New Britain herald., 1922-11-22
THE SHIP SUBSIDY.

People all over the country are
 trying to form an honest opinion aa
 to whether or not the ship subsidy
 bill should be passed It is a deep,
 perpexing and important problem.
 The bills adherentA are the President
 and small majority Of the Repub- licans in Congress. The bills, oppo-
 nents are the Democrats in congress
 and a large Republican minority.
 Foreign nations hope the bill will not
 pass The present situation is, ac-
 cording to the President, that gov
 ernment operation of the ships costs S50,oQs, ,ooo He says by passing the
 bill this amount would be cut in half.
 and at the same time there would be established and maintained ''an Amer
 ican merchant marine, privately
 operated. but serving all the people and always available to the govern
 ment in any emergency
 The President says also "our imme- diate problem is not to build and support merchant shipping :; our problem is to deal with what we now possess. Our problem is to re- lievc the public treasury Of the drain it is already meeting In other words the President wants to use the ships we have. Such authorities as The New York Herald, for instance, insist that we should forget all about the old ships and ask the question should we embark upon a policy of committing ourselves to ship sub sidy if we had no ships on hand? Such authorities say we should not do this.
 Along the same line is the state ment of Senator La Toilette, of Wis consin, opposing the bill, who says that after the war our ships were put in charge of men taken from private steamship companies whose interests have been to make government operation of ships a failure. Instead of doing the sensible thing" he con tinues land continuing government operation under direction of men who wish to make it success instead of failure 1t is now proposed to sell these ships to private ship companies at about 10 cents on the dollar and to pay to these private owners many millions of dollars for an indefinite period for operating these ships and to permit them to charge such rates for transportation as they please"
 If Senator La Follette's statement is correct as to facts and insinuations, the bill should be defeated. He i'm plies that a change of the men who handle the ships for the government, and a restoration of the excess profits taxes and the surtaxes, would take care of the cost of operation by the many times over" He, brings into the discussion a of these taxes. It is diff cult to believe that the men who have been handling the ships for the gov ernmcnt have intentionally made them fail to pay. It is difficult to accept Senator La Follettes state- mcnt in its entirety.
 There are certain patent points we must have a merchant marine. IL is costing the government large sum annually to conduct it. The re- of liquor from our ships and the increasing demands of seamen for higher pay will make the operation of the ships more expensive It does not seem that getting new men to handle the ships for the government would greatly reduce that s50,oo0 annual cost. And yet that annual cost must {; be reduced. Tho Presidents plan | would certainly establish our mer- chant marine. We must never be again as we were at the time of the wat The passage of the bill would prevent tho recurrence of such a situation. "Preparedness.'
 The public opinion Of tho men in the street. all over the country is probably against the bill. The expert opinion is probably the other way. The one thought that remains in the mind, however, after honest endeevor to solve this perplexing problem is hat if the bill is passed we will have [ Inc great merchant marine making us wealthy in trade with the world in peace, making us independent and strong in time of war-and foreign lations do not want us to pass the Jill: they want to carry the trade of he world on their bottoms with the -nited gtatoe nevinp for that frans- |