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22 MARINE REVIEW. [December 20, ° SENATOR HANNA ON THE SHIPPING BILL. HE DEALS WITH THE SUBJECT IN A STRAIGHTFORWARD, PATRIOTIC AND BUSINESS-LIKE WAY--THE BENEFITS OF THE BILL ARE WIDE-SPREAD AND WILL STIMULATE EVERY AVENUE OF INDUSTRY. Senator M. A. Hanna in addressing the senate last Thursday upon the shipping bill jumped right into the middle of his theme. He wasted no words in his introduction, a style which was eminently characteristic of the man. First he spoke of the shipping of the great lakes and its wonderful growth during the past thirty years--all due to the fostering care of the government. Thirty years ago the largest cargo that a lake vessel could carry was 600 tons, and even that was thought so great as to inspire comment. Today there are many vessels which carry 6,000 tons and more. In his preface he traced the history of American shipping from a pees of the government down to the civil war. Then continuing e said: "Tn 1858 our shipping in the foreign trade aggregated 2,301,148 tons, an increase of nearly 100 per cent. over 1848. in 1861 it amounted to 2,496,894 tons, this being the greatest tonnage ever under the American flag in the foreign trade in any single year, although but 65.2 per cent. of our foreign commerce was then carried in those ships. In 1861 was reached the highest point in the ownership of American-built vessels under the American flag in the foreign trade. The tonnage under the American flag, in the foreign trade, in 1861 was more than three times larger than was engaged in our foreign trade under our flag during the year 19 Think of that! Nearly forty years ago our shipping upon the high seas was three times greater than it is today. Could anything more clearly illustrate the decline of our merchant marine? When we consider that our foreign commerce is fully four times larger in 1900 than it was in 1861, and yet our shipping engaged in its carriage is but one-third of that of 1861, we bring into vivid prominence the shameful and humiliat- ing decline in a great national industry--an industry at once promotive of national prosperity and at the same time an industry that at all times has been the one great bulwark of national defense. OUR MERCHANT MARINE DURING THE CIVIL WAR, "The civil war completely disorganized our entire ocean-going and coastwise shipping interests. The transfers of vessel property during those four years were enormous. The enemy captured and destroyed 104,605 tons; foreigners purchased 774,652 tons; there was built for or purchased by our government 417,521 tons; the government chartered 757,611 tons, and 664,505 tons went from the foreign into the domestic trade of the United States--a total of 2,818,894 tons of American ship- ping that thus changed hands. Our shipping under register had de- creased 40 per cent., or was 1,000,000 tons less in 1865 than it had been in 1861. From carrying 65.2 per cent. of our foreign commerce in 1861 American ships carried but 27.7 per cent. in 1865. To a large extent our people gave up shipowning in the foreign trade during the civil war, and after the war there was everything to discourage them from re-enter- ing. In the first place, those who had preserved their capital had it invested in other industries, from which there was nothing to induce them to withdraw in order to resume shipowning in the foreign trade. In the second place, steam was more rapidly displacing sail and iron displacing wood, and the construction of iron vessels being much more costly in the United States than in England, the cost of operating our ships being higher than the cost of operating foreign ships, the war taxes being then so high on everything, especially ships, and the government giving no protection to American in com- petition with foreign ships, naturally the American people dropped out of the foreign carrying trade, in which cheaper-built, cheaper-operated, and heavily subsidized foreign ships had already secured control. "Tn a carefully prepared report on 'Foreign commerce and decadence of American shipping,' written on Jan, 25, 1870, Mr. Joseph Nimmo, jr., then chief of the treasury division of tonnage, and who subsequently be- came chief of the bureau of statistics, went into this subject at a time when we were but just recovering from the effects of the civil war. On page 20 of that report, which is executive document No. 111 of the second session of the forty-second congress, Mr. Nimmo summarizes his investi- gations of the subject and the information he had received, saying in part: 'The facts are stated as they were received. They seem to indicate an advantage in building iron vessels, on the side of England, of about 33 per cent. as compared with the United States.' "Mr. Nimmo compiled his statistics after visiting the leading Atlantic coast ship yards and conferring with their owners and with the owners of ships in our foreign trade. On page 21 of his report he further says: 'It is probable that the relative cost of building iron ocean steamers in England and in the United States does not differ far from the above estimate, viz. 83 per cent.' His information was that from $1 to $1.50 more per ton was paid on freight carried in iron than was paid on freight carried in wooden vessels in certain trades. Again, there was an advantage estimated at 14 per cent. in the carrying capacity of an iron sailing ship as compared with a wooden ship of the same size, which increased to 28 per cent. in iron as compared with wooden steamers, for the reason that there was more buoyancy and less weight of material in an iron than there was in. a wooden ship. WHY OUR MERCHANT MARINE HAS DECLINED. "In one of the tables accompanying his report Mr. Nimmo shows that the cost of operating for one year a 1,000-ton American wooden sailing ship, including insurance, depreciation, victualing, wages and the internal revenue tax, as compared with an English iron ship of the same size, was $31,812 and $19,674 respectively, or an advantage of $12,138 or 61 per cent. in favor of the English ship as compared with her American competitor. Mr. Nimmo assumed each ship to cost $90,000 in American currency. In figuring the cost of operation, while the wages of seamen largely contribute to the cost, the wide difference which is known to exist between the wages of seamen in the United States and those of foreign countries does not by any means make up the entire cost of operation. "In those early days with which we are now dealing money was worth only one-half in England what it was worth in the United States. If a man. borrowed capital to invest in ship building or ship owning, his interest was twice the amount of his competitor's and his taxes were four or five times that amount, because it has always been the policy of the English government, in addition to the policy of directly subsidizing their mail steamers, to make such concessions in the application of their laws as in