)&3S^ AMEEICAN NAVIGATION WITH SOME ACCOUNT OP THE CAV8E8 OF IT8 FORMER PROSPERITY AND PRE8ENT' DECLINE, BY HEN RY I IAL L, JODBNALIBT. NEW YORK: H. APPLErON AND COMPANY, 649 AND 861 BROADWAY. 1878. -J AMERICAN NAVI GAT I O N. WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE CAUSES OF ITS FORMER PROSPERITY AND PRESENT DECLINE. BY HENRY HALL, JOnKNALIST. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 649 AND 551 BROADWAY. 1878 . COPYRIGHT BY HENRY HALL, 1878. 181 «A Hlf TO OTJK GREATEST BUILDER, MR. JOHN ROACH, THK ONE WHO MOST FITLY UEPRESE.NTS A CLASS OF MEN TO WHOM, MOST OF ALL, OCR COCNTRY IS INDEBTED FOR THE RENOWN OF ITS FLAG C P 0 N THE SEA, THIS RAMPHLET IS HEARTILY INSCRIBED. i PREFACE. The object of this pamphlet is to show why American slnps are not now employed to a very large extent in our foreign trade, and to indicate what may be done to effect a change for tlie better. The original idea was to point to the vast over-building of ships in the world, and the policy of England in giving subsidies to steamship companies. These are the most potent causes now oper¬ ating against American ship-owners. Since beginning an investi¬ gation into the reasons for the present depression of our foreign shipping interest, however, I have, for my own benefit, considerably extended the field of inquiry, and have gone back through the his¬ tory of the world, so as to discover what it is that made one class of nations great navigating nations and another class non-navigat¬ ing, and to discover, if possible, if there are any more subtile causes than those above given now operating against the United States. It might have been found, in the course of such a search as that, that the blight which seems to have fallen on our foreign navigation of late years has been due to causes so permanent in their nature that no attempt to revive our shipping now would be of any avail. It is only after a general investigation like that, that a man would be qualified to say that the causes of the present de¬ pression are transient in their nature, and under our control. This branch of the inquiry proved interesting and profitable to me, and my countrymen may possibly find it so to them. The results of it are presented in this pamphlet along with the other material bear¬ ing upon the general subject. The whole subject of the state of our shipping interest is dis- 6 PKEFACE. cussed here in the light of foreign policy. Xo correct explanation of our former prosperity or recent decay can be given except by so doing, intelligent action can be taken for the future benefit of our navigation except by understanding what other nations have done and are willing to do in competition with us. There has been too much indifference for the last thirty years in regard to foreign policy. AVe have suffered from it, but paid no attention to it. The time has come for a change. AVe need now to study foreign pol¬ icy attentively, and must do so before even undertaking to decide what policy we shall adopt for ourselves. This pamphlet advocates a protective policy in regard to our shipping. It claims that the United States has reached a point in its history when the opportunity is placed before it to embark in the navigation of the Atlantic and Pacific on a large scale, and that the Government should actively aid the people by mail contracts to steamship lines and otherwise, to take advantage of the situation. Prompt action is needed, lest a great opportunity may be lost. It also proposes that there shall be a general investigation of the whole subject of American navigation, trade, and manufacture, in order to place before Congress the facts upon which an intelli¬ gent and aggressive policy can alone be founded. AA^hile Congress would display great wisdom in voting mail contracts to a few im¬ portant lines without unnecessary delay, no permanent policy could be framed that did not take its origin in a study of all the facts, authoritatively obtained, concerning commerce and manufacture in general. AMERICAN NAVIGATION. I. THE SITUATION. The United States now makes to the ocean-carrying trade of the world its most valuable contribution. No other nation gives to com¬ merce so many tons of bulky commodities which have to be earned such long distances across the sea. The extent of our commerce, in tons of articles carried (2,240 pounds to the ton), is as follows : * Exports. YEARS ENDING JUNE 80lh. Ag. Produce. c. 1 1 \ Manufacture.. Metal., etc. 1 Total. ^<569 . 1,404,642 45.5.857 ! 104.784 198,605 818.288 : 2.482.171 2,100,957 588.491 i 110..525 170,200 862..581 ; 8.872.704 2,524.005 651,988 ! 180.981 204.419 477.960 4.08!i,808 2.0?8.218 565,492 1 847.715 277,582 t>2T,098 4..501.4O0 . 1^78. 8,:«7,96T 8.52.637 ' 424.080 201.049 72.5,882 .5..542.16.5 4,567.184 1,114.521 ' 411.000 258.779 926.846 7.278.480 3.681,202 989,900 1 8.5.8.511 2.5.3.405 707..505 .5.985..528 4,400.907 1.088,1.58 : 871,6-^9 806.241 751.889 6.918.884 . 4,653,839 1,396,628 i 5.58,969 262,500 904,769 1 7,721,700 Imports. YEARS ENDING JUNE 80th. Ag. Produce. Manufacture!. MetaU and Mineral!. ^ Chemical!. 1 _ Miacellaneoua. Total. 1 222,726 617..58S 1.385.625 170.786 .55.427 8.4.52.1.52 1870. 1,2.58.570 788,981 1,429.461 161.910 04..53S 8.6.’dl.4i'0 1871 . 1.292.217 696.772 1.688,465 < 17.5.3.58 149 645 4.002.4.52 lST-2. 1.527.0.’-)0 698.296 1.901.681 185.30.8 180,000 4.4:47..38.5 1878. 7.818.905 9"9.429 1..522.546 240.297 112.791 4.603.963 1S74. 1.7.59.410 7.59.917 1.222..540 217.751 .54.896 4.01.3.014 1S75. 1,786.467 1.777.170 68.5.099 951.689 216.283 65.7.59 8.70.5.297 1876. . 60.5,429 870.427 168.703 181.467 8.548.201 1877. 1,725,066 002,161 927,073 202,453 127,046 3.593,804 ’ These figures, if not exact, arc at least a very close approximation obtained by a condensation from the tables of the Bureau of Statistics. 