The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1911-03-29

P@e0 WIN oritisn anu German
merchants ON the ocean?
Simply because our own laws will
not allow 1t. Our navigation acts have
destroyed the American merchant ma
Sine.
How?
BY denying registry and the protec-
tion of the flag to any ship not built
in one of our own shipyards. We are
not allowed to buy vessels of Eng
land. Scotland or Germany without
losing the protection OF our govern
ment. We must build them at home.
Our precious tariff increases the cost
of all ship-building material, while in
Great Britain vessels are built under
fpee trade conditions. Hence it costs
us more to build any sort of sea-going
vessel than it costs Great Britain. If
we were allowed to buy ships abroad
we could get them on equal terms with
British merchants Consequently, we
Gould compete with them for the car
pying of trade. We would get our
share. The American merchant ma
rine would once more flourish as it
did prior to the Civil War. The Tariff
cOmpels the merchant to pay more for
All American ship than the English
man pays for an English ship, and
our navigation laws compel the Amer
lean merchant to- use the American
ship or none.
RcsIlt: che Englishman wets the
trade.
1t was just this kind of legislation
which provoked the preliminary trou-
bles between Great Rritian and The
American Colonies. Our forefathers
hated tn. British navigation acts: the
sons copied them. Great Britain grew
wise, swung to free trade and took
the seas away from us. Our naviga-
tfon acts represent the most violent
type of the Protective madness. To
deny the merchant the right to buy
his vessel where he can get it cheap
est is mere lunacy. The cheapest and
best ships will inevitably get the car
goes; and where the law denies to the
American the chance to get the cheap
est and best vessel it simply puts him
out of the combat.
Our navigation acts have done that
identical thing.
What is the remedy? Senator Hanna
wanted ship subsidies" In other
words, the merchant was to be en-
Ceuraged to go into the shipping busi-
ness by the assurance that the govern
ment would go down into the pockets
Of the taxpayers and pull out enough
money to make good the difference
between the costly ships of the Amer
lean and the cheaper, better ships of
Great Britain.
To escape the effects Of the bad
law, Senator Hanna proposed that CON
sress should pass another. The
Tariff, which plunders the many to
enrich the few has killed the mer-
chant marine; therefore the merchant
marine must he restored to life, not
at the expense of the enriched few,
but of the plumdered many.
The merchant marine has been de
strOyed by the system which is the
mother of the trust" by the system
which sells to foreign consumers at a
lower price than to home consumers
Why not encourage our merchant
marine by allowing our merchants to
buy their vessels in those foreign mar
kets where our protected manufac-
turers sell their wares so much cheap
er than they sell them to us at home?
Would it not be the most shameless
kind of class legislation to take the
tex money of the unprivileged masses
of our people (who pay practically all
the taXcs), and build up fortunes for
another class of shipowners?
The benefciaries of protection are
the few it's victims are the many
Thus the favored few get all the
benefits OF protection and escape all
it's evils; while the unprvileged many
bear all of it's evils and reap none of
It's benefits.
We are told that Great Britain and
Germany subsidize their merchant ma
rine and that therefore our govern
mont must do it, The argument would
be contemplate. even if the facts sup
port It, but that is not the case. Great
Britain does not subsidize her mer-
chant marine, nor does Germany do
for specific mail service and colonial