allows one section
to feed on the other, and which per-
mits no importation Of foreign stuffs
for consumption. The laws which des
troy foreign trade. We grow millions
of dollars worth of stuff and let it rot
or gorge ourselves on it when we should
trade it to foreigners for their pro-
ducts and thus grow rich. Our ships
should carry cargoes out and bring
cargoes back. but they do nothing Of
the kind. why do so many persons
want to come to America if the other
countries are SO much ahead of us ?'
We are again asked. We answer-the
brains of foreign countries do not come
here. The working people do come.
Bees swarm out of hives not because
the hives are not good places. but be-
ca use The stronger stay in the hives,
viii CD are crowded to suffocation, and
the weaker must 60 elsewhere. We
ought to stop blowing our horns when
we read of this steamship and to our
shame admit that we did not build it,
and that we cannot build such, nor
even run one of the kind. They are
beyond us and always will be so long
as our rotten Tariff laws exist.