National Defence: Navigation and Commissioner

"The present Commissioner of Navigation estimates that the bill (before the Fifty-sixth Congress) will never involve payments from the national treasury exceeding nine millions of dollars, and that the average will be from five to six millions of dollars for twelve or fifteen years. This measure conformed to the recommendations in the President's annual message, and to those in the reports of Mr. Gage, the Secretary of the Treasury, and of Mr. Chamberlain, the Commissioner of Navigation. The bill had the support of members of both the great political parties in Congress. It was reported without opposition from the Senate Committee on Commerce, and was favorably reported by the House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries. If it should become a law, and its provisions should be accepted by our ship-owners, present and prospective, these will be compelled to construct at least 600,000 tons of new shipping in American ship-yards within five years.

"The United States is now confronted with the fact that the ships of other nations are built more cheaply and operated for less money than are American ships. In addition, foreign nations pay to their merchant shipping subsidies, subventions, and bounties aggregating $25,000,000 a year. If American ships are to compete, their owners must be fortified to meet the unequal conditions against them; while the aid that will be given by future ships and seamen in the event of war makes compensation doubly justifiable. Such aid will give us, as Thomas Jefferson once said in a great state paper, the home-build ships and citizen seamen essential to the national defence. It will not lead us into any of those diplomatic tangles which are inevitable when the policy of discriminating duty is adopted; and the bounty system, being patterned after foreign policies, will necessarily estop foreign governments from offering objection to its adoption."