8 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. These goods are exchanged witli continents and lands lying from 3,000 to 5,000 miles distant and farther. Our commerce is, there¬ fore, carried on by means of the long voyages which in every age have been eagerly coveted by a maritime people, and which are productive of employment to the greatest tonnage of shipping. The value of the goods eniering into our commerce by sea amounted in 1877 to $1,173,- 000,000, of which $694,000,000 were exports and $479,000,000 were imports. Twenty-five years ago this commerce amounted to less than $500,000,000. Twenty-five years ago American shipping was almost supreme in our commerce. In 1851 $316,000,000 of the exports and imports were carried by vessels belonging to this country and built upon its shores, against $117,000,000 carried under foreign flags. The most valuable freights were secured by American ships ; and they got better pay for their services in competition with foreign vessels. To-day American ships actually carry less than they did in 1851, or in any year thereaf¬ ter until the war broke out, 1852 alone excepted. Yet commerce by sea has more than doubled. In 1877 American ships carried $315,000,- 000 of the imports and exports by sea. Foreign ships carried $858,- 000,000, over seven times as much as in 1851. If the larger proportion of this commeree eonsisted in the impor¬ tation of articles of foreign growth and manufacture, it would not be strange to find foreign ships enjoying the larger share of the business. The ships of other lands would naturally have the preference in their own ports for the exportation of goods to the United States. The remarkable fact is, that the larger proportion of the goods go from our own shores. This is shown both by the above table and by the record of the custom-houses along the coast. Of the 17,000 ships which enter and clear at our ocean-ports every year, 4,600 enter port empty, seeking a cargo, and only 2,000 sail from port without a cargo. In New York Harbor 1,000 vessels and more constantly lie at the piers, or at anchor in the bay, taking on or discharging cargo. There are one hundred departures a week for foreign lands. Yet it often happens that a fortnight passes without a single ship with an Ameri¬ can flag at the peak clearing from the port for the British Isles, with which the largest commerce of New York is transacted. At the same time an average of twenty-five foreign vessels clear from the same port every week in that trade. For the last fifteen years a sum of money has been paid by the United States to foreign ship-owners for the transportation of mails, passengers, and goods, which cannot in an}* one year have been less than $20,000,000. It now amounts to $50,000,000 a year. Practical shipping-men have estimated it as high as $75,000,000 a year. It is $50,000,000 at least. As far as freight is concerned, this refers to the THE SITUATION. 0 import trade alone. In estimating the tribute paid by our countrymen to foreign ship-owners, there should be added to the sum stated above another amount, which wo virtually have to pay in order to land our cotton and grain in Europe in competition with other producing coun¬ tries. Tliis is a subtiler loss to the country. It falls chiefly on the agricultural classes, but it is as truly a loss as the cash in hand paid outright as freight-money on imports. These sums of money paid to foreign ship-owners amount to a drain of from $50,000,000 to $100,000,- 000 a year upon this country. These sums do not come back to us in any useful manner. They are not invested in American goods. There is plenty of evidence of that; and, considering what our exports are, it is not probable that we would sell less of them in the future, if the whole of them, and the imports, too, were cairied in American ships, and all the freight-money earned by Americans. Those sums are not invested in American labor. Their disbursement to foreigners cer¬ tainly does not tend, either, to the accumulation of ca])ital in this young country, which needs capital so much. There are only three possible ways in which we can derive any benefit whatever from this drain upon the national wealth. One is, that a portion of the money may be loaned to us again to build our great railroads from the interior to the sea-shore, which Englishmen seem as anxious now to control as they have been in the past to get possession of the steamship lines, which run from the termini of those roads to other lands. Another i.s, that the money maybe invested in our Government bonds. A third is, that the heavy drain of specie, which has amounted to $780,000,000 in the last fourteen years, $300,000,000 of it being for freight-money, has tended, as far as it has had any influence whatever, to bring down the prices of labor and goods, and to enable us to export on a larg(.*r scale. In the first two cases the benefit to this country is small, and is more than counterbalanced by the fresh drain of specie wdiich has been created for the payment of interest. In the latter case there may have been a small benefit to the country in the way of increased exports ; but this, again, is more than offset by the suffering which a fall in the value of labor has brought about, and by the check to national devel¬ opment and civilization. It is confidently asserted that the money paid by this country to foreign shipping is a useless and disastrous drain upon our resources. The $50,000,000 to $100,000,000 of money paid out every j'ear is throwm to the winds, while, if paid to our own citi¬ zens, it would be an inexhaustible source of blessing to every class of our countrymen. One advantage of living in a republic is, that the taxes there are lighter. The government is run at less expense. There are great economical advantages to a people in having a republican government on that account. This is well understood in the United States, where. 10 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. to secure the full advantages of our free political institutions, there is a constant striving after a sparing expenditure in public aflairs. Yet our people are incurring a loss every year in reference to their shipping interests, which no saving in government expenses can possibly make up, simply because they are paying no attention to the subject. They might, by spcmding $.5,000,000 every year in compensation to American steamship lines, save $50,000,000. In the last two hundred years the tonnage of the world has increased enormously. According to Seabright’s statistical annals, the tonnage of Europe in 1G76 was 2,000,000, ow?ied as follows: In the Nether¬ lands, 900,000 ; in England, 500,000; in Hamburg, Denmark, Sweden, and Dantzic, 250,000; in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, 250,000 ; and the rest here and there. Now Europe owns 13,700,000 tons of shipping, and the world owns over 19,000,000, of which 15,000,000 tons is in sail¬ ing-craft, and the rest in steam-vessels. This includes only sea-going vessels, and does not take in river-craft. The distribution is as fol¬ lows : Great Britain, 7,300,000 ; the Netherlands, 500,000 ; Norway' and Sweden, 1,800,000; Italy, 1,300,000 ; France, 925,000; German}^ 540,- 000 ; the United States, 3,500,000 ; and the rest here and there. The greatest increase has been within the last forty years. The tonnage of the world has tripled in that period. Its efficiency has increased in a