The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

soil as the protective tariff. °To sup- plement the tariff, and to give to our growth substance and _ stability that shall make it enduring we must give to our ship builders and ship owners, such aid as will remove the ruinous competition of even insignificant for- eign nations. "Like protection, the fostering and upbuilding of our merchant marine will. endure to the lasting benefit of all people. The farmer of Iowa equally with the ship builder of Maine will reap the advantage. It means even more to those of the inland states than it does to those of the coast that their products shall be carried to dis- tant foreign ports in American ships under the 'stars and stripes.' "Lhe present ational administra- tion is committed to the American policy of making our merchant marine commensurate with our greatness in other directions. President-elect Taft has, taken his stand on the "same 'ground. His varied and worldwide experience has made him very appre- ciative of the enormous advantage that lies in having American products transported in American bottoms. "Soon after Judge Taft was nomin- ated for president, I wrote him a let- ter, of which the following is a copy: "Youngstown, O., June 21, '08. My dear Judge Taft: It seems quite proper that I should join with the multitude and send you congratulations, which [I do most heartily. Your election will be as cer- tain as the certainty of your nomin- ation prior to its consummation. ; On the same date of your nomi- nation, I was elected president of the Merchant Marine League of the United States to succeed Harvey D. Goulder. I regard this as one of the greatest questions before the Ameri- can people and bespeak your hearty co-operation and I hope the time will come when the American flag will fly as freely in all parts of the globe as it now does on our inland waters and on the Great Lakes. Very sincerely, (Signed) : iG) Buriks;: JR' "J received a most cordial ' and affirmative reply to this letter. We may all rest assured that our new president is in hearty sympathy with the extension of the merchant marine and will do all in his power to help it along. It will be remembered that he spoke most enthusiastically about it in his speech at Chicago. "T come from an inland state. For years the Republicans of Ohio, through their platforms, have declared their belief in the only policy by which the development of our country can be "TAE MARINE REVIEW rounded out and completed. Senator Hanna with his clear insight into the needs of the country, fought for it, He lived to see his efforts result in the passage of a merchant marine-bill by the Senate. Every Republican Con- gressman and every' Republican sen- ator that goes to Washington from Ohio must stand for the fostering of our: merchant. marine, if he truly represent his constituents. would Ohio asks of them that they do this much to advance her best interests and un- less they do so, they fail to live up to the responsibility placed upon them by their fellow citizens. "TI believe what is needed is a cam- paign of education and in time. the American people will be as enthusias- tic about extending our merchant ma- rine as is our friend Mr. Peuton, and I might add--that if there is anyone in the United States more enthusiastic than Mr. Penton, or anyone who knows more about it, or anyone who has done more for the cause, I would like to be introduced to him. "This question of the Merchant Marine like the ancient Gaul, of which Caeser wrote, is naturally divisible into three parts--that pertaining to our national. defences; the navy and a naval reserve of ships and seamen; that pertaining to the seacoast indus- tries of ship building and navigation and finally last but not least, that per- taining to the expansion of American commerce. In what I have to say, as a Central Western business man, I shail address myself chiefly. to this third consideration--not forgetting however, either of the others and par- ticularly not forgetting the first. To my mind it is a disgrace to all of us, to us Americans of the inland states, quite as much as to the Americans of the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards, that our huge battleship fleet, the pride "of the nation, is being convoyed and nursed around the world by a crowd of slow and shabby commercial ho- boes, well named 'tramps, foreign col- liers, flying half a dozen foreign flags, cheaply built, with crazy hulls and rat- tletrap engines, and manned by the re- fuse of humanity. It is no wonder that these 'tramps' have failed again and again to arrive on time at their destination and to deliver their coal where it was expected and where it was required. The only strange thing about it is that these 'tramps' turned up anywhere at all. Yet I am not condemning the United States govern- ment for employing them. It had to do this, or our battleship fleet could not -have-- started Roads, for such is now the skeleton weakness of our merchant: marine that Ly; from Hampton - practically no long-voyage American cargo steamships are available. "Splendidly managed as the cruise has been, strong and formidable as is the fleet, and brave and efficient as are the 13 thousand officers and men who man it, this cruise, because of our absolute dependence upon foreign col- liers, has simply advertised our mari- time weakness to the world. We have been able to send these ships abroad in time of peace, but to the shame of our people and the humiliation of our government, the fact. stands out, that we could not have done this at all in time of war, when international' law would forbid the use of foreign craft as colliers and as supply ships--and without coal these huge battleships of ours, could neither move nor fire a gun. If war had come, or does come now, before our battle-line returns to Hampton Roads, this magnificent ar- mada, which has cost more than a hundred million dollars of American money, would, as has well been said,. be, 'as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.' "Now, all. this. ig. not the -fault..ct President Roosevelt or of the navy department or of the officers of our navy. Time and time again, they have pointed out the egregious folly and the peril of neglecting our mercantile marine, the indispensable reserve of our fighting marine. Time and time again, the president and the navy de- partment have urged and = implored Congress to take some vigorous steps to remedy this desperate situation. But the national lawmakers, though eager and willing to pour eighty million dollars a year into deepening our waterways, chiefly for the use of foreign ships, have refused, up to this time, to give a single dollar for the encouragement of our merchant ship- ping, so that we might have colliers and supply craft of our own and sea- men of our own in case of war. The very best welcome that congress can give the battleship fleet, on its home- coming next February, is the enact- ment of the legislation now pending, to create swift and regular lines of Amer- ican steamships to South America and across the Pacific ocean, and to give American ships the preference in the carrying of supplies and materials to Panama. "Now, after this division, I will come to our own home section of the coun- the farms and factories of. the middle west. Our people of Ohio and the other inland states have the same interest as the people of New Eng- land, New York, Pennsylvania, Califor- nia, Oregon and Washington, in main-