Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1914-03-20
MERCHANT MARINE
 LOST BY U. s. A. Half Century Ago This
 Land Carried One Third of It.
 INTRODUCED STEAM. Legislation Is Said to Have Destroyed Chance for Commercial PrOWess to Be Further Maintained.

one-third, the remaining third being scattered. Mulhall, the English statistician, comedies that American tonnage was growing more rapidly than British shipping. We were on the point of becoming the first maritime nation.
 American merchants were the first private ship owners to engage d. rectly in trade with China and the far East, without the support of a great semi-government corporation or mo- nopoly, like the East India companies of England, Holland and France. Tie American China fleet, which dates from 17S4, developed and maintained for century the largeEt and fastest sailing ships in the world.
 In steam tonnage our early records are equally favorable. The first sue cessful steambot, obert Fulton's s
 "Clermont" was built in the United States in 1907. It was followed by a large commercial development cf steam navigation, in advance of any other country.
 The first steamship to cross the Atlantic, the Savannah, 1919, carrie1 the American flag.
 The first regular steamship line i'll tro1 in 1920 from New York to Cuba.
 In the first twenty years of regular transatlantic steam navigation, ls4o- 60, the largest and fastest ships car ried the American flag; and in the came period the tonnage of steam was far in excess oi that of Englanc } or any other country.
 Flag Has Disappeared.
 Today our flag has almost "isap peared from the worlds commerce We have on the A4lant:c one seccn( class passenger lin': to England, small surviving line to Venezuela, ant
 a freiglrt line to BrAzil!. cnly recently established. Cuba $ helping us on | hv keeping up the old American Enf from New York to Havana, and als( assists us with line to Soutm Amer | ica. On the Pacific We have two l lines to the Orient, owned by rail.
 roads, one of them 'lav!ng only enc boat, and both losing money, and a | line to Australia backed as patr:- otic enterprise hv one of the veal | thiest Pacific Coast families.
 We have the kini put humiiit ing | assistance in our forelgn trade o! steamship lines maintained by Cuba Brazil, Australia. Nov Zealand, China
 Japan, Canada and European coun- tries. We also. like Spain aid
 Portugal, hava ionI reeo!lections oi
 our glorious past. The American flag, once sup:enls OH ;ha seven seas i is seen no more III a thousand ports
 whose commerce it. Itoduly shal Cd
 but yesterday.
 Why have w3 fallen: The usua
 answer is that We dc no: ray sub
 sides, but this $ incorrect. Only :
 few second class nations pay sub.
 sidies for fire u'lt service. England
 never paid a dc..'a- in su5ven;ions tC
 a freight line and subsidies only { few passenger lines wrich contro
 routes to India; purely military
 provision for rie defonse of tht
 empire. Only one of the great Ger | man lines ever received subsidy
 and that one onv for line 70 Aus tralia and the Orient, where it must complete with British IT dia policy
 We have been pa-:ng mail subsidies for over twenty years and have les:
 to show for it +kah any other sec Che
 class nation. The trouble lies deeper The American merchant marine il | the most remarkable example i'll the
 world of ths,pe that as bte1
 destroyed by ,..,s.a-ol. Railroad: l can carry an indefinite amount O
 legislation like tho Elkins law or tit
 Bepburn law. If all competing rail 1 roads get an aqu,i share But con
 gre does not co1sroi all he compet ing lines in ocean traffic, ard thS
 laws which it has enacted have mad
 the American flag :oo heavy a burdei for a merchant shi.. to carry in com
 petition with the free sh'ps. nnoe foreign flags.
 T Americans laws increase the pay ,l roll of a ship 50 to 1oo ger cent, p ;i ancient restrictions on the employ ment of men. In the e.shteeEl {, century, when European nations wer
 almost constantly at each otaef