greater ratio. It is now six times as great as forty years ago, owdng to the fact that steam has been utilized in ocean-commerce within that period, and that a given tonnage of steam-shipping performs a service equal to three times the amount of sailing-tonnage. Shipping has in¬ creased faster than commerce and travel, and a great deal of it has been rendered idle and useless by the employment of steam, and the opening of the Suez Canal. A growing proportion of the ocean-commerce of the world is being transacted by steam-vessels. • This is an important fact in the situation. The cost of operating steamships has been cheapened one-half within twenty years. Steam can now compete with sails, and it is gradually and surely superseding sails in all important trades. Trade loves rapid dispatch, and as steam has made itself able to transact business three times as fast as the craft propelled by the winds, and at little or no greater cost, it is rapidly gathering up not only all the mails, passen¬ gers, and finer classes of freight, but the bulky staple goods, which, twenty-five years ago, statesmen said would never in the ■world be carried in anything except sailing-vessels. There are some figures to show how rapidly sailing-vessels are being displaced in ocean-commerce. At the port of New York, to which are brought three-fourths of all the imports to the United States, steam-vessels import nine-tenths of all the goods coming from countries from which steamships run. They bring all the passengers and mails. Of the exports from New York Harbor, THE SITUATION. 11 three-fifths of tlie whole go by steamer. Mr. R. B. Sanford, the intelli¬ gent chief of export statistics at the New York Custom-House, kept for a few months in 1870 an account of the exports by steam and sail to the special countries to which steamers run. For six months his rec¬ ord was as follows : SP.C.*.COU»T»,BS. s,-. 1 England ... ! f55.-41.203 f 18,487,082 Scotland.. Sig . . | io,;)!t.5.;4s 8,ir2<>,4-3 0,272,795 1,4n5,o.’>8 Notbcrlunds...j 6,001,920 2,241,889 Had a record been kept at Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, the same increase of steam in cotnmerce and the same displacement of sailing-tonnage would have been shown. This result was clearly foreseen in Europe, and foreigners shifted their capital from sailing to steam tonnage. They have jiut two hun¬ dred steamers into the trade to the United States. On the other hand, the United States has neglected the new mode of transportation in its foreign trade, and has less than fifteen steamers running across the At¬ lantic and Pacific Oceans. It loses ground in the carrying-trade, there¬ fore, year by year. It neither employs the modern style of ship, nor is able to compete for business with its sailing-craft. It suffers the double loss of not having a share of a profitable business, and of seeing tens of thousands of tons of sailing-vessels lying idle in its harbors. A re¬ vival of our shipping interest must take place principally in the direc¬ tion of our steam marine. It is only with the most modern description of vessel that we can win back our old-time supremacy in the carrying- trade. With the decay of our foreign navigation there has been a corre¬ sponding decay of our ship-building. In 1857, when our marine was the most prosperous, §25,000,000 was being expended annually in the construction of new vessels, and a far greater sum in the repair of old ones. Only an infinitely small part of this expenditure was for raw material. It was nearly all for labor. The amount spent annually in building new vessels is now about §11,000,000, and the disbursements for repairs are proportionately reduced. The falling off is more than half. E.xcept for the wise regulation that none except American ships shall take part in the coasting-trade of the United States, this profit¬ able branch of manufacturing industry would have died out in this country. As it is, with twice the tonnage employed in our foreign trade, ship-building has fallen off one-half in twenty years. There arc thousands of men starving in this country to-day because they cannot get work. There are large numbers of our young men growing up who 12 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. cannot find any field of employment that is not overcrowded, ^Vhat a boon it would be to our country were the Government to pursue a policy with reference to shipping which would lead to the old activity' at the ship-yards, and make a fresh demand for the services of our laboring population and our young men ! The capital invested in our sailing-tonnage built for the foreign trade is now largely unproductive. A great deal of the tonnage is absolutely idle, and in danger of becoming a total loss to its owners. Ship proprietors have been losing money for several years. The coast¬ ing-trade continues to be regular and profitable. In the foreign trade, our sailing-ships are only made to pay to any extent when owned by merchants who trade in them on their own account. In the general carrying-trade they scarcely live, and, as stated before, many have been withdrawn from business altogether. These are the principal facts in regard to depression in our naviga¬ tion and the way it is affecting the country. The political datigers arising from a feeble merchant marine ought not, l)owever, to be overlooked ; and there is another matter which may be mentioned to show what the United States is losing by its neg¬ ligence to develop a steam marine for the foreign trade. The country is under the necessity' of exporting its manufactures on a large scale. The home market is too small to keep our manufacturing population bu.sy. The foreign markets in which a large sale of our goods can the most easily be ereated are in South America, Africa, and the Mediter¬ ranean countries. But the Europeans have an almost undisputed con¬ trol of those markets at present, because they have abundant steam communication with them, a fact which enables them to land their goods more cheaply, and to take the quickest advantage of the state of the markets. The United States is under the need of extending its commerce, but is hampered by the insufficiency of its steam marine. Wc suffer from dull times and stagnation, when the starting of first- class steam lines to South America, Africa, and the ^Mediterranean, would quicken industry and agriculture in every part of the land. This is the situation. The first question is, “ What is the depression all due to, and is it likely to be permanent, or are the causes of depres¬ sion under our control?” It is a question that should not be answered hastily. A time like this came once in the affairs of Italy, Spain, Portu¬ gal^ and the Netherlands, and those countries never rose from the disasters which befell their merchant marine. Three of those powers were at different times, and for a long period, the common-carriers of almost the whole known world. Decay fell upon their marine, and they passed off the stage forever as great navigating peoples. Is this to be the fate of the United States ? Or are our misfortunes merely the elouds of a day in the sky, and like elouds not likely long to remain ? WHY A NATION NAVIGATES. 