3 
 U 
 
 C 
 6 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 HE 743.U6C6 
 Free ships.The restoration of the Americ 
 
 3 1924 013 695 616 
 
— Ai* 
 
 ECONOMIC MONOGRAPHS No. VI. 
 
 FREE SHIPS 
 
 JOHN CODMAN 
 
 SHIPMASTER OF THE LATE AMERICAN MERCHANT SERVICE 
 
 |to which is appended a review of the plans of 
 senator blaine and secretary sherman for 
 
 the RESTORATION OF THE AMERICAN 
 CARRYING TRADE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 27 & 29 WEST 23D STRKB T 
 1883 
 
 Jt 
 
 •f" 
 
Works on Political Economy. 
 
 The Wealth of Nations ; An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of. 
 By Adam Smith, i2mo, cloth extra, 792 pages . . . $2 00 
 A perennial work, and the only book in history to which has been accorded the 
 
 honor of a Centennary Celebration. 
 
 Essays on Political Economy. By Frederick Bastiat, with Intro- 
 duction and Notes by David A. Wells. r2mo, cloth . $1 25 
 " The laws of an abstruse science have never been made more clear, or expressed 
 
 more forcibly." — Cincinnati Comme?-ciaL 
 
 The Sophisms of Protection. By Frederick Bastiat, with Intro- 
 duction by Horace White. i2mo, clolh extra, 400 pages $1 00 
 
 ** Contafns the most telling statements of the leadmg principles ,of Free-Trade 
 ever published."— A^. V. Nation. 
 
 What is Free-Trade? An Adaptation for American Readers of 
 Bastiat's "Sophisms of Protection." By Emile Walter, a Worker. 
 
 i2mo, cloth . 75 
 
 " Unsurpassed in the happiness of its illustrations.**— iV. Y. Nation. 
 
 Social Economy. By Prof. J. E. Thorold Rogers. Revised and 
 
 edited for American Readers. i2mo, cloth . . 75 
 
 *' Gives in the compass of 150 pag^es, concise^ yet comprehensive answers to the 
 
 most important questions in social economy * * * cannot be too highly recommended 
 
 forthe use of teachers, students, and the general public." — Aynericati Athen^um. 
 
 Railroads : their Origin and Problems, By Charles Francis 
 Adams, Jr. i2mo, cloth extra . . , . $1 25 
 
 " A careful, intelligent, and discriminating criticism of the merits of the different 
 methods of regulating, or leaving unregulated, the vast power exerted by railways." — 
 London Economist. 
 
 An Alphabet in Finance. A simple statement of permanent principles, 
 and their application to questions of the day. By Graham McAdam. 
 With Introduction by R. R. Bowker. i2mo, cloth . . $1 25 
 
 *' A timely volume, whose directness and raciness can but be of service.*' — New 
 Englander. 
 
 ^' A model of clear-thinking and happy expression." — Portland Press. 
 
 Lectures on the History of Protection in the 'United States. 
 
 By Prof. W. G. Sumnf.r, of Yale College. 'Octavo, cloth extra, 75 
 
 "■ There is nothing in the literature of free-trade more forcible and effective than 
 ihis little book." — N. V. E-.-ening Post. 
 
 " The book is especially timely, because it furnishes an adequate application of 
 the principles of economic science to the conditions existing in this country.^' — Buffalo 
 Cou rier. 
 
 Mt>ney and Legal Tender in the United States. By Henry R. 
 
 LiNDEKMAN, Director of tho United States Mint. I2m6, cloth, Si 25 
 
 "■ The various legislative provisions with regard to the coinage of money and the 
 
 regulation of currency In the United States, are treated in this valuable essay with con- 
 
 penient brevity, but with great precision and clearness." — .V, Y. Tribzine. 
 
 Economics, or the Science of Wealth. A Treatise on Political 
 Economy, for the use of High Schools and Colleges, and for the 
 general reader. By Prof. J. M. Sturtevant. Octavo, cloth, $1 75 
 " There is nothing vague or uncertain m his (Mr. Sturtevant's) reasoning. As a 
 
 text-book of political economy, we think it will take precedence of all others. — Trox 
 
 Whig- 
 
ECONOMIC MONOGRAPHS. No. VI. 
 
 FREE SHIPS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN CODMAN 
 
 TO WHICH IS APPENDED A REVIEW OF THE PLANS OF 
 
 SENATOR BLAINE AND SECRETARY SHERMAN FOR 
 
 THE RESTORATION OF THE AMERICAN 
 
 CARRYING TRADE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 S 
 
Copyright bv 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S. SONS 
 
 r88i 
 
 Press of 
 
 G. P- Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York 
 
FREE SHIPS. 
 
 THE RESTORATION 
 
 OP THE 
 
 AMERICAN CARRYING TRADE. 
 
 It may seem surprising that an American House of Rep- 
 resentatives should have been so ignorant of the meaning 
 of a common word as to apply the term " commerce " to the 
 carrying trade, when in the session of 1869 it commissioned 
 Hon. John Lynch, of Maine, and his associated committee, 
 " to investigate the cause of the decadence of American 
 commerce," and to suggest a remedy by which it might be 
 restored. 
 
 Bat it was not more strange than that this committee, 
 really appointed to look into the carrying trade to which the 
 misnomer commerce was so inadvertently applied, should 
 have entirely ignored its duty by constituting itself into an 
 eleemosynary body for the bestowal of national charity upon 
 shipbuilders. Its Report fell dead upon the floor of the 
 House, and was so ridiculed in the Senate that when a 
 motion was made to lay the bill for printing it upon the 
 table, Mr. Davis, of Kentucky, suggested, as an amendment, 
 that it be kicked under it. Nevertheless, the huge volume 
 of irrelevant testimony was published for the benefit of two 
 great home industries — paper-making and printing. 
 
 f31 
 
4 THB RESTORATION OP 
 
 The theory of this committee was that the Rebellion had 
 destroyed another industry nearly as remote from the proper 
 subject of inquiry as either of these. These gentlemen con- 
 cluded that shipbuilding was becoming extinct, because the 
 Confederate cruisers had destroyed many of our ships — a 
 reason ridiculously absurd, in view of the corollary that the 
 very destruction of those vessels sliould have stimulated re- 
 production. Since that abortive attempt to steal bounties 
 from the Treasury for the benefit of a favored class of 
 mechanics. Government, occupied with matters deemed of 
 greater importance, has totally neglected our constantly 
 diminishing mercantile marine. 
 
 By refusing to repeal (he law that dejiresses it, it may 
 truly be said that had every ingenuity been devised to accom- 
 plish its destruction, its tendency to utter annihilation could 
 not have been more certainly assured than it has been by this 
 obstinate neglect. 
 
 In the session of 1876, Senator Boutwell, of Massachusetts, 
 renewed the proposition of Mr. Lynch, but his bill was not 
 called up in the Senate. In the course of intervenin<x years a 
 little more light may be presumed to have dawned upon Con- 
 gress, and, therefore, it is to be regretted that the Senator did 
 not obtain a hearing, in order that the fallacy of his argument 
 might have been exposed. 
 
 If any one cares to study the origin of our restrictive navi- 
 gation laws, he can consult a concise account of it given by 
 Mr. David A. Wells, in the North American Revieio, of 
 December, 1877. It came out of a compromise with slavery. 
 The Northern States agreed that slavery should be " fos- 
 tered " — that is a favorite word with protectionists — provided 
 
THE AMERICAN CARRYIN& TRADE. 5 
 
 that shipbuilding should also be fostered, and that New 
 England ships — for nearly all vessels were built in that dis- 
 trict — should have the sole privilege of supplying the Southern 
 market with negroes ! 
 
 That sort of slavery being now happily at an end, ship- 
 builders still inherit the spirit of their guild, merely trans- 
 ferring the wrong they perpetrated on black men by binding 
 all their white fellow citizens with the bonds of their odious 
 monopoly. Moreover, although the arbitrary law of the 
 mother country, forcing the colonists to conduct their com- 
 merce in British built ships, was one exciting cause of the 
 Revolutionary Rebellion, Americans had no sooner obtained 
 their independence than they created a monopoly quite as 
 tyrannical among themselves. And yet, they were not then 
 without excuse. At the time when the Convention for 
 forming the Federal Constitution convened, in 1789, every 
 civilized nation was exercising a similar restrictive policy. 
 But while all of them have either totally abolished or 
 materially modified their stringent laws touching their ship- 
 ping interests — America, " the land of the free," the boast- 
 ing leader of the world's progress and enlightenment, stands 
 alone sustaining this effete idea. She persists in maintaining 
 an ordinance devised originally for the protection of the home 
 industry of Ler shipbuilders, which has now become a most 
 stalwart protection for the industry of every foreign ship- 
 owner whom we encourage in the transportation of our 
 persons and property over the ocean — an industry in which 
 this law forbids a similar class of her own citizens to par- 
 ticipate ! 
 
 Whatever may be the arguments in favor of, or opposed 
 
6 THE BE8T0BATI0N OF 
 
 to, the protection of industries under the control of our own 
 Government, none of them can apply to those pursued upon 
 an area which is the common property of the world. It is 
 a proposition so evident that no words need be wasted in 
 its demonstration, that, other things being equal, the cheapest 
 and best ships, most adapted for the purpose, by whomsoever 
 owned, will have preference in the carrying trade over the 
 ocean. You may pile the duty, for instance, on iron, and 
 grant bounties on the production of the American article, if 
 you please, to any extent ; you may, if you choose, prohibit 
 the importation of ploughs, and then assess farmers ten 
 times the cost of their ploughs for the benefit of the home 
 manufacturer. You would undoubtedly succeed in compel- 
 ling them to purchase American ploughs. They must have 
 them or starve, and we should all starve likewise if they did 
 not use those protected ploughs to cultivate the soil. Indeed, 
 in a less exaggerated way we are doing something very 
 like this continually under the guise of " protecting home 
 industry." 
 
 It is a legitimate business for the advocates of that doctrine. 
 If they believe in it they are quite right in "trying it on," 
 and in making the people at large pay as much as can possibly 
 be got out of them for the benefit of a few. 
 
 But fortunately they cannot build a Chinese wall around 
 the country. We are necessitated to have intercourse with 
 other nations. We have a surplus of agricultural products 
 to dispose of to them which they cannot pay for unless to a 
 certain extent we take the merchandise they offer in ex- 
 change. This exchange, with all due respect to Mr. Lynch, 
 his committee and the House of Representatives appointing 
 
THE AMERICAN CARMTING TRADE. ^ 
 
 those astute investigators, is commerce. The carrying 
 trade is the means whereby commerce is conducted, and this 
 carrying trade, an industry once of vastly greater importance 
 to our people than all shipbuilding has been, is now, or ever 
 can be, is a business that Congress, by its supine neglect, has 
 deliberately thrown into the hands of Europeans, and sacri- 
 ficed American shipowners at the instigation of American 
 shipbuilders. 
 
 In face of the prosperity achieved in consequence of the 
 abandonment of a ruinous system by other nations, in face of 
 the lamentable decadence its maintenance has brought upon 
 ourselves, we still persist in packing this Sindbad of prohibi- 
 tion, the worst offspring of protection, upon our back, and 
 then we wonder that we alone make no progress ! 
 
 Certain political economists are in the habit of raking up 
 records of the past wherewith to justify their theories for the 
 present age. They tell us of England's protective laws in 
 Cromwell's time, and say that as by them she then established 
 her mercantile marine, we should endeavor to regain what we 
 have lost, by a return to the policy of that period, from which, 
 by-the-bye, we have varied only in a small degree. Upon the 
 same principle we should abandon steam, which, like the 
 progress made by our competitors, in free trade, is merely 
 another improvement in the train of advancing civilization. 
 When such men talk of the steamship enterprises which have 
 triumphed in spite of their antediluvian ideas, they tell us 
 that England supported the Cunard line by subsidies, and thus 
 put her shipbuilding on a firm basis. The inference is that 
 we should go back to 1840, build some 1,200 ton wooden 
 paddle steamers, and subsidize them. 
 
