Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1922-12-21
The Sinking Of SHIP Subsidy

-HE Congress which but recently was
convened to praise and pass the Ship
Subsidy bill, has come in fact to bury
it. Even so steadfast a friend of the Ad-
ministration as Senator Jim Watson of
Indiana, joins in the obsequies by proposing
that rural credits be substituted for marine
bonuses on the calendar of the present ses-
sion; while Senator Jones, of Washington
State, navely declares that the farmers of
America, if they understood ship subsidy
would be urging it's enactment" but that
they do not, sad to say, understand it, The
President, though still nursing a pale hope
for his pet measure, probably will bow with
wonted grace to the Inevitable. What avals
the "big stick when ones party in the Sen
ate is divided into factions which break the
further asunder the more that weapon is
brandished? \.-, 49,.
The Progressive" and the Old Guard are
united for agricultural credits, everybody in
politics is for agricultural credits these days.
but they never chimed ON ship subsidy. The
Old Guard supported the bill as matter of
habit and of predisposition, finding it's
favors to special interests almost as appeta-
ing as those in the Fordney- McCumber tariff
But the "Progressives" had enough of taste
for democracy to disrelsh the idea of selling
the Government merchant marine at a
loss of two billion eight hundred million dol
lars, as compared with it's original COST and
then granting to the purchasers of SUBJ
sides equivalent to seven hundred and fifty
the Administration bill passed ;1e House by
a slim plurality consisting largely of the votes
of Congressman who were defeated for re-
election at the November polls; and now, %
spare it the shame of an outright hic jacet in
the Senate, it's friends advise it's retirement
for matters suddenly found to be more i'm
peratiye.
That this means the last of the measure is
hardly to be doubted-certainly the last of
1t in anything like it's present form The
Congress whose term begins ext March will
cOnCa1E lar larger democratic contingent
tina. does the one to which President Harding
looked for passage of the Ship Subsidy and
will be far more keenly concerned for COM
mon rights in asclash with special privilege.
There is no likelihood, then, of the Admins
tration's accomplishing anything by way of
Government support for national mere ant
marine (Which in itself would be purpose
altogether praiseworthy) unless it abandons
the method and the spirit which has rendered
the present measure dstasteful.
Touching one point however, the President
was eminently right when he said, in his
special message on the matter, that those
who would not hear to the plan proposed
ought, in all fairness, to suggest an alterna-
tive. This can hardly be done within the
time that remains for the present Congress-
nor Is it desirable that a Congress whose
record tA.I people have so emphatically con-
demned, should undertake, in it's eleventh
hour, far-reaching legislation on which there
is certain to be wide tivergences of judgment
But the new Congress, as soon IS it is feasible
to do so, ought to go tho-cugLly into the
question of encouraging by methods fair and
sound the development of American mer-
chant marine.