13 II. WHY A NATION NAVIGATES. It will help us to understand the true state of the case in regard to our merchant marine by looking first at the general causes which affect maritime prosperity. The special causes which have affected our enter¬ prise will be considered in other chapters. There need be no uncertainty about the things which qualify a na¬ tion to become eminent in navigation, or which prevent it from becom¬ ing so. History is full of instances of the rise and fall of maritime nations, and of instances where nations never became maritime at all. It is not diflicult to select from the conditions of national life the par¬ ticular things which give rise to the impulse toward a navigation of the sea, and enable a people to gratify that impulse on a large scale ; or which create a disrelish for the sea, and guarantee that a race will re¬ main landsmen for ages, if not for all time. I. The first impulse toward maritime enterprise arises out of life in a region which will not support its inhabitants in agriculture. Original poverty of the soil, or limited extent of territory, almost rises to the rank of a necessary qualification to become a maritime people. The born navigators of the world always lived in little, half-barren countries situated in the midst of fruitful regions. Beginning with the Phoeni¬ cians, who lived in a contracted, sterile spot at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, no large." than a county in the Empire State, and com¬ ing along down to the Venetians, living on marshy islands in the sea, the Dutch, the Scots, the people of the north of Europe, the Iceland¬ ers, and the New-Englandevs, who have been the only born navigators of the world, it will be seen that tliey occupied tlie comparatively un¬ fertile lands. On the other hand, those who inhabited the fruitful regions never navigated to any extent until their population became so dense that agriculture would not support them. This was the case with the Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Latin races of Europe, the English, and peoples on various parts of the Ameriean Continent. As showing the influence of dense population, it is interesting to note a peculiar experience of Spain and Portugal. Before and at the time of the discovery of America, and of the ocean-route to the East Indies, both countries were very rich in shipping ; but both expelled the Sara¬ cens and Jews, and sent off a large number of their own people to colo¬ nize newly-discovered regions. Not only were both countries deprived of the whole of their surplus population, but they were left with an absolutely insufficient population. A decline in shipping immediately followed. Neither country ever recovered from the maritime decay 14 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. which then set in. A people inliabiting a fertile territory which they have never been able to crowd with human beings have never yet ac¬ tively navigated the sea. The Egyptians, in an experience of at least six thousand years, although living directly in the j^ath of the East India trade, have never had ships, except during the reign of some king who built them mainly for military purposes. Superhuman efforts have been put forth to give Egyj)t a merchant marine. They all failed from the cause above stated. The passivity of the Brazilians is another illustration of the principle. In the United States the original, and almost the only, navigators have been the New-Englanders and New-Yorkers. They occupied the poorer lands. In the South there was scarcely any shipping at all for a hundred years, and has been very little since. To-day not over one- ninth of the tonnage of the country is owned in that region. The rich lands prevented navigation. The ship-builders sent over to Virginia, by the company in England which planted the colony, themselves fell to planting tobacco. There was, however, great interest in tlie pros¬ perity of our navigation in all parts of the country, even in the agricult¬ ural States, as long as our people lived on the eoast, hedged in by the wilderness and the savage tribes of the interior. Interest in our navi¬ gation decayed when, by reason of the building of railroads and the employment of steam on the Western rivers, our population was en¬ abled to spread itself over the vast agricultural regions of the interior. With the opening of the West to settlement, all pressure of population of preceding times passed away. A scarcity of population followed, and our foreign navigation began to decline. Coming down to 1877, we find now a pressure of population. Immigration has brought mill¬ ions of people into the country. Natural increase has been doing its work. The country does not yet contain, perhaps, a fourth part of the population which may eventually gather liere, but, under the circum¬ stances of the times, it is now in a condition of over-population. Its people cannot live in agriculture; they cannot at present find full em¬ ployment in the industries or mines; the country is crowded ; it has reached the point when; an active impulse to go into navigation on a large scale always makes itself felt. It was when France reached this stage of development that Colbert and Kichelieu at different periods found themselves forced to do some¬ thing to create a national merchant marine. England, in a similar stage of its national life, adopted the Navigation Act. Is there not already visible in this country the workings of an impulse such as moved France and England, and such as one would expect to see under the same circumstances ? II. The genius of a people affects its maritime activity extremely. The case of the Egyptians above cited is in part an illustration of WUY A NATION NAVIGATES. 