8 THE RESTORATION OF 
 
 That this is no idle supposition is shown by the fact that 
 long after England had abandoned that class of vessels in 
 favor of iron screw steamships, we did build and subsidize 
 the unwieldy tubs, some of which are still in the employment 
 of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. We became the 
 laughing-stock of the rest of the world, who classed us with 
 the Chinese, and our steamships with Chinese junks. The 
 Japanese, just emerged from barbarism, exceeded us in enter- 
 prise. 
 
 They now own one line of fifty-seven steamships, more of 
 them engaged in foi-eign trade than all the steamships we 
 thus employ upon the ocean ! At a late day we did com- 
 mence the use of iron screw steamships of such description 
 and at such cost as one or two domestic ship-yards chose to 
 supply, and thus we were as far from resisting competition as 
 ever. 
 
 Now, if there was no ocean traffic of which we should be 
 deprived, the hardship to our shipowners would be compar- 
 atively trifling, although the tax upon ships of inferior work- 
 manship and higher cost would, like all the operations of the 
 tariff, be felt by the community at large. This is evident 
 enough. 
 
 The Pacific Mail Steamship Company, for example, in 
 order to pay expenses, to say nothing of profits, are obliged 
 to charge a higher fare to passengers, to exact higher rates 
 of freight from shippers and to demand a larger postal con- 
 tract from Government than they could afford to take, if, by 
 being allowed to supply themselves with ships in the cheap- 
 est markets of the world and of the best quality that compet- 
 ing shipyards could turn out, they might save one-third of 
 
THE AMEBIOAN OARBTINQ TBABE. 9 
 
 their cost and have better steamers. If, therefore, we had 
 only the coasting trade to consider, we might say that the 
 prohibitory statute would not pinch the shipowner partic- 
 ularly, but its evil M'ould be generally distributed. We are 
 actually carrying on the coasting trade in this way, and as it 
 is all that shipowners have left, of necessity they oblige the 
 community to pay them the excess of cost in order that pro- 
 tection may inure to the benefit of the few monopolists who 
 build iron steamships and are able to force the quality and 
 price upon their unwilling purchasers. We can and do, with- 
 out considering the pockets of the majority, make whatever 
 laws we please for our own coasting trade. 
 
 But now let ns look at the ocean, rolling from continent to 
 continent, unfettered by the chains with which " protection " 
 can bind the lands and coasts upon its borders appropriated 
 by nations to themselves. It is independent of an American 
 tariflE and of them all, as it was in the days when — 
 
 "It rolled not back when Canute gave command." 
 
 It welcomes the people of all nations on equal terms to its 
 bosom, and commerce is the swift-winged messenger ever 
 travelling from shore to shore. Look at it, and if our eyes 
 could scan it all at once, we should see the smoke darkening 
 the air as it rises from hundreds of chimneys, telling of fires 
 that make the steam for propelling the mighty engines that 
 bring the great leviathans of commerce almost daily into our 
 ports, and into those whom we supply and by whom we are 
 supplied with the products of mutual labor. The flags of all 
 nations are at their peaks — the British, German, Dutch, 
 Danish, Belgian, French — but among the three hundred and 
 
10 THE BESTOBATION OF 
 
 more there are only four that carry the stars and stripes, and 
 these were put afloat mainly at the cost of the Pennsylvania 
 Railroad Company. Three hundred steamships, employing 
 fifty thousand men, earning a million and a half of dollars 
 monthly ; these men supporting and educating families, and 
 themselves becoming reserves for their respective countries to 
 call upon for naval service in time of vi'ar ! Look at the 
 ports from which these vessels, wherever built, now hail, and 
 which they enrich by the capital they distribute. Behold the 
 warehouses, repairing shops, foundries, and other various 
 industries connected with these enterprises, and the ship- 
 owners engaged in promoting them pursuing a legitimate 
 business. 
 
 Then look at home. First calculate the sum of one hun- 
 dred and thirty millions of dollars that has been annually 
 paid by us to those foreigners for transporting ourselves and 
 our merchandise. Then go back in memory to the time when, 
 in the days of sailing ships, our packets almost monopolized 
 the ocean on account of the skill of our officers and seamen. 
 
 Reflect that if a policy of ordinary foresight had prevailed 
 in our national councils when these sailing ships were killed 
 off by the competition of the newly-invented iron screw, 
 their old commanders and their noble crews would have kept 
 their employment, and as they died would have been suc- 
 ceeded by men as worthy as themselves, adding to our reve- 
 nue in time of peace, and, when needed, supplying a navy 
 now maintained at an immense expense — God save the 
 mark ! — for the protection of an extinct merchant service ! 
 
 See how few American steamship offices, how few repair- 
 ing shops we have need of for these foreigners, who employ 
 
THE AMEBIOAN OARRTING TRADE. \\ 
 
 their own agents instead of our merchants, and naturally 
 endeavor to do all the work required upon their vessels at 
 home. Then search for the American shipowners engaged in 
 trade beyond the seas. Look for them in their deserted 
 counting-rooms of South street, in New York. As their old 
 captains have retired in poverty and are begging for such 
 offices as that of inspector or port warden, or for some subor- 
 dinate place in the Custom-House, while the seamen are 
 mostly dead with none to come after them, so South street is 
 abandoned by its honorable merchants, who have, in too 
 many cases, moved up to Wall street, and become gamblers 
 by boing deprived of their original business. When you have 
 don« all this, finish up your investigation by estimating how 
 much sooner the rebellion might have been overcome, if in 
 years past we had owned our share of the world's shipping, 
 and multiply the $130,000,000 of freight money we annually 
 pay to foreigners by the number of years we have been en- 
 gaged in this suicidal policy of protecting them in earning 
 money that of right belonged to our own people ! 
 
 Having sketched this result of American legislation, let us 
 glance at that of other nations in late years ; for it is as use- 
 less to dwell upon what it was a century or two centuries ago 
 as it would be to study the navigation laws of thePhcenicians, 
 or to inquire if Solomon exacted that the ships bringing his 
 spices from India and his gold from Ophir should be of 
 Jewish construction. Old things did not pass away and all 
 things did not fairly become new, until the discovery of gold 
 in California and Australia revolutionized values, created uni- 
 versal national intercourse, and by thus giving a sadden im- 
 
12 THE BUSTOBATION OF 
 
 petus to commerce, made the carrying trade an industry of far 
 greater importance than it had ever been before. 
 
 At that epoch, our restrictive laws were productive of no 
 harm to us, because it so happened that most of the business 
 of the seas was done in wooden sailing ships, and it also hap- 
 pened, fortunately for us, that we had the faculty and the 
 means of constructing them better and cheaper than they could 
 be produced elsewhere. Accordingly, our ship-yards became 
 wonderfully active in supplying the demands of our ship- 
 owners, and the personnel as well as the material of our mer- 
 chant fleet being of the highest character, it was consequently 
 in active employment. In the ratio of the increasing value of 
 our carrying trade there was a corresponding decrease in that 
 of Great Britain, simply because her restrictive laws, which 
 were the same then as ours are now, prevented her people from 
 owning such magnificent clippers as we were able to build, on 
 equal terms with us. 
 
 But British statesmen were not inattentive to the situation. 
 They wasted no time in appointing committees to investigate 
 the cause of the difiiculty, for it was as clear to them as the 
 noonday sun, as clear as the occasion of our '■ decadence " 
 should have been to the House of Representatives that ap- 
 pointed Mr. Lynch — as clear as it should be to the Congress 
 now assembled. 
 
 Parliament deputed no half-dozen of its members to spend 
 six months in running around among shipbuilders, askino- 
 them what bounty they required to build clippers like the 
 Americans, a,nd how long it would take them to equal Amer- 
 ican shipbuilders in skill, material and cost. 
 
 But realizing that the interests of commerce and ship- 
 
TEE AMERIOAN OABRTINQ TRADE. V6 
 
 owning were of infinitely greater value than that of mere 
 shipbuilding, they did not propose to lose them, while the 
 latter industry should endeavor to gain a new life. Regard- 
 less of any such consideration as that which solely actuated 
 our investigators, Parliament at once abolished the prohibition 
 to purchase foreign built ships. The greatest good of the 
 greatest number was the motive of this wise decision. 
 
 As soon as they were thus allowed to do so, English ship- 
 owners ordered clippers from our shipyards, and putting 
 them into profitable employment under their own flag, kept 
 on with their business, sharing with us the supremacy of the 
 seas, which, but for the timely action of their government, 
 they would inevitably have lost. In this way they main- 
 tained it until there came a new era in shipbuilding, when 
 circumstances becoming reversed, their mechanics were 
 enabled to accomplish what ours could not, in the con- 
 struction of iron screw steamships. Had Congress then been 
 as wise as Parliament was in 1849, our shipowners would, in 
 their turn, have maintained their prestige by supplying them- 
 selves from abroad with the new vehicles of commerce they 
 could not procure at home, and we should never have heard of 
 " decadence. " Instead of such obviously judicious action, it 
 has done nothing but condemn us year after year to enforced 
 ideness in the name of " protection." So we have endeavored 
 to compete with these new motors on the sea by means of 
 wooden sailing ships and paddle steamers, until they are of 
 service only in our coastwise monopoly, or rotting at the docks, 
 if not broken up. We have gone on steadily protecting our- 
 selves to death, and protecting England and Germany, the 
 chief of our rivals to life, at our own expense of vitality. 
 
14 TEB RESTORATION OF 
 
 England's justice to her shipowners, which at first seemed 
 harshness to her shipbuilders, was eventually the means of 
 their prosperity. It set them to " finding out knowledge of 
 witty inventions," and now they have one hundredfold the 
 capital invested and labor employed in iron steamship build- 
 ing, more than ever found occupation in their old shipyards. 
 
 In a recent address before the New York Free Trade Club, 
 Mr. Frothingham humorously described a visit made by him 
 a few years ago to the studio of an artist. He found him 
 seated in despair, amidst a gallery of his unfinished pictures, 
 his palette, brushes and colors scattered about upon the floor, 
 complaining bitterly of his lack of business. " This impor- 
 tation of French pictures," he said, " is ruin to American 
 artists. Something must be done for our protection ; we 
 intend to get Congress to raise the tariff on those produc- 
 tions so that we shall not have to contend with the cheap labor 
 that takes the bread out of our mouths." It may be noticed 
 that this common phrase is very generally employed by those 
 who are too lazy to supply their own mouths with bread. 
 " Something," added the desponding artist, " must positively 
 be done, and that very soon, or our occupation will be gone !" 
 "I thought," said Mr. Frothingham, "that I could more easily 
 convince him of his mistake by entering for the time into his 
 humor, and so with apparently deep sympathy, I condoled with 
 him and promised to exert my influence in behalf of his pro- 
 fession. He thanked me heartily for my good will. But then 
 I continued, "I want you to do something for me and for my 
 profession in return." " How can I!" exclaimed my friend 
 with some amazement. " Why," I replied, " we must get up 
 what they call an omnibus bill, including relief for painters 
 
TEE AMERICAN OARRYINQ TRADE. 15 
 
 and preachers. Don't you know that one of the Presbyterian 
 churches in New York, has imported, duty free, the Rev. Dr. 
 Taylor, from England, another, the Rev. Dr. Hall, from Ire- 
 land, and the Princeton Theological Seminary has brought 
 over, without Custom House charges, the Rev. Dr. McCosh 
 from Scotland ? Now that is " taking the bread out of our 
 mouths." There dre plenty of American clergymen who 
 would be glad to obtain these positions, and what right, there- 
 fore, have those congregations and that institution to supply 
 themselves from abroad ? The wants of the people ought not 
 to be considered, but an art monopoly, a pulpit monopoly, a 
 monopoly of any kind should be protected." In a style of 
 satirical reasoning, of which the foregoing is an abstract, con- 
 viction was brought to the mind of the painter. Changing 
 his tone to one of serious advice, the clergyman counselled 
 him to go to work, to let competition become an incentive to 
 action, instead of paralysing his energy. He then told him 
 how the advent of these foreign divines had been a stimulus 
 to him and to his brethren in the ministry. The result was 
 that to-day there is a higher standard of pulpit eloquence in 
 New York than in any other city of the Union. 
 
