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December, 1909 be: First, ambition enough throughout the country to carry the products of our industry in our own ships to any country which cares to exchange prod- ucts with us, and that ambition must be strong enough to enable us to face the apparent cost; and second, there must be wise national laws to protect and foster our merchant marine, mak- ing it possible for our ship builders to build and equip ships and for our ship owners to purchase and operate them; third, there must be state and municipal laws on the part of sea-girt states and maritime cities encouraging ship owning and ship building within their own borders, This country is so constituted that nothing can be done to foster American shipping unless the people demand that the government do what is necessary to recover her lost place on the ocean. Naturally Turned to the Sea. It is evident that a country like this, having an immense seaboard on _ the two great oceans of the world, great power, both naval and commercial, is a very desirable thing, yet the history of this country shows that at certain stages in the development of such a country it is not a prime necessity. In its early history, when its people found it absolutely necessary to protect its shipping, with the population centered on the Atlantic seaboard and depending on an interchange of commodities be tween the mother country and: her colonies, the energies and accumulated wealth of the people naturally turned to the sea. Behind them was a great .forest of magnificent timber for build- ing ships and in front of them a great 'ocean highway leading to all the coun- tries of the earth. With such oppor- tunities this young and vigorous coun- try, in the beginning of the last cen- tury, found an extensive merchant ship- ping an absolute necessity to its de- velopment and growth in wealth and power. Her first legislative acts were promulgated for the purpose of pro- tecting the growing 'sea power of the young republic; these imposed extra duties on foreign ships, thus preventing them from getting any hold on the ex- port and import trade of the United States as long as such measures were in force. Destruction During Civil War. ' The destruction of a part of our shipping during the civil war used to be given as a reason for the rapid decline of our foreign shipping trade; this is an error that it is natural to fall into. The truth is that a steady decline be- TAE MarRINE REVIEW gan from the time, 1828, that the for- eign carrying trade of the country was opened free to foreign ships, at which time the final restrictions on competi- tion by all countries in our foreign trade were removed. From 1825, when this country carried in her own ships 95.2 per cent of her imports and 89.6 per cent of her exports, to 1840 the percentage had fallen to 86.6 per cent of her im- ports and 80 per cent of her exports; in 1850 she carried 78 per cent imports and 66 per cent exports; in 1860, 63 per cent imports and 69 per cent exports, and this decline was before the war, during which there were neither imports from nor exports to the southern states; since then the same trend of our trade shows in the statistics of our commerce as shown by the following returns :-- In 1870, 33 per cent imports, and 38 per cent exports. In 1880, 22 per cent imports, and 14 per cent exports, : In 1890, 17 per cent imports, and 9 per .cent.. exports, In 1900, 12 per cent imports, and 7 per cent exports. Since 1900 the decline has continued. That the shipping interests United States did not recover from the injuries received during the civil war, but kept on steadily declining 'as they had done before the war, is in itself an indication that a merchant marine was not absolutely necessary to the develop- ment of this country; had it been a necessity the people would have demand- ed laws fostering the shipping interests. First Bill Passed in 1828. It is interesting to note that the same nonsense about the great superiority of American skill that so largely prevails today prevailed with even more force in' 1828... ~The. first. bill. .to.. abandon American shipping to its own resources was passed in 1828. Its passage was managed by Senator Woodbury, of New Hampshire; in his speech he says: "We are known to possess a skill and economy in building vessels, a cheap- ness in fitting them out, an activity in sailing them, which, without discrimina- tion, would give us an advantage in coping with any commercial power in existence. Such are the accurate cal- culations of our merchants, the youth and agility of our seamen, and the in- telligence of our shipmasters, that American vessels can, 'on an average, make three trips to Europe while a foreign vessel is making two. It must be manifest to all that circumstances such as these rather than any discrim- duties, must always give and yponts Ines 2s of the 509° maintain to us a superiority and pro- tection which leaves nothing to be feared from the fullest competition." In spite of this wonderful superiority the removal of a protective duty of less than one-fourth the then prevailing freight rate drove the American ship out of that trade; if the ships were cheaper and could make three voyages to the other's two, how could this have happened ? Passed by a Protection Congress. The act of 1828 was not passed by a free trade congress but by the very same men who enacted the extraordinary tariff bill of 1828. In this instance the same men were eloquent on the helpless condition of American industries in facing the fierce competition of the European factories with their generations of experience and labor with more efficiency and less pay than the same class of operatives gave and received in America. Such is the strange in- consistency of the lawmaker, ancient and modern, . . Besides the loss of all protection to American shipping in the foreign trade other forces began to operate and finally became powerful factors in hastening the decline of American shipping. One of these was the change which began to take place in method of con- structing ships. The native oak of Old England, that had enabled her flag "to brave a thousand years the battle and the breeze,' was becoming a very scarce article, and ships being an ab- solute necessity to her power and posi- tion among the nations, a new material had to be found out of which to build ships. This new material, first iron, then steel, had been gradually gaining the confidence of "those who go down to the sea in ships and do business on the great waters," and while the Con- federate States' cruisers were burning the best wooden ships that carried the stars and stripes, the British ship yards were learning the most economical methods whereby iron and steel plates and bars could be given the form of ships to carry freight and not only equal the wooden walls in strength and power to carry but to exceed the best that the ship builders' art could do in wood. This néw material gave Great Britain her opportunity not only to maintain her position on the sea but to extend it to a magnificence thar became the wonder of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The Ameri- can ship owners and ship builders saw all this going on and doubtless understood how it would end, but in ship building and ship their country