15 this. The easy life and profits of agriculture in a fertile region tend to keep a people away from navigation and industrial pursuits. This is because they can make more money with the same expenditure of labor. When however, dazzling fortunes can be made in a commerce which sweeps past the doors of such a people, it is surprising not to find them leaving agriculture and going into active trade and navigation. The disadvantages of the Egyptians in reference to materials for boat-build¬ ing were never greater than those of the Dutch, and there was every inducement for them to go into navigation. Yet they never could be induced to do it. The genius of the people was not favorable to it. The dissimilarity of national traits has always had a marked influ¬ ence. It has often been pointed out that an art-loving people cannot be expected to display energy in commerce and industry. The present eminence of the practical English is greatly due to the peculiar genius of the people. A roaming, restless disposition, a love of adventure, a jealousy of foreign participation in the affairs of the realm, and the spirit of traffic and industry, invariably impel in the direction of maritime enterprise. A people with sueh qualities will always demol¬ ish the obstacles to its navigation, and have its share of the carrying- trade of the world. The Americans have inherited the best qualities of the English, and have made some improvements on the parent stock, we think, owing to the character of our political institutions, which stimulate greater per¬ sonal effort and fruitfulness of mind. This may be expected to have an influence on the maritime destiny of the country. III. Maritime activity is greatly affected by the possession of ocean- fisheries. A coast-people will always have boats if it has fisheries. It will also have able mariners. In everv age the fisheries have been an original temptation to take to the sea, and an important qualification for engaging in general navigation on a comprehensive scale. The only races which have ever been eminent in shipping have fished from the beginning. In a national sense, the actual value of the cod, whales, herring, and other treasures taken from the bosom of the sea, has never been the principal source of blessing of large fisheries. Their chief utility has resided in the training of mariners, by teaching them to be constantly in their boats in stormy seas, and to voyage in all climates and in all parts of the world. They have always given a nation tars who could sail a ship well and make it last long, and were always ready to undertake the most daring and difficult enterprises. All other things being equal, that nation will be foremost on the sea which has the most abundant fisheries. Its progress will never be retarded by reason of the lack of competent seamen as long as it has whaling, cod, herring, and mackerel shipping. It may owe its progress entirely to the possession of a fleet of such vessels. 16 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. IV. Geographical location has always counted for something. To be in the centre, among a number of countries of widely-different productions, between which an exchange of commodities could be made to take place by establishing friendly relations, has been a character¬ istic of all the leading maritime nations. The flag of commercial em¬ pire has shifted from one place to another in the world, as the centre of civilization and settlement has shifted. To be in an out-of-the-way quarter of the earth is to be cut off from a great navigation. Iceland, Russia, Germany, Und Canada, may have a considerable tonnage in the trade to adjoining coasts; no such nation can be first in the commerce of the world. It is only a region situated in the midst of great seas, and advantageously central in its age, that can in the long-run have the mostsliips and be supreme in commerce. While this has always been true in the past, it will be more so in the future, on account of the more general settlement of all parts of the earth. With respect to particu¬ lar branches of commerce, nearness to important markets has an influ¬ ence. Of two nations competing for trade and navigation to a great market, that one will in the end secure the larger share which is the nearest to it. In ancient days, Spain was one of the richest markets of the world. To the countries at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, it was a sort of Peru and United States in one. Phoenicia engrossed the extremely profitable trade to Spain at one time, but Carthage beat her entirely out of it in friendly competition, by reason of her greater nearness. There are many similar instances. This principle will prob¬ ably be exemplified in time in the competition between the United States and Europe for the South American trade. V. Another important point is the size of a country. The onlj-^ per¬ manent foundation upon which a merchant marine of any size can be buill. is a great population and a great surplus of native commodities. An extensive trade growing out of the wants and energies of a vast native population gives a country a superior position in navigation, if it chooses to take advantage of it. It is only necessarj’ to secure that trade for native ships to create a vast marine. This is what made Eng¬ land the first maritime power of the world. Her large body of con¬ sumers and producers gave rise to an extensive trade. She simply di¬ verted the larger part of this into vessels of her own nationality, in a characteristic manner, and gained the largest merchant-fleet in Europe, when before she almost had the smallest. The sudden collapse of Italy, Portugal, and the Netherlands, in navigation, was precipitated by the lack of a home market sufficient to employ their shipping. Their carrying-trade was principally between other nations. A slight change in the currents of commerce left them utterly prostrate. There was nothing to fall back upon. When the distribution of East India products was taken away from the Dutch by WHY A NATION NAVIGATES. 