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22 7 ; MARINE REVIEW. {January 81, SENATOR DEPEW ON THE SHIPPING BILL. HE HEARTILY ENDORSES IT IN A MOST ELABORATE SPEECH—VIGOROUSLY AP- PLAUDED IN THE SENATE—A WONDERFUL ARGUMENT. Senator Chauncey M. Depew addressed the United States senate last Friday on the subject of the shipping bill. His speech was delivered with great force and effect and in a clear ringing voice which could be heard in the remotest parts of the chamber. It had been prepared in advance and he held the printed slips in his left hand while he used his right hand in gesticulations, but he spoke for the most time as if he were delivering an extempore speech. He had the closest attention from senators and from a large audience in the galleries. The peroration was spoken with great force and fire and when it was concluded the spectators in the gal- leries, in defiance of the rules of the senate, applauded with hand clapping, while the senators from both sides of the chamber crowded about Mr. Depew and warmly congratulated him, The senator's speech was as follows: Mr. President, in every country its statesmen, political economists, and men of letters are writing up the results of the nineteenth ceniury. Each nation in the old world finds in these statements causes for intense satisfaction. Each is able to make an exhibit of progress and develop- ment which gratifies the national pride and makes the people believe they are in the front rank at the commencement of the new century. While the rivalries and jealousies and war of contending figures and estimates among themselves continue, they are unanimous in granting to the United States the lead in almost everytuing which goes to make up the power and greatness, the advancement and development of any country. From 5,- 000,000 of population in 1800 we are 77,000,000 in 1900. From having little _ rank in agriculture and none whatever in manufactures, our productions now enable this enormous population to live far better than did our fore- fathers 100 years ago, and the surplus of our farms and factories 1s enter- ing the markets and succeeding in competition all over the world. For 100 years the debtor nation, we enter upon the twentieth century a banker for all the governments of Europe. We have changed the continent which was a wilderness beyond the fringe of settlements on the Atlantic coast to great cities, thriving villages, prosperous farms, and active indus- tries on the plains and in the mountains from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Circle. Our railway lines, covering the country with a network of steel, in connection with trans- portation facilities on the inland lakes, rivers and canals, have given to us an internal commerce greater than that of all the interchanges “of all the nations of the earth by rail and water. In length of lines we number nearly one-half the mileage of the railways of the world. There is every- where an earnest search for the factors which produced these astonishing results. We freely admit that natural advantages were essential to our political and industrial victories, but natural advantages lie dormant un- less the motive power and creative genius exist which shall utilize their opportunities. Our virgin soil, our climatic conditions, the limitless wealth in earth and forest and in mountain were all here, and had been for ages. Distance and isolation from European paternalism gave excep- tional opportunities for the growth of civil and religious liberty, for the growth of that individualism in tczought and action which has created millions of architects contributing to their country’s greatness. But no unprejudiced observer can fail, upon careful study, to be convinced that the United States of today owes nearly all that it is to the wisdom of - Washington, Hamilton and Jefferson in the initial legislation which they conceived for developing American industries and American industrial independence by the policy of protection. - _ Inthe one hundred years there have been a few deviations from this beginning, each one of them followed by panic, industrial*paralysis, and general distress. Since the close of the civil war in 1865, except for the experiment under the Wilson bill of 1898, the policy of the fathers has been the practice of the country. In this thirty-five years we have wit- nessed the most remarkable part of our country’s growth. The develop- ment of our resources has furnished ample opportunities for the enter- prise of our people and for the useful employment of their wealth, and necessitated the borrowing of large amounts of foreign capital. We have been so absorbed in production that we have neglected utterly the equally important question, if we are to be a world power, with all which that means, of our position upon the ocean. In other words, our development and growth have been one-sided. We have crowded upon our rails, our lakes, our rivers, and our canals an output from every avenue of pro- duction which must find markets or prodtce stagnation and distress beyond our dreams, without any provision, so far as our government or our people or our flag is concerned, for its carriage’ beyond our own sea- board. The farm, the factory. and the mine have filled the warehouses and docks of our Atlantic and Pacific coasts with their contributions to national wealth, employment, and the happiness. of our people, and left their transportation to Europe, to Asia, to Africa, to South America, and to Australia to the greed of foreign ship owners, to the protection of for- eign flags, and to the hazards of foreign wars. A general collision, which is often predicted in the European news: ‘papers, among the great powers of Europe, in the mad haste of their navies and armies to outstrip each other in the acquisition of spheres of influence in Asia and Africa, would act upon the United States, who might be simply a spectator of the conflict, as an embargo upon our coast. We would be shut up within ourselves as absolutely as if the navies of the world were blockading our ports. Outside the material ad- vantages of owning and operating our own merchant marine under our own flag, it is humiliating, not only to our pride, but also to our self- respect, that we should thus, upon the ocean, have the industry, capital, labor, and living of our people dependent upon the whims, the jealousies, and the animosities of the sovereigns and the cabinets of Europe. WE HAVE A MARKED GENIUS FOR THE SEA, _ Now, to return to a brief investigation of why a people who showed such marked genius for the sea at their beginnings should have developed in such a marvelous way upon the land and surrendered their position upon the ocean to countries as insignificant in population and power, compared with ourselves, as Norway, with 2,000,000 of people, and Bel- gium, with 6,000,000. In 1807, with a population of 7,000,000, the Unitea States had a larger registered tonnage for the foreign trade than in 1901, with 77,000,000 of people. In 1852 