 The lecture of the preacher was serviceable to the artist, 
 who is now at the head of his profession, caring no more for 
 French rivalry than for that of a tavern sign painter. The 
 appositeness of this illustration will be evident when it is 
 applied to the subject under consideration. 
 
 Almost immediately after the repeal of the British Navi- 
 gation Laws the revolution in shipbuilding to which I have 
 referred had its commencement, and we have seen how British 
 shipowners availed themselves of it. Nor were they alone in 
 
16 THE BBSaTORATION OF 
 
 adopting the change from sail to steam and from wood to 
 iron. We can remember what a large trade we had with 
 Germany twenty-five years ago, although it was small com- 
 pared with that of the present. As that time it was chiefly 
 conducted in American vessels. But when iron steamships 
 came into vogue, wooden vessels, both American and German, 
 were abandoned. If we had been permitted to do so, we 
 should have still kept the greater part of that important carry- 
 ing trade in our hands. But we were shackled by our navi- 
 gation laws, while the Germans were unconstrained by any 
 such impediment. 
 
 The personnel of our mercantile marine was, in every 
 respect, superior to theirs, but it was consigned to annihilation 
 by our protective government, while Hamburg and Bremen 
 took their old galliot skippers in hand and educated them to 
 the responsible places they now fill in command of the splen- 
 did lines of iron steamships, making their semi-weekly trips 
 across the Atlantic, having absolutely monopolized the whole 
 American trade ! 
 
 Thus our government protected the Germans as well as 
 the English. By citing other examples, we might show how 
 the " fostering " hand of protection has been extended by our 
 government to every nation choosing to trade upon the neces- 
 sities of prohibited Americans. 
 
 Now, if the United States persist in maintaining a policy 
 long since abandoned by Europeans, South American and 
 Asiatic nations, even by Japan, leaving us not even China as a 
 companion, there must surely be some arguments to support 
 it, and to account in some other way than has been pointed 
 out, for the decadence of our carrying trade. It was the 
 
THE AMERICAN CARBTINQ TRADE. 17 
 
 theory of Mr. Lynch's committee that we were going on very 
 successfully until the civil war supervened, and then the Con- 
 federate cruisers destroyed our " commerce," as they termed 
 the industry we have lost. If this is not disposed of by what 
 I have already said, permit me to quote from my scrap-book 
 an extract from a letter addressed by me to the New York 
 Journal of Commerce, in the spring of 1857, nearly four years 
 previous to the commencement of the rebellion : 
 
 "In an article, written some months since, it was assumed that 
 steam was destined to be the great moving power for emigration, and 
 that it would supplant, almost entirely, the use of sails. Experience is 
 every day justifying this view ; and, still more, it is becoming evident 
 that in proportion as steam can be economized, it will serve for the 
 transportation of very much of the merchandise now carried by sailing 
 vessels. In fact, the time is not far distant when the latter class of ships 
 will be required only for articles of great bulk and comparatively little 
 value. 
 
 " The only question now is, who are to be the gainers 6y this revolu- 
 tion in navigation ? 
 
 Figures are very convincing arguments to American minds. Let us 
 use them : 
 
 In January last it was stated that less than eighteen years have 
 elapsed since the first steamship, propelled wholly by steam, crossed the 
 Atlantic ; and now there are fourteen lines of steamers, comprising 
 forty-eight vessels, plying between Europe and America."* Upon 
 looking into this with a view to test its correctness, it was found to be 
 within the truth ; for, including transient steamers, the number was 
 greater than stated. And it incidentally appeared that of them all, 
 there were but seven under the American flag — all seven, side wheel 
 ships — and, on the average, unprofitable, even with the support of gov- 
 ernment, upon which they leaned. " 
 
 Maintaining then, as now, that the screw must supersede the side- 
 wheel for all purposes, excepting perhaps those of mail carriage, and 
 
 *In twenty-two years the number of our transatlantic steamships has 
 decreased from seven to four, while those under foreign flags have in- 
 creased three hundred. 
 
18 THE EESTOBATION OF 
 
 that iron screw steamers are, in all commercial respects, preferable to 
 wood steamers, the argument was adduced that England, being able to 
 construct this class of vessels more economically than we can, must of 
 necessity have the monopoly of building them. Her monopoly, in this 
 respect, we cannot prevent ; but it depends upon ourselves and our gov- 
 ernment whether she shall share with us the monopoly of owning and 
 sailing them. 
 
 I have taken a bold, and it may be, apparently, an unpatriotic stand, 
 in assuming that the only way in which we can participate in ocean 
 si cam navigation is by adopting a system of reciprocity with England in 
 so changing our laws that we may buy her steamers as she now buys 
 our sailing ships, because she finds it for her interest to do so. '' 
 
 These views, entertained twenty -three years ago, were ap- 
 plicable then. They have been applicable ever since — they 
 are applicable now. They have been the staple of all that I 
 have ever written on the subject before the war, during the 
 war, and since its termination. 
 
 Iron steamship building was in its infancy in 1857. Its 
 great development was merely coincident with our civil war. 
 That war was a horrid nightmare. We found that our navi- 
 gation interests, with many other things we could ill afford to 
 lose, the lives of hundreds of thousands of our young men, 
 vast sums of our money, and not a little of our morality, were 
 gone. Those lives can never be restored, while our money 
 may be regained, and it is to be hoped our morality may be 
 improved ; but as to our ships, we simply refuse to replace 
 them with those that are better. 
 
 One argument in opposition to free ships is founded upon 
 the injustice that would be done to our shipbuilders. Were 
 this true, it might be said that ship-owners and the general 
 public have some rights that shipbuilders are bound to- 
 respect. The interests of our whole people are paramount to 
 theirs, as were those of the English people in 1849, when the 
 
TEE AMERICAN CARRTINQ TRADE. \Q 
 
 proportion of their shipbuilders was greatly beyond that of 
 ours at this day. 
 
 In point of fact, however, the suffering of our shipbuilders 
 by the repeal of the navigation laws, would, from the first, be 
 scarcely appreciable, and, in the end, would be more than 
 compensated by increased business. 
 
 It would matter very little either to the builders of wooden 
 vessels or to the public if the provision of the statute which 
 touches that department, and which really was intended for 
 that alone, should be repealed or not. Our mechanics build 
 mainly for the coasting trade, and they build wooden vessels 
 so good, and at such low prices, on account of the material at 
 their hands, that there is little danger of any competition with 
 them on the part of foreigners. We never had any reason, 
 and probably never shall have, to fear the rivalry of other 
 nations in this particular lin-e of business. So long as it 
 constituted the only method of construction, as we have seen, 
 England found her advantage in coming to our market for 
 her ships. 
 
 Therefore, what Congress does, or neglects to do, regard- 
 ing this branch of shipbuilding, is of very email moment. Our 
 wants do not lie in that direction. 
 
 The iron screw steamship is now the great and profitable 
 , arrier upon the ocean, and all we care to ask is the privilege 
 to avail ourselves of this " survival of the fittest." Whence, 
 then, comes the opposition to what should be the inalienable 
 right of an American citizen to own the best ship that he can 
 buy with his own money ? 
 
 Naturally, from the few iron shipbuilders in this country, 
 the chief of whom happens to be an Irishman. I would not 
 
20 THE RESTORATION OF 
 
 be understood as speaking disrespectfully of his nationality, 
 for I am aware that our political machinery depends very 
 much upon the votes of his countrymen for its running order. 
 Nevertheless we do object to this perpetual cry of the " Pro- 
 tection of Home Industry," which simply means the protection 
 of Mr. John Roach at the cost of the forty million citizens 
 vrhom he has adopted. 
 
 This personal allusion is unavoidable. Mr. Roach is omni- 
 present in the lobbies of Congress, and by his persuasive 
 blarney exerts an undue influence there. Withal he is my 
 personal friend, and I have often had occasion to compliment 
 him upon the ingenuity of his appeals. 
 
 When we approach Congress with the modest request to 
 be allowed to buy ships where we can do so upon the most 
 satisfactory terms, Mr. Roach is always on hand to give assur- 
 ance that it is needless for us to go abroad, for by his skill 
 and his labor-saving processes he is able to supply us with all 
 the ships we require cheaper than they can be bought upon 
 the Clyde. Again, when there is a subsidy bill before the 
 Senate or Plouse, our versatile friend is equally ready to go 
 down upon his knees as a beggar, telling Congress that the 
 only way to regain our ocean prestige is to subsidize the com- 
 panies from whom he expects to get orders, as otherwise they 
 sannot compete with the "pauper labor "of the country he 
 has abandoned. In either case, as will be readily seen, the 
 object is to have us contribute to the prosperity of Mr. Roach, 
 
 With pride the iron shipbuilders of the Delaware point 
 to the increase of their business, infinitesimal as It is, com- 
 pared to the ever-multiplying production of British shipyards. 
 But whence does this increase arise ? Prom the demand of 
 
TEE AMEBIOAN GARBTING TBADE. 21 
 
 our people for carrying grain, cotton and other products to 
 Europe, and bringing back merchandise therefrom in compe- 
 tition with the great fleet of foreign steamers to whom we 
 have given the monopoly of that business ? By no means. It 
 will be found upon critical inquiry that every one of our 
 home-built iron steamers, excepting two or three in the W. 
 India business, is built for our coastwise trade or for some line 
 that had been subsidized. Even the three or four ships 
 belonging to what is called the " American Line," running 
 between Philadelphia and Liverpool, may be said to be sub- 
 sidized, as without an entire remission of taxes from the State 
 and the aid of the Pennsylvania Railroad, they could not have 
 been put afloat. 
 
 Now, why cannot American shipbuilders compete on equal 
 terms with those of Great Britain? That they cannot is 
 evident from the fact that they do not ; for it would be 
 unreasonable to suppose that the ability to sail ships, on the 
 part of our seamen, vanished with the departure of wooden 
 vessels. It is true that we need a revision of other maritime 
 laws besides those under discussion, but it is sufficient now to 
 say that we cannot prove our ability to sail ships unless we are 
 permitted to own the ships we desire to sail. 
 
 Ships are but the tools of commerce, and if we have not 
 the tools we cannot do the work. Foreign mechanics cannot 
 sell us these tools ; our own mechanics cannot provide them ; 
 therefore the workmen of the sea are idle. 
 
 If one of Mr. Roach's theories is correct, if he can build 
 steamships cheaper and better than those we desire to buy, 
 why does he object to the introduction of an article that can 
 do him no harm ? If the other is true, and undoubtedly it is, 
 
82 TEE BESTOBATION OF 
 
 that he cannot build the ships that are needed without the aid 
 of a bounty or a subsidy, what then ? Manifestly, unless the 
 prohibition to purchase such ships is removed, it being the 
 duty of Congress to protect the individual interests of Mr. 
 Roach and his confreres by subsidies, equal justice demands 
 that every person, as well as every company, who is forced to 
 come to them for ships, should be subsidized to the extent of 
 the difference of the cost of a ship in the United States, and 
 that in the country where they are most advantageously built, 
 and this difference is at least twenty-five per cent. Call it 
 rather more or less as we please, but a vast difference is on all 
 hands acknowledged, and the fact of our non-production 
 proves it. The shipbuilders have already had exceptional 
 legislation by a considerable remission of duties in their favor. 
 But it is not enough. 
 
