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NEW YORK Shipbuilding Ship operation Ship maintenance MARINE REVIEW CLEVELAND LONDON VOL. 51 SEPTEMBER, 1921 Sell or Sink the Ships--Why Not? Cancerous Growth on American Shipping Brought About by Government Interference Demands Quick Surgical Treatment "BY: JOHN A. PENTON OR years loyal Americans fought to obtain Fk what the country finally owned on Armistice Day----a strong fleet of ocean freight carriers. Unless common sense finally is recognized, Amer- icans will be fighting for years to come to get away from what has been wickedly and licentiously forced upon them since Armistice Day--an unwieldly, costly and probably useless mass of ships. With eyes inflamed by the madness of war, we have seen almost without protest the criminally wasteful and extravagant pouring out of taxpayers' funds since the war ended to carry out what was purely a war project. We have "balanced the fleet" by unbalancing what merchant marine we had. For the last 32 months we have been drifting in a fog. Just one way remains to get back on our course-- sell or sink the ships. Before the war, marine thinking Americans tried desperately to win a few hundred thousands of dol- lars of support from the government as a direct subsidy' to American shipping--a small penalty 'on the government for its insistence on keeping pro- hibitive laws on the books. But the thought of a subsidy was abhorrent. : Then the war tossed the whole world into the air and in trying to patch it together, the same law- makers voted close to three and one-half billions of dollars--and have watched another half billion come in and turn around and go out--for shipping. Calls for deficiency appropriations of $125,000,000 for the next six months are important now to these other: block 'of ships: 387 lawmakers only because the sum is less than they expected. A few hundred thousands spent annually in the nine years between the defeat of the merchant ma- rine bill in 1907 and our entrance into the war would have saved these four billions. And we should now have a real merchant marine with a trained personnel of private owners instead of a mass of ships which we have been unable to operate or to sell. No honest effort was made to sell' the ships when they could have been movéd quickly. The one method now is to tow out the wooden ships and sink them; next. offer 25 of the lower grade. steel ships at auction--any bid accepted--and if no bids are made, sink these. Next week or month offer an- Tell the story to the whole world, regular auctions at regular intervals, open to every one--Americans preferred, -but everyone, European, African, Asiatic, privileged to bid and buy.' England has thrown down the bars on ship sales and Germany is buying from her. A few sinkings, a few sales at bargain prices, a few evi- dences of sincerity in getting rid of the ships and the fleet will begin to sell. Don't forget that every sale means one less leakage of public funds. It was a crime not to have cancelled all govern- ment-subsidized ship construction as soon as the armistice was signed. We should have started the next morning to fire the huge force built up at federal expense to win