The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1909-10-14
THE QUESTION OF AMERICAN SHIPS.


have ever read. 1t sets at rest the COM
monty accepted conclusion that the de-
cline of our shipping interest was due to
the Civil War, and it leaves the advocates
of the free ship policy not leg to stand
on. The article should be read in its
entirety by every one interested in this
great question, but as many may not
have this opportunity we shall present
some of the salient points. While the
up-building of the American merchant
marine was due to Democratic legisla-
ton, it is also true that it's downfall was
caused by that party, and it is mainly the
Democrats of the South and West who
today stand in opposition to measures
for its revival. How our merchant
marine was built up, and how it was
destroyed, is thus clearly told by Mr..
Marvin.
The first Federal government in 1889
had found the American merchant ma
rine almost as shrunken and dead as it is
nova mere skeleton of 123, 900 tons, ca
pable Of carrying only fraction of our
commerce, which was conveyed as now
largely by British shipping. But the
statesmen of 1889, in their very first tar
if act, ''for the protection and encourage
ment of manufacturers, embodied stall
wart protection for American ships and
sailors through the form Of discriminate
ing tonnage and custom taxes, which
compelled American merchants to employ
the ocean carriers of their own country
and the law required that these ocean
carriers should be built in the United
States.
This bold protective measure, which
Washington and Madison joined in franz
ing and enforcing, proved so successful
that by 1900 our registered merchant
fleet had expanded to a tonnage of 667,-
600, carrying SO per cent of our imports
and exports, and by 1910 to tonnage of
9S1, 900, carrying 81 per cent of our i'm
ports and exports. These policies of ship
protection, though modified here and
there in the years that followed, were
not entirely withdrawn against Great
Britain, our chief competitor, until 1849
and by that time they were reinforced by
generous system Of mail subsidies which
rapidly developed steamship-building and
engine-building in the United States, and
gave to our ocean steam fleet a growth
in quantity and quality far superior to
that of the United Kingdom. These
early American mail subsidies, by the
way,-it is worth recalling now, had
been granted by Democratic Congresses,
on the recommendation of Southern Dem
ocratic presidents. They created several
American steam lines to Europe, with
which the feebler and slower British sub
sidized ships could not compete, and
other lines to the West Indies and in the
Pacific ocean.
The American merchant marine, as it
stood at the height of it's strength, in
1855, when 5s3, 900 tons of shipping were
launched in the United States, was the
result of system of national protectio
deliberately initiated in 1889 by the foun-
ders of the Federal government. Even
through those periods when low-tarif or
anti-protection theories had prevailed in
Congress and the country, the merchant
marine was sedulously fostered by dis
eliminating duties, and later by subsidies
to mail lines, while all the time direct
bounties were paid to the vessels and
men of the deep-sea fisheries, ''the nur-
sery of the navy" There was small
protection then for pig iron and cotton
cloth, but much protection for ships and,
therefore, for shipbuilding. This mari
time interest up to 1856 was unquestion-
ably the most progressive, efficient, and
prosperous interest in America.
Those were the years of the Dread
nought and the Flying Cloud, and of the
still swifter steamers Of our subsidized
mail lines-the years when the Stars and
Stripes were streaming proudly at the
peaks of the finest ships in the ports of
every ocean. A significant decline came
in the year Immediately before the Civil
War-our shipbuilding fell off from $685.
600 tons in 1855 to PA, 1000 tons in 1860.
One cause of this shrinkage was that, as
direct result of the fierce sectional jeal-
ousy and strife over the slavery issue in
Congress, the ocean-mail subsidies were
withdrawn, in retaliation on the part of
the leaders of the South against the abo-
lition ports of the North, which built and
owned most of these swift and powerful
vessels of such unmstakable value in the
conflict now seen to be impending.
Not all the pluck and resource of Van
derbilt and Collins, the ablest ship mana
gers OF their time, could sustain the
American steam lines, unsubsidized,
against the treasures of Europe, and
all but few of the splendid Yankee
steamships had vanished with the clipper
ships from the great trade routes of the
North Atlantic when the first shots of the
war were fired at Sumter. The Civil
War did not begin the destruction of our
ocean shipping, as is often but inexactly
stated: the destruction had begun before.
American ships, without their mail pay,
though larger and faster ships, could not
compete with the British Cunard line and
its subsidy Of 5000, 600 year.
The writer recalls the Collins line,
composed Of the finest steamships of
that day, as we'll as the Vanderbilt
steamships, of which the same may be
said and of the efforts made to keep them
in service after the mail subsidy was
withdrawn; but it ended in bankruptcy
for the Collins line and Vanderbilt turned
his finest steamship over to the govern
ment, a free gift. AsMr. Marvin says: '"The
American merchant marine had prosper
ed and grown amazingly under national
protection, and it had begun to shrink as
soon as that protection was withdrawn
by the able but vindictive men who soon
after left Washington to found the
Southern Confederacy. They were