 In order to compete successfully with foreigners, they 
 should obtain the repeal of all duties which make their daily 
 life so much more expensive to them tlian it is to their fellow- 
 craftsmen in Scotland. But having already more protection 
 than any other class of mechanics, they have scarcely the pre- 
 sumption to demand any partiality to that extent. Another, 
 and a more forcible reason for their lack of success, is that 
 there has been no competition in the importation of ships to 
 stir them to exertion. Had there been, the first difficulty 
 might more readily be overcome. The illustration used by 
 Mr. Frothingham, already given, applies with greater force to 
 shipbuilding than to any other industry. The importation of 
 ships is absolutely prohibited, whereas that of all other articles 
 is either free or accompanied by a duty. And it is worthy of 
 notice that the smaller the duty on whatever is introduced. 
 
TRE AJIEBIOAN OARRTINO TBADB. 33 
 
 the greater is the constantly-improving skill of our domestic 
 manufacturers in its production. 
 
 As an argument against free ships, opponents of the 
 measure a few years since circulated and placed on the desks 
 of members of Congress, a lithographed drawing. It repre- 
 sented, among other things, the destruction of our vessels by 
 the Alabama, and a personal caricature, the compliment of 
 which it does not become me to more than acknowledge. Its 
 chief ground was occupied by starving mechanics, standing 
 listlessly around deserted ship-yards and machine-shops. 
 
 There was some truth in this part of the picture. There 
 ■was no reason why mechanics should starve at that time, 
 when a common laborer obtained from two to three dollars 
 per day for his work, but there was a reason for the abandon- 
 ment of wooden ship-yards and old-fashioned machine-shops. 
 
 Wooden ships were no longer in demand at home or 
 abroad, and the world had discovered better machinery to 
 propel better ships. As an offset to this pictorial argument, 
 another might have been introduced, exhibiting in the back- 
 ground the mere blacksmiths' shops of the free cities of 
 Hamburg and Bremen, as they existed before the era of iron 
 steamship building, and in the front the subsequent appear- 
 ance of great workshops and foundries, first built for the pur- 
 pose of keeping in repair the fleet of steamships bought by 
 unhampered Germans to do our American carrying trade, and 
 afterwards kept in more active employment, by the ability 
 their workmen have since acquired to supply their home mar- 
 ket with steamers of their own construction. 
 
 The advocates of subsidies have committed a grievous 
 error in arguing that postal contracts, given lo one or more 
 
24 TEE RESTORATION OF 
 
 steamship companies, will tend to a revival of shipbuilding for 
 public benefit. It is evident, on the contrary,' that those ships, 
 a part of whose cost is defrayed bylsTational bounty, would be 
 run as monopolies against individuals who have no such 
 charitable aid. A subsidy given for the protection or the 
 assistance of shipbuilders is a downright robbery of the peo- 
 ple's purse. There can be no question about the propriety of 
 giving a proper compensation to steamship companies who 
 carry the mails. They ought to be paid as liberally as railroad 
 or stage-coach companies, according to the miles they traverse 
 and the diiEculties they surmount. Their true policy is first 
 to advocate a measure whereby they can be supplied with the 
 best ships for their purposes in the cheapest markets of the 
 world, not only because in ordinary traffic they can thus better 
 compete with rivals under foreign flags, but because they can 
 better afford to accept a moderate compensation from our gov- 
 ernment for carrying its mails. 
 
 Mr. Charles S. Hill of New York, has recently pub- 
 lished a pamphlet of elaborate statistics, his object being to 
 prove that Great Britain has protected not only her commerce, 
 but her shipbuilding, by subsidies. In one respect he is right. 
 By liberal payment for the carriage of her mails she has in- 
 directly fostered commerce in maintaining regular postal 
 intercourse. But there is not the slightest evidence to show 
 that she paid out her public money to encourage either private 
 shipbuilding or ship owning. In England each of these in- 
 dustries stands by itself, and is able to maintain itself. All 
 that either of them asks, and all that they both receive, is 
 liberty. It is this, and this alone, that has given them their 
 nversh ad owing success. 
 
TEE AMERICAN OARBTINQ TRADE. 25 
 
 It is the want of it, and only the want of tnis great element 
 of prosperity, that has brought upon them in the United States 
 the oft-lamented " decadenoe." In this one sentence the whole 
 story may be read. 
 
 In giving her postal contracts, England never inquires 
 where the ships that carry the mails are built. It is sufficient 
 that under her flag they perform their work. 
 
 It was only the other day that a British subsidized line on 
 the coast of South America, bought the steamers of a bank- 
 rupt French line, put them under the British flag, and went on 
 with their accustomed regularity in carrying the mails — all 
 that was required at their hands. 
 
 Now, if any of the companies who are seeking for postal 
 contracts from our government are to have their proposals 
 acceded to, it should be with the express proviso that they 
 and all of us may be provided with the best and cheapest 
 ships wherever they can be obtained, as in this way the pub- 
 lic and individuals can be most profitably and advantageously 
 served. 
 
 I have observed in the preceding pages, that the reason 
 why our American shipbuilders are unable ■• t compete with 
 those upon the Clyde is, in a great measure, owing to the fact 
 that a high tariff, making it more costly for mechanics to live, 
 necessitates the demand, on their part, for higher wages. 
 
 In the construction of an iron steamship, as will be seen 
 in reading a communication herewith presented, the labor 
 may be estimated at 27^4 per cent, of the total cost. Thf. 
 writer, of course, means to be understood as s"f)eaking of the 
 labor in putting the ship together, having the material m 
 shape of angle iron, plates, &c., &c., already prepared. 
 
2Q THE BESTOBATION OF 
 
 If the labor from the time of extracting the iron from the 
 mines, reducing it to ore, and working it up from thence to 
 the shape required by the shipbuilder, had been included, 
 nearly the whole cost of the ship would be comprehended 
 under that term. Indeed, in working out this problem, we 
 ought actually so to consider it. It will be seen that the dif- 
 ference in the cost of labor, even in its depressed condition in 
 this country, without tauing the higher cost of materials into 
 account, is so great as to absolutely preclude any attempt at 
 equality upon our part, notwithstanding what may be said 
 to the contrary by Mr. Roach, when it suits his convenience 
 to 'ooast of his ability to compete with foreign shipbuilders. 
 
 At Dumbarton, I once carefully went over the books of 
 Messrs. Wm. Denny & Brothers, a member of whose firm, 
 Mr. James Denny, now furnishes me with some statistics. It 
 ivas found that to build the Parthia, a Cunard steamship of 
 3,000 tons, 162,500 days' labor was required ; I mean, with the 
 materials already prepared. 
 
 Now, although the figures given in the tables below ought 
 to be convincing at a glance, it is easy for any one with an 
 ordinary knowledge of arithmetic, to make a close calculation 
 of the labor difference in cost of British and American steam- 
 ships of the same quality. I do not deny that a tea-kettle 
 may be cheaply rivetted together anywhere. 
 
 Naturally, in this line of argument, I shall be met by the 
 oft-repeated question : " Do you then advocate the reduction 
 of the wages of our mechanics to the level of 'pauper labor' 
 in Scotland ? " ' By no means ; but while explicitly in favor of 
 such free trade in general as will make a dollar go as far in 
 the United States as four shillings now go in Great Britain, 1 
 
TEE AMEBIOAN GARRTING TRADE. 27 
 
 maintain that in the particular industry of ship owning, so 
 long as the necessity for higher wages is imposed upon us, we 
 ought to avail ourselves of any labor, "pauper" or otherwise, 
 by which steamships are built, because other nations are so 
 doing, and are prosecuting for their manifest advantage this 
 vastly more important business upon the ocean, which we are 
 forbidden to engage in, because we cannot build ships. The 
 homely illustration at the close of the parable on the conclud- 
 ing page, is certainly applicable. We are not allowed to 
 whittle, because we cannot make jack-knives. 
 
 On the other hand, my friend Mr. Roach will, if he is not 
 engaged for the moment in asking for subsidies for the very 
 reasons I have just adduced, most confidently assert that, on 
 account of the superiority of his machinery, and the energy 
 of his workmen, attained by " breathing the pure air of lib- 
 erty," he can overcome all the difference in wages, tliat he has 
 already done so, and that he "can now build steamships 
 cheaper and better than they can be built upon the Clyde." 
 
 Mr. Denny sends the following memorandum under date 
 
 of February 5th, 1878 : 
 
 "Prices of steamers of various sizes similar to those at present employed 
 in the Atlantic passenger trade. 
 
 1st, 2,000 gross tons, speed on trial, 13 knots, cost £44,000 
 2d, 3,000 " " 13^ " " 63,000 
 
 3d, 4,000 " " 14^ " " 96,000 
 
 4th, 5,000 " " 16 " " 147,500 
 
 The whole of these prices include the builders' profit, which has been 
 put down at the usual one we expect for our work. 
 
 1 inclose rates of payment our men get while employed on time, but 
 our boiler-platers work almost wholly by the piece. Also rates paid 
 to men in the ship-yard while on time, but this system of payment has 
 been almost entirely abandoned there in favor of piece work, which you 
 may safely say reduces the cost of labor from ten to twenty per cent., as 
 
28 THE RESTORATION OF 
 
 compared with time work. However, for sucli of them as are employed 
 on time, the rates I give you are correct. 
 
 In the foregoing prices of ships I have given you, you may say that 
 271^ per cent, of the total cost at present price of materials may be put 
 down against labor, but of course this will vaiy, as the prices of mate- 
 rials vary. 
 
 Bates of wages paid on Olyde to men employed in flie manufacture of iron 
 sJiips — apprentices excluded : 
 
 d. 
 
 Carpenters 7 
 
 Joiners 7}£ 
 
 Blacksmiths CJ^ 
 
 Platers GJ^ 
 
 Rivetters 5^ 
 
 Laborers 3}£ 
 
 Anglo iron-smiths 6^ 
 
 Riggers 6^ 
 
 Hammer-men 43^ 
 
 Holders up 4^ 
 
 Bates of wages paid on Olyde to men employed in tjie manufacture of 
 marine engines and toilers — a/pprenfices excluded : 
 
 d. 
 
 Smiters 6.6 
 
 Strikers or hammer-men 4.33 
 
 Angle iron-smiths 6.5 
 
 Boiler platers 7.07 
 
 Rivetters and caulkers 6 . 33 
 
 Holders up 4.7 
 
 Iron turners 6.47 
 
 Iron finishers 6.10 
 
 Engine fitters and erectors 6.16 
 
 Planing machinists 5 . 64 
 
 Shaping ,,. 5.17 
 
 Slotting 5.3 
 
 Drilling 4.9 
 
 Pattern-makers 7.58 
 
 Carpenters 7 
 
 Joiners ,. 5.5 
 
 Engine-drivers 4.55 
 
 Ordinary laborers 4 
 
 N. B. — The above are the average rates of each class of men as 
 
THE AMERICAN OARBTING TRADE. 
 
 29 
 
 detailed, and the rates given are tlie amount paid in pence and in frac- 
 tions or decimals of pence per hour. Fifty-one hours constitute a work- 
 ing weeli. Boiler-platers work mostly by the piece, but the rates given 
 are those paid when they are on time. 
 January, 1878." 
 