17 the capture of tlieir principal islands by the English, they had ten times as much shipping as they then had any employment for. The needs of their home market would not sustain it. Their maritime prosperity van¬ ished like a dream. The e.xperience of Italy and Portugal was the same. In this age, given the largest territory and the largest population, and the largest native navigation can be made to follow it. VI. Maritime activity is greatly influenced by the cost of operating a ship. In the foreign trade, ships enter in this age into free competi¬ tion with those of all other nations. Cheapness of operation is, there¬ fore, indispensable. Now, to secure this several things are essential. Foremost of all is to have skillful ship-builders. Nothing will compensate for the lack of able ships. From antiquity down, through the several ages when oars, sails, and steam, wore the principal means of propulsion, a perfect com¬ mand of the art of construction has been necessary. There have been many interesting illustrations of this. A good and fast ship is the cheapest to operate in the long-run, and this cannot be had without good builders. Then there must be economy in construction. Costly ships cannot be operated against cheaper ships of the same class. To build cheaply, the first thing necessary is an abundance of building-material at home. The disadvantages of a lack of it have never been overcome by more than one nation. The Dutch imported their timber and fabrics for cord¬ age, etc., for centuries. They were enabled to do it only by their re¬ markable frugality. All other nations which have imported their build¬ ing-material have lost ground in the trade with the nation from which the importation took place. It is the emphatic lesson of history that successful ship-building can onl}' go on in an age of free competition in regions where there is an abundance of good materials. Moderate wages for labor are also necessary. Wages constitute three-quarters at least of the cost of a ship, and a comparatively inexpensive vessel can coexist only with a scale of wages not greatly in excess of that of a rival nation. In America our builders have not found it fatal to pay wages somewhat in excess of those paid in England and France. Ameri¬ can labor is more efficient and goes further. Our builders would rather have it, even if they have to pay more for it. Besides, much labor is saved here by the use of machinery. Our principal builder, Mr. Roach, has a system which directly stimulates the men to invent labor-saving processes ; and he finds by pursuing this intelligent and creditable policy that he can pay better wages than the men would receive in England, and yet produce a steamship as cheaply as it can be done on the Clyde. American builders can pay ten per cent, better wages, and not be placed at a disadvantage by it. A greater difference than that would be a drag upon national maritime enterprise. 2 18 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. Then there must be a moderate rate of interest. Low interest is a great help to a navigating country. This is the uniform experience of Europe and the United States. The wages of sailors must not be greatly in excess of those of other nations. With an energetic and inventive people like the Americans, wages may be somewhat more generous than with their rivals, without affecting the total cost of operation, because their sailors are better men ; they make more voyages in the year; they wear a ship less ; a fewer number of them arc needed to man a ship. With first-class sea¬ men, such as can be recruited from the fishing-towns of New England, a country can pay perhaps ten per cent, better wages and still hold its own. If the dillerence is twenty per cent., a people in this age might as well quit the sea. It will be driven off by competition if it does not go voluntarily. It must not be forgotten that the predominant fact of navigation in this age is freedom. The sea has been cleared of pirates. Some of the merchant-ships sailing from New York Harbor for China still carry a few cannon as a measure of precaution, but the long battle against the freebooters has been substantially fought out, and ships are free to move about the world wheresoever they will. The old hamper¬ ing regulations of European nations have also been overcome. A vast number of these regulations were once in force, and no ship was free to sail about the world and get a cargo wherever it could find it, and carry it to any place where it could sell it. The United States broke down that ancient system by her example in making a reciprocity treaty with Holland in 1782, the first of the kind in history, and by her policy in subsequent years. The United States gave to progress and civilization the gift of maritime reciprocity. The old regulations have been re¬ pealed through her influence, and ships are now substantially free to go from one country to another anywhere in the world. Their limita¬ tion to direct trade has been abandoned. This brings against the ships of any nation the free competition of the vessels of all other nations, in foreign trade. The merchants of the world beings free to choose the ships that shall carry their goods, naturally select the ones which will carry them the cheapest. It is this which now makes cheapness of op¬ eration an indispensable condition to maritime prosperity. VH. The final reason is a favorable policy on the part of the gov¬ ernment. This i.s a very important matter. If there were universal freedom of action throughout the world, and everything w’ere left to private intelligence and enterprise, a governmental policy would not be needed by an energetic and happily-circumstanced people. But there is not now such freedom of action, and never has been. If one nation per¬ mits it, others do not and cannot be persuaded to permit it. The con- ENGLISH POLICY. 10 sequence is, that the citizens of a nation like America often hav'e to contend not only with the private enterprise of older lands—itself a sufficient bar to their progress—but with the resources of wealthy for¬ eign governments besides. In such cases private enterprise is power- lei. Nothing can be done without a governmental policy to sustain the younger nation in the competition. The above constitute the principal causes which affect maritime prosperity. If we look among them for the sources of the decay of American navigation, we will find that our decline cannot have been due to the lack of good seamen, to our geographical location, the genius of our people, or the lack of natural resources, good builders, and a commerce. The United States is well off in all these particu¬ lars. It may have been due to the ability of this country to employ its people profitably without building and navigating ships ; to the high prices of labor, high interest, or foreign policy. As a matter of fact, it has been due to all four of these in varying degrees. The extent to which each of the four causes has operated, and is operative now, will be discussed in the following chajiters. III. ENGLISH POLICY. OxE of the most prolific sources of our maritime troubles is the course pursued by England for the benefit of her own marine. The study of it cannot fail to be profitable to Americans. A sketch of it is presented here. It will explain to us in great part our own misfor¬ tunes ; and it will show how a people of the same race, language, and genius as ourselves, growing up under somewhat the same economic conditions, hampered by a too exclusive devotion to agriculture at home and by the powerful competition of rivals abroad, managed to make itself the first maritime power in the world. The policy of Eng¬ land cannot be imitated in all its details in this countrv, but a study of it will be extremely useful, for all that. The story will be told from the English point of view. The policy of England (to.quote from David A. Wells) “ is now, and always has been, framed solely and exclusively with reference to one object, viz., the promotion of supposed national self-interest—and has never had the slightest regard to the interest of any other nation, or to any arguments other than those based upon specific national wants and specific national experiences.” 