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or: made for the power to the president to has changed the commercial appear- ance of all Europe, by building up and enabling Mediterranean traffic to be developed, and such ports as Trieste, Marseilles, Genoa and Naples have come to the front, Germany has developed a deep sea water con- nection with the entire world, cer- tainly with practically every country of Europe, and we find that England has not the extent of trade she had before the Suez Canal was opened. It has been a distinct disadvantage to her. She has found, through the preference which Germany shows to her own ships, that Germany has been able to make great inroads on the direct trade. You know what I mean 'by direct trade. It is direct trade from one country with another. If an English ship brings a cargo from England to America, that is direct trade; but if the English ship goes down to Brazil. and brings a cargo to us from that point, it is in- direct trade. When Germany under- takes to take the direct trade from England she will find other condi- tions, because the capacity of "the Englishman is great for looking out for His own country; and 1° admire such a nation, and the only sad fact is that we have not properly looked out for our own. Japan Increasing Her Subsidies. in srepard to. fapan,.it-is said, that Japan is poor, and the ships are not 'paying, but yet we see that Japan is increasing her subsidies and doing practically all the trade with us. The problem of getting all the trade with the Pacific, the forcing of premature peace with China, the signing of the agreement between our secretary of state and Takahira about a year ago, to preserve the statu quo, which statu quo was a puzzling condition, which increase of American commerce in the Pacific, all these have developed to encourage the Jap- -anese, so they do not need the en- couragement that we do. Suspending. Discrimination in Indirect Trade. Now, gentlemen, the whole point is that Mr. Dickie, and a number of others I have heard speak on the subject throughout the United States, has the idea that the only course for the item States is to biy' out a participation in our own trade. When in 1828 we passed the law giving the suspend discrimination: in started then the crowning act which made for the killing of American commence on the ocean. Our ships up to that time, 1828, were doing 93 indirect trade, we ° THe MarINe REVIEW per cent of our own over sea com- merce. From that time there has been a constant and steady decline. Gf course, that decline was augment- ed during the Civil war, but since then it has been constant and con- tinuous. Our people will tell you that it is brought about by economi- cal conditions, because of our atten- tion having been given chiefly to the railroads, and because the metal ship was proved to be better than the wooden ship, and the steam en- gine came in to supplement our de- cay, but when we were building Steamships for a number of years we were holding our own and passing England in our merchant marine un- til she was able to discriminate against American ships in favor of her own. We gave up the discrim- ination. . We .tever made a_ treaty "wih Great Britain, "We have' no treaty of commerce and navigation. We have a treaty of peace, which is so lacking in. support of American claims and rights, that the War of 1812 was forced upon us, and then, as a condition of peace, when held up, as we were, at the point of a gun, we signed an agreement to give up the direct trade. In 1828, when we concluded to give up the indirect trade, we were then in such position that our "commerce "was. On. every ocean, and we thought we could stand alone, without the discrimina- tion which other nations gave to their commerce. Instead of being able to stand alone, we went down. How to Get Commerce Back. From my point of view, I believe the right way to get the commerce back is to discriminate in the indi- rect trade. I find that people realize that subsidies to make up the differ- ence in cost of operation of the cargo vessel, between our cost and that of the foreigner, will not be effective. We have undergone a post graduate course, under the guidance of foreign nations, both in our foreign affairs and in our local and domestic affairs, and many of our people have come fo the .conclusion that outside of a mail subvention, and the building of mail lines, the subsidies will be in- effective, and every one of us be- lieve they are unconstitutional. That being the case, I think they are gra- ciously considering allowing us to have them. Bring on a Commercial War. We have left the possibility of se- curing a tremendously large share of American commerce in the indirect trade, and any time any one gets up February, 1910 to advance that theory the state de partment opens its archives and _ pre- sents the objections to that plan, which are familiar to us. They throw their hands up, and tell ys that we would bring on a commer- cial war. There are worse things than' a commercial war. The con- trol of the carriage of the world by any nation is something worth fight- jing for, if necessary, and it is worth while carrying on a commercial cru- sade to secttre it, and endeavor to meet some of the discriminations to which we are subjected by other na- tions. There is not going to be much in this golden rule business, when it comes to competition for the markets of the world. -Phis.. trade will not come to us, unless we can find some enlightened way by which we can go out and, take it. There are $300,000. 000 of gold spent by this country for carrying people, carrying cargoes, and insurance and banking, and that is a constant drain of money from this country, while our balance of trade in 1907 was nearly $600,000,000. This $300,000,000 is the amount we pay foreigners for carrying our traffic on the ocean, which money we want to keep at home. We have tremendous exports abroad. We feed a large pro- portion of the people of Europe, and supply the factories of Europe with material. In the .business world we must get down to a low basic cost factor. One factor is the efficiency of our own people, and I believe that when a man comes over here, and breathes our tonic climate, that man does a little more work. We must, in order to balance our trade exports more and more try to get another string to our bow, and that is to keep at. home the gold that now - flows abroad. There are no Treaties. Some of the objections raised are, that if you repeal some of these treaties, that thete will be a commer- cial war. In the first place, they are not treaties. . In: 1849, after 21 years, during which a number of other na- tions had made agreements to stop discrimination in indirect trade be- tween our country and foreign coun- tries, the English did nothing, they stuck to their own navigation laws, good laws at the time, until a. man named Ricardo, a bright man, studied the conditions of every one who made agreements or treaties with us, and he found, not only that there was a constant decline of our commerce, but that every other nation which had made a discriminating agreement with us in the indirect trade had pro-