 I have endeavored in vain to procure from Mr. Roach his 
 corresponding prices of steamships and labor rates. The 
 nearest approach to the latter has been obtained from the Sec- 
 retary of the New York Free Trade Club, who has handed me 
 a note under date of February 7th, from a well-known iron 
 ship and engine building firm of New York. They inclose 
 their tariff of wages, with these remarks : 
 
 "In regard to shipyards, you know there is no such thing around 
 New York any more, but I give you such rates as we are now paying. 
 We are building three small iron steamers at present. 
 
 "In regard to rates of wages, compared with Wilmington and Ches- 
 ter, they are about eight to ten per cent under us." 
 
 Rates op Wages ra Shiptabd. 
 
 Carpenters $2.50 to $3.75 
 
 Joiners 2.50 " 3.00 
 
 Blacksmiths , 3.10 " 3.75 
 
 Platers 2.25 " 3.75 
 
 Eivetters 2.10 " 3.50 
 
 Angle iron-smiths 3.00 " 2.20 
 
 Hammer-men 2.00 " 3.25 
 
 Holdersup 1.60 " 1.75 
 
 Riggers 2.00 " 2.50 
 
 Laborers 1-40 " 1.50 
 
 ENOrNB AND BOILBB WOSKS. 
 
 Carpenters $3.50 to $2.75 
 
 Joiners 3-00 
 
 Hammer-men 2.00 " 3.25 
 
 Smiters 1-50 
 
 Angle iron-smiths 2.00 " 2.35 
 
 Boiler platers 3.25 " 3.75 
 
 Rivetters and caulkers 3.10 " 3.50 
 
30 THE RESTORATION OF 
 
 Holdersup $1.60 to $1.75 
 
 Iron turners 3.35 " 2.75 
 
 Iron finishers 3.50 " 3.00 
 
 Engine fitters and erectors 3.50 " 3.Q0 
 
 Planing machinists 3.35 " 3.75 
 
 Shaping " 3.35 " 3.75 
 
 Slotting " 3.35 " 3.75 
 
 Patternmakers 3.75 " 3.35 
 
 Engine drivers 3.35 " 3.75 
 
 Laborers 1.40 " 1.50 
 
 Having quoted both these lists, their data will now be ar 
 ranged in a tabular form, so that the difEerenoe in the cost of la 
 bor employed on the Clyde and on the Delaware will be at once 
 apparent. For this purpose, the Scotch prices are reduced to 
 American money, one pound sterling being represented by five 
 dollars currency, and the hourly pay multiplied by ten, to make 
 a day's work. 
 
 An average is made of the wages paid in New York, and 
 10 per cent., the largest allowance mentioned by the New 
 York firm, is deducted from the average prices paid by them, 
 resulting in the rates upon the Delaware. 
 
 Comparative Table. 
 
 Labor on the Clyde. Labor on the Delaware 
 
 Carpenters, per day, 10 hours, $1.40 $3.36 
 
 Joiners, " " 1.45 3.48 
 
 Blacksmiths, " " 1.30 2.18 
 
 Platers, " " 1.30 a. 25 
 
 Rivetters, " " 1.15 2.07 
 
 Laborers, " " 75 1.31 
 
 Angle iron-smiths, " " 1.35 1.89 
 
 Riggers, " " 1.35 2.03 
 
 Hammer-men, " " 85 1.91 
 
 Holdersup, " " 85 1.51 
 
TEE AMEBIGAJT OARRTINa TRADE. 
 
 31 
 
 Engine and Boiler Works. 
 
 
 Labor on tlie Clyde. 
 
 Labor on the Delaware. 
 
 Smiters, 
 
 per day. 
 
 10 hours. 
 
 $1.33 
 
 $1.35 
 
 Hammer-men, 
 
 (( 
 
 tt 
 
 85 
 
 1.91 
 
 Angle iron-smiths, 
 
 " 
 
 " 
 
 1.30 
 
 1.91 
 
 Boiler-platers, 
 
 (( 
 
 tt 
 
 1.41 
 
 2.25 
 
 Rivetters and caulkers," 
 
 " 
 
 1.35 
 
 2.07 
 
 Holders up. 
 
 
 It 
 
 94 
 
 1.51 
 
 Iron turners. 
 
 
 tt 
 
 1.29 
 
 2.25 
 
 Iron finishers. 
 
 
 It 
 
 1.20 
 
 3.48 
 
 Engine fitters and 
 erectors. 
 
 
 tt 
 
 1.23 
 
 3.47 
 
 Planing machinists. 
 
 It 
 
 It 
 
 1.13 
 
 3.35 
 
 Shaping, " 
 
 
 It 
 
 1.03 
 
 3.35 
 
 Slotting, 
 
 
 It 
 
 1.06 
 
 2.25 
 
 Pattern makers. 
 
 
 It 
 
 1.51 
 
 2.70 
 
 Carpenters, 
 
 
 It 
 
 1.40 
 
 2.36 
 
 Joiners, 
 
 
 II 
 
 1.10 
 
 3.70 
 
 Engine drivers. 
 
 
 11 
 
 91 
 
 3.25 
 
 Laborers, 
 
 
 •■ 
 
 80 
 
 1.81 
 
 There are two horns to the dilemma, either of which Mr. 
 Roach may lay hold of, but he cannot swing on a pivot be- 
 tween them. If he accepts these figures, or anything approach- 
 ing them, — and the fact that the ocean is covered by foreign 
 built ships to the exclusion of his own is proof of their cor- 
 rectness, — he may go on asking for a bounty on every ton hi 
 builds, equivalent to the difference in cost. Will he get it ? 
 No! 
 
 If, on the contrary, he chooses to repeat his assertion that 
 his ships cost less than those built in Scotland, what inference 
 is naturally drawn ? Simply, that his ships are too cheap to 
 be good. 
 
 Whatever position he may take, Section 2l8t of the new 
 Tariff Bill meets every just demand of the ship-owner whose 
 rights have never been considered at all, and of the ship- 
 
33 THE RESTORATION OF 
 
 builder who has been a mendicant in the lobby at Wash- 
 ington. 
 
 "All materials for the construction, equipment or repair of vessels 
 of the United States may be imported in bond, and withdrawn there- 
 from under such regulations as may be prescribed by the Secretary of 
 the Treasury; and upon proof that such materials have been used for 
 such purpose no duties shall be paid thereon. And all vessels owned 
 wholly by citizens of the United States shall be entitled to registry, 
 enrolment and license, or license, and to all the benefits and privileges 
 of vessels of the United States ; and all laws, or parts of laws, conflict- 
 ing with the provisions of this section, shall be, and the same are hereby, 
 repealed. " 
 
 This is all the privilege that ship-owners demand, and with 
 the favoritism over all other mechanics shown to ship-builders, 
 how can they complain ? Even now, Mr. Roacli says that he 
 " can build steamships cheaper and better than they can be 
 built on the Clyde." What will he not be able to accomplish 
 with the provisions of this bill ! His angle iron and his plates, 
 his rivets and his brass work, bis copper, his wire rigging, his 
 sails, his paints, his cabin upholstery, mirrors, and everything 
 appertaining to the completeness of his equipment — a great part 
 of which would cost him vastly more at home — anything and 
 all that he requires may be imported, duty free ! Plappy Mr. 
 Roach ! Why need he fear the effect of the clause in favor of 
 ship-owners ? Who will avail themselves of it? But alas for 
 the ship-builders upon the Clyde, in Newcastle and Belfast ! 
 Their occupation will be gone. Already building ships at a 
 lesser cost than theirs, this remission of duties will enable Mr. 
 Roach to build them from ten to twenty per cent, cheaper 
 still. What will England then do ? Will she grant bounties 
 to her ship-builders, to meet the emergency ? She did not do 
 it in 1849, to sustain her wooden-shipbuilders ; she will not 
 
THE AMERICAN OABRTINO TRADE. 33 
 
 do it now in order to " protect " an industry infinitely greater 
 than ours, but infinitely less in importance than that of her 
 ship-owning. She will protect that, by leaving it free, and 
 every Englishman who desires to build a ship will come for 
 that purpose to the Delaware. Mr. Roach objects to our buy- 
 ing British ships now ; will he decline to sell American ships 
 then? 
 
 In view of this glorious future, how can you, Mr. Roach, 
 oppose the 21st section of this bill? 
 
 I have thus adduced some of the principal arguments in 
 favor of the free importation of ships, the only method by 
 which the lost prestige of our commercial marine can be re- 
 stored. I have given a very close attention to the subject 
 for many years, having in the outset come to the conclusion 
 ■which subsequent time and events have abundantly confirmed. 
 
 If this essay should prove too long to be carefully read by 
 our law-makers, for whose perusal it is mainly intended, I still 
 trust that they may turn over the leaves sufficiently to recog- 
 nize the condition of our carrying trade compared with that 
 of England and Germany, as I shall endeavor to portray it in 
 the shorter form of a parable, of which I earnestly hope they 
 will make the application. 
 
 THE THREE FERRIES. 
 
 There are two large towns on the opposite banks of a wide 
 river. There is constantly increasing passenger and business 
 employment, supporting several ferries, between them. In for- 
 mer days the principal ferry masters were an American, an 
 Englishman, and a German. They all employed boats pro- 
 
84 THE RESTOSATION OF 
 
 pelled by sails, and especially the first did a very profitablt 
 business. Indeed, the American was the most successful, as 
 he and bis boys bad a way of handling their craft much supe- 
 rior to either of the others. Each had a large family of rel- 
 atives, and, naturally, as these relatives of theirs were willing 
 to work for the same wages as other people, they built new 
 boats for their kindred whenever they were required. 
 
 It so happened, however, that the American's family built 
 nuich better than the Englishman's. When the latter noticed 
 that the superior craft of the former were better patronized 
 by the public than his own, be asked the Yankee boys if they 
 wouldn't build some boats in their style for him ? " Sartain," 
 they said, "if you'll pay us what Uncle Sammy pays for 
 his'n ?" "Aye, of course I wull," said Mr. Bull, " for boats 
 like yon I must have, or Sam will run away with all my busi- 
 ness, and my family will starve." So Uncle Sam's boys built 
 the boats for Mr. Bull, and the two old gentlemen got on ami- 
 cably, for there was business enough for them both, and the 
 Dutchman did not interfere with them a great deal. The few 
 carpenters among Mr. Bull's relations did not like this very well 
 but the old man said to them squarely, "Look you here, now, 
 do you think I am going to let fifty of my relatives stand still 
 because two or three of you, who can't build boats as well as 
 Sam's people, are growling about it ? That's not my way ; I 
 work for the good of my family at large. Go to work, now, 
 and see if you can invent a better boat than they build ; if 
 you can, I will employ you, and so will Sara." They took the 
 old man's advice, for they saw the sense of it, and in a short 
 time they studied out a craft superior in every respect to any- 
 thing they had before, or that Sam had now. " That's right, 
 