20 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. For the first six hundred years after the Conquest, England’s maritime growth was slow. Agriculture was the principal interest. The popula¬ tion was scanty and poor. The island might have become densely set¬ tled early in its history, but the Government engaged in continual wars, leading to great destruction of life on land and sea, which the constant immigration from the mainland could not counteract. The lack of capital prevented the people from building ships to any extent. En¬ couraged by bounties and by trade, they did occasionally manage to create a little fleet, but this invariably proved a temptation to the king to go to w'ar with somebody. The merchant-ships were impressed into the military service, and were not only thus diverted from legitimate navigation, but a large percentage of them were destroyed or captured by the enemy. Neutrals meantime gathered up the carrying-trade which the English neglected. So the kingdom was left both without ships and without the business by which it could secure the capital to build them. The Dutch, during the greater part of this period, en¬ grossed nearly all the transportation of Europe, certainly nearly all in the north of it. They brought the bulky products of England and the north and south of Europe to their own ports, and then manufactured or warehoused them, and distributed them again all along the coasts from Russia to Egypt. Their only competitors were the Italians, but they steadily gained upon this ancient and active people, and, by the early part of the seventeenth century, had substantially beaten them out of the carrying-trade. They virtually monopolized all the important trade to England and to the English colonies in America. The English were only able to navigate at all by virtue of the creation of societies of merchants, to whom was given a monopoly of certain trades. The Dutch had 20,000 ships at sea, to 2,000 by the English. The English had always deemed it proper to assert a political do¬ minion of the sea. For two hundred years they had required the Dutch by treaty stipulation to strike the topsail and lower the flag in the pres¬ ence of English men-of-war, a practice which they insisted upon down into the present century. In the seventeenth century it began to grow doubtful whether they could continue to enforce their claim. The Dutch had carried on for fifty years a war with the haughty empire of Spain, and had completely crushed its naval power. They now' con¬ ceived the idea of making themselves masters of the colonies of that empire in America and Asia. In 1621 they incorporated a West India Company expressly to conquer Brazil and Peru ; and in fifteen years they had sent 800 ships to America, captured 545 Spanish and Portu¬ guese vessels, and taken Brazil, and in Asia had taken possession of all the important spice and other islands in the Indies. The Dutch, during that period, built 1,000 ships a year, it is said, to 100 that were needed to carry the native commodities of the Netherlands. UNDER THE NAVIGATION ACTS. 21 The English were irritated by tlie overshadowing activity of the Dutch, They could not build up their own murine under the existing state of things. They could not even control the trade to the colonies, and they were in danger of being laughed at for their declaration of a right to rule the seas. They were at the same time under the necessity of extending their commerce and providing new fields of employment for their labor, owing to a recent increase in population. The whole force of English policy was now turned toward repressing the Dutch, and developing the shipping of the king’s own subjects. Undku tiik Navigation Acts, The first step taken was very much in the direction of an old law of 1381, passed by Parliament under llichard 11,, in response to complaints that foreigners were monopolizing the whole navigation of the kingdom. That law provided that “ for increasing the shipping of England, of late much diminished, none of the king’s subjects shall hereafter ship any merchandise, either outward or homeward, but only in ships of the king’s subjects, on forfeiture of ships and merchandise ; in which ships also the greater part of the crew^s shall be the king’s subjects,” This appeared to be a short and simple method of securing the whole trade of England to English ships. The law was a very inconsiderate one at the time, because there was both a lack of native shipping and of capital to build it. Trade was accordingly liampered by it, and it was virtually repealed the following year, by an enactment permitting merchants to employ foreign vessels if there were none of English nationality to be had. It was always disregarded. In the seventeenth century the kingdom was richer, had more shipping, and was better able to adopt some such aggressive policy. In 1650, accordingly, under Cromwell, a law was passed excluding foreigners from the trade to the English col¬ onies in all parts of the world. In 1651, after a careful study of the whole field of commerce, the law of the previous year was superseded by the Navigation Act. In 1660 the act was confirmed by the royal Parliament under Charles II,, and made more stringent. The Navigation Acts established four rules : 1. None except Englishmen should engage in the trade and navi¬ gation to the colonies of the kingdom. The ships %vere to be English- built, and manned by a crew whereof at least three-fourths were Eng¬ lishmen. 2. Europeans could trade to England only from their own ports, 3. Exportation should take place from the colonies only to the mother-country. 4. The coasting-trade was reserved to national vessels. The object of this law was well understood in Europe. It was AMERICAN NAVIGATION. 