The Republican journal., 1911-10-26
LOST: A MERCHANT NAVY.

If it were not impossible to doubt the
ship news reporters it would sound as il
he Flying Dutchman had put into Bos.
ton harbor. In the registry of mythical
tonnage spectral galleons are far more
common than American clipper ships.
But the truthful gentlemen of the press
set their sole leather to her decks and
talked with her skipper in the flesh. He
did not smell of sulphur, nor were the
catheads visible through his ribs; no
CHASTITY chorus sang "Yo no! 20 hop to
a rising gust from an orchestra beneath
the stage; and it was an honest ship.
The skipper, to be sure, acknowledged
that he did not know where the vessel
would go next; but she is driven not by
an Avenging Wrath, but by the blind
and arrogant prejudices of Western con-
gressmen who, unable to see votes for
themselves in any ship-fostering legisla-
ton, below subsidy" through their
mouths and whine through their noses
petitions for the deepening of inland
waterways. For the first time in five
years an American clipper ship has
arrived in Boston harbor, where their
masts were once as the stand of pines on
a Maine hillside. Business on Atlantic
avenue pauses whilst the populace gapes
at her. Old men lead their grandchil-
drel to pierheads, saying, "Now look,
sonny! We can say you've seen Yankee
ship like what your grandad sailed in,'
as babes were lifted to look on Lincoln
Poor old vessel first to be the museum
freak of her home port, and then, as
report has it, to go up and down this
coast, dismantled and disgraced, at the
end of a tow line, until she finds grave
on Peak Hill Bar.
Aye, well, one or two memoranda for
the people of New England and faint
halloo to those beyond the Alleghenies:
First-When the Panama Canal is fin
ished, who will use it? An editorial arti-
Gle in the London Times of this month
reminds the British that "there are not a
dozen American vessels engaged in cross
seas service. The want of ships
has prevented the United States from
developing any considerable trade with
her neighbor in South America
With larger fleet available for the new
conditions which will follow the opening
of the Panama Canal, we should take
care that other nations less favorably
situated SnOulQ not enter this held
through any lack of enterprise on our
part.
Second-When the navy was sent spin
ming around the globe in Mr.. Roosevelt's
time, was it generally known that it was
coaled by foreign bottoms and that the
governments of Europe were laughing in
their sleeves at the spectacle?
Third-Does this country suppose that,
in the event of sudden war, such seamen
as won her battles in 1912 and 1861 could
be tr ained in six weeks? The old breed
of seafaring men is dying out of the
country, and there is now no way to re-
place them. The money we lose through
the want of merchant marine this ma
ton can better afford to miss than the
kind of men we lose.
These are the baldest elementary facts
of the situation. They are admitted in
Congress to be ignored Let any legisla-
ton be proposed of sort which will
fairly allow American shipbuilding firms
and American vessels to compete in the
markets Of the world and bark to the
OWLS boot and parrot shrek of ''Sub-
sidy!' from the inland congressman
Boston Herald