the United States was foremost among maritime nations, and now the least. We constructed at that time a greater tonnage than Great Britain or any other nation, while in 1898 we built of ocean-going steam vessels a tonnage of 16,382, against Germany of 130,667 and England of 1,301,325. There is but one line, of four ships, carrying the American flag and having an American registry, between United States and Europe. There are not ten American ships in the Pa- cific trade available for the development of the Philippines and the com- merce we expect in the Orient. lt requires about 5,000,000 tons of ship- ping for the transportation of our foreign commerce, valued last year at about $2,000,000,000. Of that 5,000,000 tons of shipping the United States has only about 350,000 tons in the foreign and deep-sea trade. There is. but one answer to ithe question of this almost inconceivable discrepancy ~ between progress on the land and on the sea, and that is that our states- manship has neglected the ocean and permitted our own commerce to slip out of our hands. 3 : Reciprocal commercial treaties with foreign nations gradually swept away every vestige of the protective features adopted during Washington’s administration. We were still able to maintain ourselves so long as wooden ships held the ocean. Our virgin forests beside the ship yard, the genius of our naval constructors, and the inventive faculty of our naval designers enabled us to overcome the great difference in expense in opera- tion and building resulting from the higher wages paid to, American mechanics and seamen. GREAT BRITAIN’S ADVANTAGE IN IRON SHIPS. The advent of iron steamships at once gave Great Britain the advan- tage. She had cheaper iron, cheaper labor, cheaper operations, and cheaper maintenance. Great insurance companies discriminated against the wooden ship; various vexatious tonnage duties discriminated against the American ship, steel, iron, or wood, and the United States was out of the race. Happily for us the enemies of the American merchant marine have never been able to repeal the protection which was granted to vessels in our coasting trade. Under our laws foreign ships were ex- cluded from our domestic commerce. The result has been that the con- struction of steamships for our coasting trade has kept alive the few ship yards which.we have. But for this preserved remnant of a wise policy, the United States, with 3,000 miles of coast and innumerable harbors on the Atlantic and hundreds of miles on the Gulf and Caribbean sea, and a thousand miles or more on the Pacific, would have been as isolated from the element upon which it should be supreme as Tartary or Tibet. The question which is far above politics or partisan considerations, which is purely patriotic, and upon which, except as to methods, there cannot possibly be any division of opinion, is, How can our merchant marine be built up? The suggestion which has attracted most attention and held it for the longest time has been free ships—in other words, the liberty of purchase and entry upon American registry of ships built anywhere in the world. There never has been, and there never will be, a better or more eloquent presentation of that phase of this question than was given here by the distinguished senator from |\Missouri (Mr. Vest) in his speech, which is upon our desks in the (Congressional Record this morning. We have in that speech all there is that is persuasive or that is possible to be put upon that side. We have fought out this question in our protective politics so triumphantly that the argument need not be restated now. The argument of the distinguished senator from Missouri, turned from the ocean onto the land, would have taken away the protective principle from our industries at the beginning, and we would be upon the land just where we are upon the sea, dependent upon foreign nations for everything we produce, except agriculture. DISCRIMINATING DUTY IS NOT PRACTICAL. Discriminating duties have been suggested by which there would be a heavier duty charged upon goods coming into our ports in foreign ships than those coming in under the American flag. To accomplish this we would have to abrogate about fifty treaties with foreign powers. It has been demonstrated, as in the case of France recently, that no nation can successfully impose discriminating duties without retaliation. The French government was forced to repeal within a year its effort at discriminating duties. No nation can submit to retaliation which is a seller more largely than a buyer. Either discriminating duties on imports or bounties for export would lead to European nations retaliating upon the things which we have to sell them, in a way to give advantage and stimulate production in Russia, in Egypt, in India, and in Asia against our wheat and our cotton. All nations are agreed that their merchant marine can be built up only by bounties. The bounties paid last year by the different mari- time nations were $26,000,000 in round numbers, against $1,000,000 in round numbers by the United States. German statesmen discovered that if the empire was to find a market for its growing surplus it must have its own ships. Within, the past few years the German government has been increasing directly its subsidies, has indirectly been giving rebates to the steamships over the state railways and has lent every possible gov- ernment encouragement to the enlargement of German ship yards and the construction and operation of German steamships. The result has been that Germany has stepped into the second place among maritime nations, although she has so little coast and so few ports. The advance of Japan by the same processes has been almost incredible, in fact so great that she is now reaching out for the control of the commerce of the Pacific. The amount proposed for annual subsidy under this bill is $9.000,000 a year. As the ships receiving the subsidy have to carry the mails free, we can deduct the present mail subsidy, and so the amount is reduced to about $7,750,000 a year. - The outcry against this sum as being enor- mously in excess of any benefits that can be derived from it can only be accounted for on the ground that it is promoted by the literary bureaus of foreign lines. We paid last year for pensions $145,000,000.. This sum is the annual expression in money of the gratitude of the country to those who have fought its battles and won its victories. Six per cent. upon this sum would carry the American flag, for which these men fought, upon American ships, loaded with the products of the American farm and fac- tory, to every country on the globe. The river and harbor bill this year as it passed the house carries $60,000,000, of which one-quarter is for local pride and local sportsmen and three-quarters, or $45,000,000, to improve American facilities for foreign ships. We appropriate over $100,000,000 for the army and $77,000,000 for the navy, and 4% per cent. upon this would carry the American flag upon American merchant vessels, laden