THB AMERIOAN CARRYING TRADE. J5 
 
 boys," exclaimed old Bull, rubbing his hands with glee, "now 
 build some of them, and I'll buy them of you, and so will 
 Sam, if he isn't a fool." They did build some excellent boats, 
 to which the public took at once ; and everybody who wanted 
 to cross the river, or to send any goods over immediately, gave 
 Mr. Bull their custom. He grew rich suddenly, not so mucli 
 from building boats as from using them. Nobody patronized 
 Sam's now old-fashioned craft. Uncle Sara, generally supposed 
 to be a " smart old cuss," couldn't understand it at all. " It's 
 one of those things that no fellow can find out," he said, " but 
 next time we have a family meeting, we will appoint a com- 
 mittee to get at what this here ' decadence ' comes from." So 
 he appointed a committee, and they ran around six months 
 among the carpenters of the family, and came back with a re- 
 port that " Whereas, a few years ago, during a family row, a 
 lot of old ferry boats had been stolen by or sold to Mr. Bull, 
 this had killed boat building ever since ; and it always would 
 be dead until every one of the family put their hands in their 
 pocket and supported the carpenters till they had learned to 
 build just such boats as Bull was using." In the meantime it 
 may be remarked that the Dutchman had got Bull's boys to 
 build some new boats for him, and he was now doing a better 
 business than he had ever done before. Uncle Sam looked on 
 and observed, " By jingo, this here's a fix ; I've asked my 
 family to hand over the cash to support these carpenters of 
 
 mine, and they say they'll see me well, never mind 
 
 what, and now that whole raft of boys, who were earning 
 money for me on the ferry, are digging clams or gone to farm- 
 ing, and when I want to go across the river I have to go with 
 Bull or the Dutchman, and pay them for it, instead of getting 
 
36 THE AMEEIOAN CARRTINQ TRADE. 
 
 money for doing what tbey do, myself." His boys, who were 
 thrown out of employment on the ferry, thereupon approached 
 the old gentleman and said, "Uncle Samuel, don't you re- 
 member how, a while ago, when those carpenters of ours built 
 better boats than Mr. Bull's could build, the old fellow came 
 to you, and asked you to let them build some for him ? If he 
 hadn't got them from us his fellows would shortly have been 
 high and dry, as we are now ; but we sold them to him, and 
 so he kept up his business on the ferry. Now, why don't you 
 do what he did, and give us something to do, instead of spend- 
 ing your money going across in his boats and the Dutch- 
 man's ?" Uncle Sam reared right up at this mild remonstrance. 
 " Grit out," he exclaimed, " you ain't no account, the ferry's 
 no account, there ain't nothing of no account in this here fam- 
 ily but just a half a dozen boat buildei's. Say, Jonathan, what 
 are you doin' with that ar jack-knife ? Did you make it ?" 
 " No, sir ; I bought it of one of Bull's boys." " Well, then, 
 lay it right down ; I ain't a goirC to have you whittle till you 
 can make one for yourself." And then the old man went off — 
 mad ! And in another sense of the word, he is still mad. 
 
A REVIEW OP THE PLANS OF SENATOR 
 BLAINE AND SECRETARY SHERMAN. 
 
 Since the first edition of the preceding pages was issued, 
 the restoration of our carrying trade has engaged the atten- 
 tion of the press in a greater degree than in times past. 
 Although many plans, different from the one herein advocated, 
 have been proposed, and none of them, as I fancy, calculated 
 to be effectual, still it is a great satisfaction to know- that a 
 subject of such importance has at last come to be carefully 
 considered. All that we ask for it is discussion, and that, we 
 have hitherto been unable to obtain where it may be of prac- 
 tical use, in the halls of Congress. 
 
 In every session for the last ten years, a free ship bill has 
 been presented both in the Senate and in the House. These 
 bills have with great regularity been referred to the com- 
 mittees on commerce, and with equal regluarity they, hava 
 expired in the committee rooms. If, incidentally to some 
 kindred matter, a member has ventured to assert the right of 
 an American citizen to buy a ship, he has been invariably 
 called to order, and generally by one of the committee. 
 
 Subsidy bills have frequently been reported upon and 
 debated. So have bounty bills for the encouragement of 
 shipbuilding, but while beggars of the people's money can 
 always be at least heard, and often rewarded, men who sim- 
 ply ask the right to use their own money in the purchase of 
 
38 THE PLAN OF 
 
 their own ships are not only denied the opportunity of getting 
 a vote upon their propositions, but are vilified as traitors to 
 their flag because they desire to hoist it over a British built 
 hull, in which they hope to make money for themselves 
 and their country instead of allowing all the profits to accrue 
 to Englishmen, because they intend to give employment to 
 American instead of British sailors, and because they wish to 
 restore the prestige of our commercial marine, to make it 
 profitable in peace and invaluable in war. 
 
 These are the offenses of the advocates of free ships that 
 excite the virtuous indignation of the shipbuilders, and induce 
 them to use their powerful influence in the committee rooms. 
 Strange as it may seem at first, they are not alone. Ship- 
 owners join with them in their protest against our heinous 
 iniquity, and the committee men are really made to believe by 
 such imposing demonstrations that since shipowners themselves 
 do not want cheap ships, costly ships are better for the 
 country. If they would allow the subject only once to come 
 before the Committee of the Whole, surely some Congressman 
 would have uninfluenced brains enough to discover that while 
 the shipbuilders are naturally monopolists, these shipowners 
 become so by having been forced to supply themselves for 
 their coasting trade with expensive ships. The argument 
 would be found to be entirely the other way. If they would 
 be ruined by the competition of those who would buy cheaper 
 and better ships, then their ruin would be for the general 
 good. 
 
 But while we propose a measure of benefit to the nation 
 we do not propose to ruin or to injure either of these parties 
 who have so long and so ungenerously stood in its way. The 
 
SENATOR BLAINE. 39 
 
 2l8t section of Mr. Wood's late tariff bill, which Mr. Roach 
 BO ingeniouvsly succeeded in eliminating, seemed to be eminently 
 just to all parties. I have allowed it to remain as printed in 
 the former text on page 33. 
 
 Latterly two distinguished statesmen have given currency 
 to their plans for the restoration of the American carrying 
 trade, and these are entitled to our present consideration, as 
 there is at last a possibility that their merits — and demerits — 
 may be discussed in Congress. Mr. Blaine's letter to the New 
 York Chamber of Commerce has the priority, it having been 
 sent to that body in June last. 
 
 First, it is subject to the same criticism with which this 
 essay commenced. If he was invited to address " the business 
 men of the city of New York on the Decay of American 
 Commerce and the means of promoting its revival," then the 
 business men of New York were sadly in want of dictionaries. 
 Commerce is " an interchange or mutual change of goods, 
 wares, productions, or property of any kind, between nations 
 and individuals, either by barter or by purchase and sale." 
 We have no want of commerce, but our complaint is that the 
 mutual interchange of goods, wares, productions and property, 
 with foreigners, is carried on in foreign bottoms. 
 
 Doubtless these business men, who, by-the-bye, ought to 
 know more about their own business than Mr. Blaine could 
 tell them, intended to get his opinion on the carrying trade, 
 "the trade which consists in the transportation of goods by 
 water from country to country or place to place," and, more 
 over, they meant the foreign carrying trade alone. Doubtless 
 too, Mr. Blaine knew what was intended ; but then again he 
 fell into the error of his less distinguished fellow citizen 
 
40 TEE PLAN OF 
 
 John Lynch, and devoted nearly the whole of his letter to the 
 consideration of shipbuilding at the expense of the nation, in 
 the interest of that " tireless, unselfish and honest man," John 
 Roach ! 
 
 He tells them how Mr. Roach has paid in the last seven 
 years, $8,000 per day for workmen's labor, but forgets to tell 
 them that he has prevented $100,000 per day being paid to 
 American oflScers and sailors, and that while he has mSde a 
 million or two of dollars for himself, he has prevented Ameri- 
 can shipowners from earning their share of the $910,000,000 
 freight money that has been paid to foreigners in that time. 
 
 At the dinner of the Chamber of Commerce where Mr. 
 Blaine made the speech that was preliminary to his letter, he 
 used the following pertinent language, subsequently admitting 
 what he, in common with other representatives of Maine ship- 
 builders, had hitherto denied, that steamships of iron have 
 taken the place of sailing ships of wood, and that the maritime 
 prosperity of Great Britain and Germany is owing to that fact. 
 
 " In 1856-7 Great Britain, the leading commercial nation 
 of the world, had only 950,000 tons engaged in trade between 
 the United States and that kingdom. She has 5,200,000 tons 
 now. Germany then had but 166,000 tons ; this last year she 
 had 950,000 tons. Norway and Sweeden twenty years ago 
 had in trade between this country and their own but 20,000 
 tons. Ijast year's reports show that they had 850,000 tons. 
 Even Austria, penned up with a limited seaboard as she is, 
 had in commerce with us twenty years ago not a vessel of 
 her own, but last year she had no less than 220,000 tons. 
 And I might go on thus through the whole list. In this 
 mighty decrease of our tonnage from 4,400,000 to 600,000 tons, 
 in about eleven years, the United States has gone backward, 
 
SENATOR BL4INB. 41 
 
 and all the vast profit of this trade has gone into the co£fers of 
 other nations. Let me ask of you here, what other interests 
 have gone backward in that period ? Has industry ? Why, it 
 has outstripped imagination. Has agriculture or internal com- 
 merce languished? Why, we have increased from 30,000 to 
 68,000 miles of railroads, and the United States has given to aid 
 commerce over 200,000,000 acres of the public domain ; but 
 meantime, she has protected by tariff every article that the 
 American would manufacture. For the foreign commerce of the 
 country, though, what has been done ? It has been left to the 
 alien and the stranger, and in the last ten years the value of the 
 products carried between this country and foreign countries 
 has exceeded $11,000,000,000 a year, out of the carrying of 
 which somebody has made $110,000,000 per anuum — a sum 
 far larger than the interest of the public debt. And who has 
 made this money ? France, England, Germany — everybody 
 excepting the United States. Think of it ; $110,000,000 in 
 gold coin has gone out of the commerce of this country into 
 the commerce of other countries. Can New York stand this ? 
 Can this great port sustain such loss as this, with all her un- 
 bounded advantages of position and of resources, and with 
 the magnificent continental commerce that stands behind her? 
 I say, gentlemen, that if the carrying trade of this country, 
 aggregating $110,000,000, is permanently turned from us, 
 then the question of specie payments becomes one of far more 
 complicated difficulty than it is to-day, and the only way to 
 make that question easier of solution is to turn that current of 
 gold from those coffers into our own." 
 
 The advocates of free ships desire no better argument than 
 Mr. Blaine himself has supplied ; we have often used it our- 
 selves, but have never presented it so forcibly. "And who 
 made this money ? France, England, Germany — everybody 
 excepting the United States !" It was an after dinner speech, 
 and there is a saying connected with after dinner speeches. 
 
43 TEE PLAK OF 
 
 At any rate the wit came out here and there — wit, as Webster 
 defines it " Sense ; judgment." lie told the exact truth, and 
 if any one had asked him which of these nations built the 
 ships while all of them have prospered, he would have been 
 obliged to say — England alone. 
 
 He tells us how Germany has prospered. She has increased 
 her tonnage from 166,000 to 950,000 tons in twenty years, 
 while ours has decreased in that time until it has nearly gone 
 out of sight. Her increase has chiefly been in iron screw 
 steamships. Where did Germany get those steamships with 
 which she has taken away from us our carrying trade ? She 
 bought them. Why did she buy them ? Because she could 
 buy them cheaper than she could build them. Why did she 
 not wait, as we are doing, until they could be built cheaper 
 than they could be bought? Because in the meantime Eng- 
 land or some other nation who could buy them would have the 
 carrying trade. Who has prevented us from imitating Ger- 
 many ; in fact, of maintaining our carrying trade, which she 
 has taken from us ? Who but Mr. Blaine and his school of 
 protectionists who have reversed the fable of the dog in the 
 manger ; for the horse has forced the dog to eat his hay. 
 
 The friends of free ships were not slow to seize upon Mr. 
 Blaine's weak point, but in his communication to the merchants 
 he repeats the same line of argument so telling against him- 
 self, without answering the questions which it is to be hoped 
 will be proposed to him on the floor of the Senate chamber in 
 a way that will bring a response. 
 