effect to give an additional subsidy to their ships. In other words, the tax on shipping property is almost nothing, and all their internal revenue laws exempt shipping. Everything was done in those days to help build up their power on the high seas, in commerce as well as in war. In another table he compares the yearly pay of officers and crew ofa British and an American steamer of 3,000 tons as being $36,649.06 and $61,788 respectively, showing that the wage cost alone on an American steamship of this size was over 69 per cent. higher than it was on her British competitor. : "The conditions existing at that time have been changed very con- siderably, as I will show hereafter. Taking a $3,000,000 line of American steamers owned in New York, and comparing it with a British line of the same value, Mr. Nimmo showed that the state, county and city tax, the duty on supplies consumed on shipboard, and the United States tax on passenger receipts and on the company's profits on the American line were $155,500 a year, the British line paying as an offset but $10,000 in Great Britain. Now, I am not claiming that those conditions apply to- day, but what I wish to bring out is that at that time, following the destruction of our merchant marine as a result of the war, when we were at the threshold, beginning once more to attempt at least to build up the merchant marine, we were confronted with the conditions to which I have referred. If those conditions have been bettered during that time, it is owing to the fact, more than any other, that the chairman of the com- mittee on commerce of the United States senate has given his unfaltering support to every measure, as to this one, which has sought once more to rehabilitate us upon the high seas and restore the American flag to its rightful place on all the oceans of the world. "Mr. President, I feel it a privilege on this floor to pay that tribute to the one American citizen who, during his whole public life, has made this question a study, and has brought to his assistance all the information of those who know about it, and who has studied and made applicable every advantage, natural or otherwise, which could be brought to re- enforce and strengthen our merchant marine. Not only the building and operating of ships, but all other accessories which make the naviga- tion of the oceans, of the rivers, and of our lakes easy and profitable have been a part of that great question, which has been forced upon the attention of the American people until, as I stated, today, in my judg- ment, there is no policy that appeals so strongly to the American people as does the building up of this great sea power of ours. If the facts and figures which I have given are not convincing as a reason to be as- signed for the fall of our American shipping interests since the civil war, I know of none better to offer, because this whole matter is a simple busi- ness question as affecting the investment of capital, although I contend that there is another element in it which should appeal to the patriotism and pride of the American people. But that feeling can only be engen- dered after the fact has been accomplished, and the first thing necessary is to put the industry upon a basis so that it will attract capital, in order to insure its consummation. The business people who have been engaged in the foreign trade of the United States for the last thirty or forty years have met obstacles which seemed in many instances almost insur- mountable. "In the meantime, what has happened elsewhere? Everybody con- versant with the development of ocean transportation knows that imme- diately following our civil war, when the people of the United States made the effort, which I have recited, to rehabilitate their merchant marine, the nations of the world, with their usual shrewdness and busi- ness perception, knowing full well the disadvantages under which the American people labored in view of those conditions, immediately began a rivalry to see which one could earliest secure for itself this great trade with the United States. Nation after nation followed each other in rapid succession, passing laws directly subsidizing steamers for any and every part of the globe. England, foremost by reason of her natural advan- tages, opened new ship yards until at last, within a very few years, miles--yes, I say miles--of ships upon the stocks were visible in the yards of Scotland, England and Ireland. From that day to the present time there has been no cessation of that effort, and, in proportion as the effort is made in this country, the effort is redoubled in the countries of our competitors, in order so fully to occupy the ground that there can be no temptation, even with the superfluity of capital in this country, to induce our people to engage in shipping. Any business man who has watched the drift of current events from the close of the civil war until today has found that to be the most prominent policy adopted in foreign competition with us in any direction. Every time a measure looking to the development of our shipping interests has been brought before a house of congress, immediately the agents and representatives of those in com- petition were on the ground ready, and anxious to defeat it. 'In this connection, I wish to say a few words in regard to the much abused American line of steamers. I do not propose to avoid any part of this issue. I do not propose to run away from the tongue of slander or the imputation of motives other than those to promote the best interests of the country on the part of any man connected in any way with this question from the beginning to the end. Several years ago a bill passed congress, passing the senate first, granting a mail subsidy to the International Steamship Co. It passed the senate after thorough consideration by the committee on commerce, and, as I understand, after thorough discussion of the question in the senate, and if it had become a law as it passed the senate it would have given to that line as compen- sation for carrying the United States mails, under the conditions enforced by the department, exactly what this bill would give. The compensation was considered fair and reasonable by the senate. The bill went to the house in the closing day of the session, and, under a spasmodic effort to chop things off, I suppose, as sometimes occurs, a certain percentage was stricken from it without any particular argument or reason for it, except perhaps that the committee on appropriations were cutting down expenses. There was no further time to consider the measure, and the conference committee adopted the report. But it then came to be a very serious question whether the men or company who had proposed to avail themselves of the benefits of the law would accept it or not. Their judgment was against it, but finally it was accepted as a venture, as I ponagly OY ne little patriotism, because along the sea- as always been a sentiment in favor of