The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-27
.SH|vELY ATTACKS
 J. s. SHIPPING LAWS
Calls the Navigation Code Me
 dieval Ordinance
ENGLAND IS AN EXAMPLE
Registry to Foreign-BuiIt Ships But We Retained It at Cost of
 Merchant Marine

Washington, January 26.-Opposing the ocean mail bounty bill. Senator Shively of Indiana took the position in the Senate today that the supremacy of American shipping was incapable of restoration by subsidy or bounty. He advanced the opin- ion that the only means of accomplishing that end was through the repeal of the shipping laws. the abolition of medieval ordinances known as our navigation code"
 It was asserted that vast majority of these laws had been imported bodily from the British code. Explaining the adoption of these laws hundred years ago, the Indiana senator said:
 New England was pursuing navigation and desired legislation that should enable her to engross the deep sea coastwise trade of the young republic. Besides, she long had been and then was proftably employed in importing molasses from the West Indies, distilling 1t into rum, trad ing the rum for darkies on the coast of Africa and selling them as slaves in southern ports. The situation in the coun- try became ripe for negotiations, com promise and bargain. Molasses. rum, shipbllding, the slave trade and slavery coalesced; and the finished products of the coalition were the extension of the slave trade for 20 years and the wide open door for the future navigation code.
 Finding especial fault with the denial of American registry to foreign built ships. though. owned by American citi- zens, MT. Shiyely said that in 1S49 Great Britain had repealed the code that we had copied, whereas we retained it with the result that the American merchant ma rine was destroyed.
 "England.' he said, recognized the in- terest of her merchant marine as para mount, re-enforced it with tools from the shipyards of the United States, saved her merchant marine, and with it her ship building industry. We made the ship building interest paramount, sacrificed our merchant marine to 1t and our ship building for the ocean trade disappeared with it."
 Referring again to the ancient origin of the code and saying that the United States alone of all nations retains 1t, MT Shively said: Since then molasses and rum have lost their significance. The slave trade has gone. Slavery itself has passed away. Advancement has been made in the physical sciences and me chanical arts. Everywhere mankind is harnessing the forces of nature into ser vice. Steam and electricity are excluding time and space from human calculations and bringing widely separated people face to face. Vast common interests are mak- ing for peace, order and progress. Ecu dal settlements are yielding to the needs of modern society. Old codes are being adjusted to new conditions. Change and improvement mark all other departments of human activity. Through all and in spite of all, the barbarisms of our naviga- ton laws remain memorials to stone blind avarice and stupid folly-the deadly blight on our merchant marine"
 The senator denounced these laws as an artificial obstruction in the way of the American merchant marine and declared Flittle could be done for it's rehabilitation so long as they were on the books. As going to show that the condition of American shipping would not be improved by subsidy, MT. Shiyely said that While under the law of 1891 tho United States has been paying 165 per cent more for carrying the mails In American than In foreign vessels, the dlscrlmlnatioh hau been of no avail
 .'For the fiscal year ended June 90, 1890. y he said, 'the proportion of our foreign commerce carried in American bottoms was S5 S-5 per cent. For the fiscal year ended June 30. 1910. this proportion had fallen to 8 7-1O. Whatever occasional slight reaction appears. the general course has been consistently and swiftly down ward. Nor is there persuasive evidence that these disbursements from the reder- al treasury over and above the open mar ket nrice have even retarded the decline. The evidence is far more convincing than this persistent reliance on false reme- dv. based on false diagnosis. to the ex- ciusion of the true one. has hastened the disease"