 After admitting the great change in shipbuilding which all 
 agree has taken place, it seems unworthy of Mr. Blaine's ability, 
 though it may serve well enough for the capital of small in- 
 
SENATOR BLAINE. 43 
 
 tellects, to tell us that the civil war had anything whatever 
 to do with our present maritime decadence. Fifteen years 
 have elapsed since that time, and if the wooden ships, a few 
 of which were destroyed by Confederate cruisers, but most of 
 which were profitably sold, had been worth replacing, an im- 
 petus rather than a drawback would have been connniunicated 
 to ship-building. 
 
 Before Mr. Blaine offers his specific, he makes this very 
 just remark, to which we yield our ready assent — and we 
 would apply it to ships that we might buy, as well as to 
 those that we build: 
 
 "We can build wooden ships better than any other country, and we 
 can buildthem as cheaply ; but after they are launched and in trade 
 they should not be worried and harried and burdened with every form 
 of taxation, port-charge and quarantine exaction at home ; and mal- 
 treated and oppressed, as they too often are, by our consuls in foreign 
 ports. They should have every facility for supply in our ports that 
 England gives to her ships." 
 
 And then he gives us his plan: 
 
 " We must have iron steamships besides, and with the start that other 
 nations enjoy to-day, we shall never compete with them unless we use 
 the same aids and the same instrumentalities that have built their steam 
 fleets. And that aid I would give. And to give it effectively and wisely 
 I would abandon all idea of granting subsidy to special lines as they 
 apply to Congress for aid. That policy, however just and meritorious, 
 will always be rendered abortive by prejudice, by jealousy, and by scan- 
 dal, either actual or imputed. I would prefer a general law that should 
 Ignore individuals and enforce a policy. For instance, enact that any 
 man or company of men that will build, in an American yard, with 
 American material, by American mechanics, a steamship of 3,000 tons, 
 and sail her from any port of the United States to any foreign port, he 
 or they shall receive for a monthly line a mail allowance of $"35 per mile 
 per annum, for the sailing distance between the two ports ; for a semi- 
 
44 THE PLAN OF 
 
 monthly line, $45 per mile ; for a weekly line, $75 per mile. Should the 
 steamer exceed 3,000 tons, a small advance on these rates might be 
 allowed ; if less than 3,000 tons, a corresponding reduction ; keeping 
 3,000 tons as the average and the standard. Provide that the steam- 
 ships shall be thoroughly inspected by a competent commission under 
 the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of the 
 Navy, and the Postmaster-General, and thus insure the very first class 
 of construction for safety and for speed, both for passenger and cargo. " 
 
 The first sentence is admirable. We ask nothing more. 
 If his plan had ended with it, we would have hailed Mr. 
 Blaine as a convert to the doctrine of Free Ships. 
 
 But all the rest, though ostensibly in the interest of a lim- 
 ited carr3'ing trade, is merely a curious proposition that the 
 Postal Department should enter into a contract to support 
 ship-building at the public expense. 
 
 It seems utterly impossible for Mr. Blaine and his school 
 of theorists to rid themselves of the idea, so widely promul- 
 gated by Mr. Roach, that England grants, or ever has granted, 
 subsidies for the purposes of ship-building. The fallacy of this 
 notion has been frequently exposed, as it has been in this 
 tract, on pages 25 and 26. We challenge those who pretend 
 to entertain it, to produce a single expression in Parliamentary 
 debates upon questions of subsidy, wherein the British Gov- 
 ernment was urged to grant it on tlie plea of promoting ship- 
 building. Its whole object has been to extend its postal, and 
 consequently, its commercial, relations with English colonies 
 and foreign nations all over the world. It would as soon 
 have stipulated that the mail-bags should have been made of 
 British leather as that the ships should be built of British iron. 
 When her navigation laws became as odious in England as 
 ours are here, and were therefore repealed, the first use the 
 
SENATOR BLAINE. 46 
 
 Britons made of their liberty was to buy our clippers for 
 Australian packets, and their government granted them postal 
 contracts for carrying the mails in these American bottoms. 
 
 One would be led to suppose, from Mr. Blaine's reasoning, 
 that all commerce is carried on in mail steamers, whereas, of 
 the British and other foreign ships, propelled either by steam 
 or sail, that transport our commerce, not one in a hundred has 
 a mail contract. If Mr. Blaine will insist upon it that ship- 
 building is synonymous with commerce and the carrying 
 trade, and that it must be protected to render the two last 
 successful, let us have the protection equal. Let the exact 
 difference in cost between building ships, especially iron 
 steamships, abroad and at home, be ascertained, and then let 
 every American citizen draw that difference from the Treasury 
 whenever he proposes to build a ship. As Mr. Blaine's pro- 
 position evidently comes directly from the dictation of Mr. 
 Roach, that gentleman would not object to have the sphere of 
 his profits enlarged, while a more equal justice would be dis- 
 tributed among his employers. 
 
 The most astonishing misconception of Mr. Blaine lies in 
 this sentence : 
 
 "Nor can it fail to be noted that the argument for free ships applies 
 with equal force to the free admission of all dutiable articles which are 
 not exclusively on the revenue basis. Why not have free cottons, and 
 free woolens, and free silks, and free iron, and free steel, and free cut- 
 lery, and free fabrics of all kinds?" 
 
 This will be true when all the navigable waters of the 
 world come under the dominion of the United States tariff. 
 At present, the ocean, as we have repeatedly had occasion to 
 remark, is not our exclusive property. Whoever puts the 
 
46 TEE PLAN OV 
 
 cheapest and best ship upon it, and sails her most carefully 
 and economically, will be successful over all rivals who cannot 
 have these advantages. That is just the difference between 
 free ships and the free admission of the articles he enumerates. 
 In the one case, we are obliged to compete with the outside 
 world. In the other, we can, if we choose, keep the rest of 
 the world outside. 
 
 Really, Mr. Blaine must have thought that the merchants 
 of New York did need instruction, and that instruction of a-jy 
 kind was good enough for them. 
 
aEOSHTAJii aHEBlLAN. 47 
 
 We have now before us the report of the Secretary of the 
 Treasury. Mr. Sherman thus alludes to the shipping laws : 
 
 " It has always been the policy of the law to restrict the privileges 
 of American registry to vessels built in this country. The object was 
 to further the shipbuilding and naval interests of the country, and this 
 policy was so successful as to advance the United States to the second 
 rank among nations as respects tonnage and the number of its ships. 
 While wood was the article mainly used in the construction of ships, 
 we had the advantage over foreign nations in the cost of material. Our 
 shipbuilders could not only supply vessels for domestic commerce, but 
 could successfully compete in the carrying trade of the world. The use 
 of iron in shipbuilding in place of wood is, however, steadily increasing, 
 and in the cost of iron and in the price of labor other commercial 
 nations have the advantage. It is a grave question of public policy 
 whether the period has not arrived when the unlimited right of pur 
 chase, as under the English statutes, should be extended to vessels as 
 well as to other commodities, and when admission to American registry 
 upon the payment of duties should be allowed them upon importation. 
 The recovery of our old position in the carrying trade will more than 
 counterbalance any disadvantage likely to ensue from a modification of 
 restrictions upon the right of purchase, while a moderate duty on ships 
 imported will enable our shipbuilding to compete successfully in the 
 construction of iron vessels of the largest class. The proper policy to 
 be pursued i^difflcult to determine, but the great importance of consid- 
 ering the subject is respectfully submitted to the attention of Congress." 
 
 To be sure, he approaches the subject with apparent 
 timidity. But we must remember that, after all, he is a pol- 
 itician, and that he has, heretofore, been identified with the 
 school of protectionists. It is no small triumph, therefore, 
 for our cause, when it forces from him the admission that its 
 principles deserve his consideration in any degree and with 
 any qualifications. 
 
48 THE PLAN OF 
 
 The passage of an act in accordance with his suggestions, 
 could not be otherwise than beneficial, although, without an 
 amendment, which I will venture to propose, it would confer 
 no benefit upon our foreign carrying trade. Such a change as 
 the secretary would effect, would introduce into our coasting 
 trade new models and ships of superior workmanship, which, 
 instead of destroying domestic shipbuilding, would stimulate 
 it by a healthy competition. 
 
 Mr. Roach occasionally assures us that he can build ships 
 as cheaply as they can be built abroad, and he always says 
 that our iron is better than any that enters into the building 
 of English ships. Now, with these advantages, his fears and 
 those of his advocates, may be dispelled when they anticipate 
 the total destruction of our shipyards and the inability to build 
 even a naval vessel for ourselves. Especially will all such 
 visions of ruin vanish from their minds Avhen these inferior 
 British ships are subjected to " a moderate duty." 
 
 We have always maintained that if from the outset we 
 had been permitted to import foreign-built ships, we should 
 soon have had no occasion to buy them, for their very im- 
 portation " will enable our ship-builders to compete success- 
 fully in the construction of iron vessels of the largest class." 
 Here is the exact point. When an Englishman, a German, or 
 any other foreigner, desires to build an iron steamship, he has 
 an unlimited choice of builders, and can weigh in his mind all 
 the advantages of model, work, material and price, presented 
 to him in any ship-yard of any country. But when an 
 American individual or company requires a steamship there is 
 no such competition from which there can be made a selection. 
 
 Mr. Roach has thus far built the only very large ships on 
 
8E0BETABT SHERMAN. 49 
 
 this side of the Atlantic. These, the " Cily of Peking " and 
 " City of Tokio," could have been built at Belfast, Ireland, 
 for forty per cent, less than they cost tlie Pacific Mail Com- 
 pany, as we were assured by the builders of the White Star 
 Line, and they would not probably have required from one to 
 two hundred thousand dollars to be laid out on each of 
 them upon their first voyages to San Francisco. Thus, we see 
 what is the effect of encouraging American industry when 
 that industi-y has an absolute monopoly. We have already 
 noted that upon all articles in the manufacture of which we 
 equal or excel foreigners, the duties have been so low that 
 competition has been invited, and this it is that has stirred 
 our mechanics to energy. 
 
 We wonder why the Pacific Mail Steamship Company has 
 not been successful. It is, as has been already stated in dis- 
 cussing the question of subsidy, because for many years be- 
 fore even Mr. Roach had facilities for building iron ships of 
 any kind, the company was compelled to use wooden side- 
 wheelers, a class of vessels abandoned by all other nations 
 who were using the new style of iron screw steamers ; and 
 when, at last, Mr. Roach was ready to build iron ships, the 
 company was obliged to take them of the quality he chose to 
 furnish, and at the price he chose to demand ; and these are 
 still his terms with all Americans. 
 
 It would, moreover, be worth the while of Congress to 
 have a calculation made of the subsidies that have been paid 
 to this company, and what would have been the difference in 
 cost to it if it had been allowed from the beginning to buy 
 ships wherever it pleased. We should find that this differ- 
 ence in cost, with the difference in speed, carrying capacity, 
 
50 TEE PLAN OF 
 
 repairs, interest and insurance, would be tenfold the amount 
 of all its subsidies, and it would have been successful by this 
 iieans and by honest management, instead of resorting to 
 questionable methods of obtaining money from the public 
 treasury, and being a failure after all. 
 
 Before recurring to the recommendation of the Secretary 
 of the Treasury, it may not be amiss to notice another propo- 
 sition which has gained currency in the newspapers. It has 
 undoubtedly been started by that sagacious lobbyist, John 
 Roach, who will seemingly oppose it while he pulls the wires 
 of the puppet behind the screen. This brilliant idea is that 
 of admitting foreign built ships to registry, either with or 
 without a duty, to he used in the foreign carrying trade alone. 
 
 Mr. Roach would like exceedingly to have Congress pass 
 such a bill. He has been worried, in his monopoly, to some 
 purpose at last. Congress really meditates a change in the 
 navigation laws. He sees that it must come, and he is anxious 
 to have the blow strike nothing but the empty air. The more 
 practical Don Quixote of the present day will not be hurt by 
 the windmill. He knows perfectly well that no man or com- 
 pany will buy a ship on such conditions. It has always been 
 an insult to American citizens to tell them that they alone, of 
 all mankind, shall not buy ships wherever they please, and it 
 is scarely le.ss insulting to tell them that under certain hard 
 conditions they may own ships, but they must sail them 
 under the directions of Mr. John Roach. 
 
 Doubtless, some steamship lines would generally employ 
 their vessels in the transatlantic trade, but there might arise 
 a necessity for sending a ship to a coastwise port, and, under 
 this provision, it could not be done. Think of Parliament, 
 
SECRETARY SHERMAN. 51 
 
 ever ready to encourage the carrying trade of Great Britain, 
 providing, in its act of 1849, that although Englishmen might 
 buy our clipper ships, they could not send them from one 
 British port to another ! If such a bill as Mr. Roach's were 
 passed by Congress, it would be perfectly immaterial if it 
 implied a duty or not. No shipowner would avail himself of 
 it. He would not do so if he were offered a bounty on the 
 purchase. 
 
 And here let me say, while I have always contended that 
 the absolute freedom to purchase, at least, a certain class of 
 ships, without duty, for any trade whatever, is a sine qua non 
 for the revival of our foreign carrying trade, this freedom of 
 itself will not produce the desired result. If we were dis- 
 posed to imitate the mendicitj' of the shipbuilders, we might 
 well demand a bounty from the Government, whose long 
 masterly inactivity has destroyed the personnel of our mercan- 
 tile marine, driven our sailors on to farms, and made our ship- 
 ping merchants stock speculators. Our knowledge of the 
 business in which we once excelled the world has faded out, 
 and while other nations have acquired and utilized experience 
 at our expense, we are to be started against them once more 
 in the race, with clogs upon our heels ! 
 
 No, if we had the ships at prime cost, dutyfree, we could 
 not sail them in the foreign trade without further beneficial 
 legislation. It is known that there is a line of steamers under 
 the British flag employed in the service of the Central Pa- 
 cific Railroad between San Francisco and China. When Gen- 
 eral Colton, the late president of the " Occidental and Oriental 
 Steamship Company," was living, two years ago, I asked him 
 
52 THE PLAN OF 
 
 for his countenance and support in the free ship enterprise. 
 He declined, and gave me these satisfactory reasons. 
 
 He said : " We virtually own these ships ; that is, we have 
 Che privilege of buying them if they can be put under the 
 American flag \, but as we only desire to use them in the China 
 trade, we prefer to keep them as they are. It is cheaper to 
 charter them, and to pay their owners a handsome profit, than 
 it would be to own them ourselves. The British laws pertain- 
 ing to sailors are more beneficent than ours. Sailors in their 
 service are not so generally owned by shipping commissioners 
 and landlords as they are in ours. There is not the same diffi- 
 culty in discharging them in foreign ports as there is in oui 
 service. The British consuls are not robbers on a four years' 
 raid. In fact, there is every advantage in sailing these ships 
 under the British flag. And then, don't you know that with 
 us, ships are personal property liable to taxation, like all per- 
 sonal property, whether it is profitable or not? In England, 
 on the contrary, the ship is not taxed, but if the owner makes 
 a profit he pays an income tax merely on this profit, not on 
 the ship ; and if there is a loss he pays nothing, while the 
 American pays all the same anyway. No, your free ship 
 scheme does not interest ns. We prefer to have the advan- 
 tages of the British flag !" 
 
 General Colton was not alone in this unanswerable logic. 
 Every owner of a sailing ship transferred to nominal owner- 
 ship under the British flag during the war, would have been 
 content to have her remain there, but for the advantages that 
 might be derived from the coasting trade if she could be 
 allowed to sail under her old colors again. 
 
 In view of facts like these, what wonder that Mr. Roach 
 
8EGBETART SHERMAN. 63 
 
 should be willing to allow as " to purchase foreign-built ships 
 for purposes of foreign trade " ! 
 
 In all previous discussions^ the shipbuilders have scouted 
 every proposition of compromise, always asking for bounty 
 and subsidy for themselves, and have denied liberty to others. 
 Now there is an opportunity for us to be magnanimous even 
 towards Mr. John Roach, their chief exponent. 
 
 It seems to me that Mr. Wood's section 21st, on page 33, 
 ought to satisfy him. It is eminently fair to all parties, as 
 the remarks which follow it clearly show. 
 
 But let us take this latest suggestion of the Secretary of 
 the Treasury, that " the unlimited right to purchase, as under 
 the English statutes, should be extended to vessels as well as 
 to other commodities, and admission to American registry, 
 upon the payment of duties, should be allowed them on impor- 
 tation." Let us add to it one single amendment which will 
 not harm the coasting trade one jot or one tittle, for without 
 it not one ship more would be built at home, and with it the 
 only effect could possibly be to transfer freight money from 
 British pockets to our own. 
 
 Let this amendment apply to a large class of vessels, such 
 as would be seldom used in the coasting trade. Fix the limit 
 somewhere — say even at four thousand tons — but let these 
 large ships which would almost invariably be employed in the 
 foreign trade, be admitted to registry dutyfree. In this way 
 we shall take the first and most important step toward restor- 
 ing our foreign carrying trade. But I frankly confess and re- 
 peat that twenty years of decadence, — during which time all 
 foreign nations have been learning the business that we have 
 forgotten, until even the Chinese are about to establish a line 
 
64 THE PLAN OF SECRETARY SHERMAN. 
 
 to our Pacific coast, — cannot be brought suddenly to an end, 
 even by absolute freedom to purchase ships of all kinds. 
 
 Mr. Blaine closes his letter with a happy bimile, which is 
 cordially adopted as a concise summary of my argument, and I 
 trust that Congress will act upon it for the good of our coun- 
 try : " We must arm with the weapons of Achilles in a con- 
 test with Achilles himself." Yes, we must fight this modern 
 Achilles, not with the weapons he used in the times gone by, 
 but threw away in 1849. We want his weapons of the present 
 day — his ships and his maritime laws. 
 
 Without both of them, our " decadence " will continue for 
 his gain and for our loss. 
 
PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. 
 
 Relating to Finance, Currencjh, Banking, etc. 
 
 HONEST MONEY AND LABOR. An Essay by the Hon. Caul 
 SCHURZ, Secretary of the Interior. Being No. ii of the series of 
 " Economic Monographs.'' Octavo ^5 
 
 AN ALPHABET IN FINANCE. By Graham McAdam. With 
 introduction by R. R. BowKER. i2mo, cloth . . . $i 25 
 
 " This volume has been planned to present in clear and readable shape the first 
 principles or .\ B C of Financial Science." 
 
 " It is the kind of boolt that should be heartily welcbmcd, as it presents facts and 
 unfailing laws relating to the principles of money, without dictating harsh means to 
 carry out personal -views."— Pittsiurg Conmierciat. 
 
 • " If any people of the whole world need to be versed in the science of money, it 
 is the people of the United S\ai.e%.''— Louisville Courier-Journal. 
 
 MONEY AND LEGAL TENDER IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 By. He.nry R. Linderman, Director of the the United States Mint. 
 i2mo, cloth . . ...... $1 25 
 
 *' The various legislative provisions with regard to the coinage of money and the 
 regulation of currency in the United States, are treated in this valuable essay with con- 
 venient brevity, but with great precision and clearness." — N. V. Tribune. 
 
 THE CURRENCY QUESTION from a Southern point of 
 view. Being an argument against the Inflationists and the Supporters 
 of State banks and local money. By RoBT. W. Huuhes, U. S. Judge. 
 i2mo, cloth ....... . Si 25 
 
 " A work of exceptional value, that should find a large circulation " — Hart/ord 
 
 Post. 
 
 LABOR AND CAPITAL. By John B. Jervis. A complete ani* 
 comprehensive treatise by the veteran engineer, whose experience of 
 more than half a century has given him exceptional opportunities for 
 arriving at a practical Understanding of the questions at issue between 
 employer and employee. i2mo, cloth . . . $1 25 
 
 " His remarks are always opportune as well as pointed, and the terse simplicity 
 of his style evinces the sincerity of his purpose and the lucidity of his mind," — N. V. 
 Tribune. c 
 
 ECONOMICS ; or the Science of Wealth. By Prof. J. M. 
 
 Sturtevant. a Treatise on Political Economy for the use of High 
 
 Schools and Colleges, and for the general reader. i2mo, $1 75 
 
 * * * " There is nothuig vague or uncertain in his (Mr. Sturtevant's) reason- 
 
 mg. He is comprehensible from beginning to end. As a text-book of political 
 
 economy, we think it will take precedence of all others."— 7>»j' Whig. 
 
PUBLICATIONS OF G P. PUTNAM'S SONS. 
 
 Economic Monographs: 
 
 A Series of Essays by representative writers, on subjects connectPd| 
 with Trade, Finance, and Political Economy. 
 
 The titles of those that can no longer be supplied are omitted. 
 
 I. Why We Trade, and How We Trade ; or an Enquiry into 
 Extent to which the existing Commercial and Fiscal Policy of the Uni li 
 States Restricts the Material .Prosperity and Development of the Couniiv 
 By David A. Wells. 8vo, paper, . . . . . 25 cei 
 
 III. The Tariff Question and its relation to the Present Commeri' 
 Crisis. By Horace WHirE. 8vo, paper, .... 25 ceni 
 
 IV. Friendly Sermons to Protectionist Manufacturers. 
 
 By J. S. Moore. 8vo, paper, 25 cem 
 
 V. Our Revenue System and the Civil Service ; Shall They be 
 Reformed ? By Abraham L. Earle. 8vo, paper, . . 25 cen 
 
 VI. Free Ships. By Capt. John Codman, 2d edition. With a 
 view of the plan of Senator Blaine and Secietary Sherman, for the restci 
 lion of the American carrying trade. ..... 25 cei 
 
 VII. Suffrage in Cities. By Simon Sterne. 8vo, . 25 cer 
 VHI. Protection and Revenue in 1877. By Prof. W. G. Sumn: 
 
 author of " History of Protection in the United States." 8vo, paper, 25 cer 
 
 X. An Essay on Free Trade. By Richard Hawley. 
 Svo, paper 25 cen 
 
 XI. Honest Money and Labor. By the Hon. Carl Schu 
 Secretary of the Interior, ....... 25 cer 
 
 XII. National Banking. By M. L. Scudder, Jr., Chairman of 1 . „ 
 Honest Money League, ■....., 25 cen « 
 
 XIII. Hindrances to Prosperity: or, the Causes which retard I it 
 adoption in this Country of Financial and Political Measures of Reform S 
 By Simon Sterne, Svo, sewed, 25 cen 
 
 XIV. Adulterations in Food and Medicine, By E. R. Souibb M I> 
 Svo, sewed, . . . ..... ^ 25' cen 
 
 XV. International Copyright ; An Historical Sketch, and a C( 1 
 sideration of some of its Relations to Ethics and Political Econon 
 By George Ha^en Putn.vm. Svo, sewed 25 cen 
 
 XVI. Free Trade, as promoting peace and good will among mi 
 By Charles L. Brace. 25 cen 
 
 XVII. Bi-Metallisra. By the Hon. Hugh McCullo^h 
 8vo, sewed, ... . . . =5 cen 
 
 XVIII. Labor-Making Machinery, By Fred. Perry Poweks. 
 
 25 cent 
 
 XIX. Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United Stati s, 
 By William L. Rovall 25 cem 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, 
 
 New Vii 
 
 RK,