22 leveled directly at the Dutch, in favor of English shipping. When it was passed, nearly all the tobacco of Virginia and of other valuable produce of the colonies was being exported to the Netherlands from the colonies in Dutch ships, and was distributed to the rest of Europe from the Netherlandish ports. The Dutch were enjoying the long voy¬ ages from all parts of Europe to their own harbors, and were limiting the English substantially to the short voyage across the Channel, This law was intended to overturn all this ; and, while crowding the Dutch out of the long voyages from America and the distant countries in Eu¬ rope to England, to secure those voyages to English shipping. More¬ over, it was an encouragement to the various countries of Europe, whose foreign navigation was being largely engrossed by the Dutch, to build ships for themselves. In the trade to England, they would only have to contend with the high-priced English ships, and not, as formerly, wuth the low-priced Netherlandish vessels. Tlie law tended, therefore, to diffuse the shipping of the Continent more equally among the several powers and prevent its concentration in the hands of any one of them ; and it did, in fact, have that effect. The export trade of England was left substantially free, except to the colonies. By giving native ves¬ sels a better position in the import trade, however, they were enabled to compete for and get their full share of the export trade, as was fore¬ seen and intended. England did not stop w’ith passing the Navigation Act. She began a series of aggressions toward the Dutch, with the purpose of rendering their commerce at sea perilous and uncertain. In effect, she adopted the policy the Carthaginians pursued of capturing her rival’s vessels and destroying them, and throwing the sailors into the sea, though she did not, in fact, throw the Dutchmen into the sea, but merely prevented large numbers of them from putting out to sea at all by her warfare and interferences. Two bloody wars took place in consequence of these aggressions. They were courted by England, and the Dutch were greatly weakened by them. The policy of England was at first attended by some consequences which threatened to lessen its popularity. The cost of ships and freights advanced one-third. France in 1655 imposed a tax of fifty sols on all English shipping entering her ports. Other powers, before they saw what a benefit to them the Navigation Act would be, imposed sim¬ ilar taxes. By reason of the advance in freights, the kingdom was taxed hundreds of thousands of pounds annually, in order that a few English ship-owners might make a few thousand pounds of profit. The wars imposed a still heavier burden. Parliament was sagacious enough to perceive that in a short time its policy would approve itself to the people. The policy was steadily persevered in. The end was as expected. In a few years, English 23 UXDEli THE NAVIGATION ACTS. merchants only asked that the law might be made more stringent. It Tad given them a vast advantage in trade theretofore engrossed by the Dutcli In the importations from Europe and America, the Dutch had so overshadowed tlie natives that the latter had a very imitedqiian- tLoftoniiairc. The trade could now be earned on only in English reLls, or ill those of the country from which the importation took place. The English, by littiiig out ships the most promp ly for the sev- Ll trades, got the largest share of them immediately They obtained a position in the Mediterraiioaii, Spanish, north ol l.ii rope, and colonial trade, such as they never had enjoyed and almost at a Lrd. Shipping increased rapidly in consequciice, and found profita¬ ble employment. It doubled in ton years, and again in ton years more. The change which took place in the navigation of the kingdom will bo illustrated by a few figures showing the toiiiiiige which cleared from her ports at prions periods; it being understood that, previous to 1051, the largest share of the tonnage was foreign. Uie fibres aio froiii Anderson’s “History of Commerce,” and begin in 1003, from which year certainty of statistics dates. They are as follows : YEAR. Foreign, Total Tonnage. t66ii-'69 166S noo-1703 1719 172ft-’28 1760 1770 1774 Average. Average. Average. 9.1.266 I!I0..58» 270.603 .326.620 482,9.32 471,241 703.495 793,864 47,6.34 9.5,267 48,685 29,115 28,651 102,787 57.470 65,192 142.900 2S5.S00 817.828 8.V).785 4.56.4S3 .578,978 760.971 864,156 There was a falling off of native shipping after 1774, owing to the independence of the American colonies. An enormous increase fol¬ lowed a little later, liowever, because England drove the Dutch out of the East Indies, in punishment for their aid to the United States during the war, and thereby secured a monopoly of that inexpressibly rich Eastern trade. In 1820 the United Kingdom owned 2,300,000 tons of shipping. Maepherson says of the operations of the Navigation Act: “We, by tliis Navigation Act, have gradually obtained a vast increase of ship¬ ping and mariners; for by patience and steadiness we have, in length of time, obtained the two ends of this ever-fanions act, viz., the bringing our own peo- ])Ie to build ships for carrying on such an extensive commerce as they did not have before. Sir Josiali Child was of the opinion that ‘without this act we had not now (in 16G8) been owners of one-half of the shipping or trade, nor should have employed one-half of the seamen we do at present’; ’ so vast an alteration had this act brought about in a few years; insomuch that we are at length become, in a great measure, what the Dutch once were, i. e., the great carriers of Europe, more especially within the Mediterranean Sea. By this act we have absolutely excluded all other nations from any direct trade with our 24 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. American plantations; and were it not for tliis act, says that able author, we should see forty Dutch ships at our plantations for one of England. That before the pa.ssage of this act, and while our American colonies were but in childhood, the ships of other Eurojjean nations, more especially the Dutch, resorted to our plantations both to lade and unlade; and their merchants and factors nestled themselves among our people there, which utterly frustrated the original intent of planting those colonies, viz., to be a benefit to their mother-country, to which they owed their being and protection; and it could not therefore be thought strange that when our planters were become able to stand on their own legs, and to supply considerable quantities of materials for exportation (as was now' the case with Virginia for tobacco, and with Barbados for sugar, ginger, cotton, etc.), our Legislature thought it high time to secure to ourselves alone those increasing benefits, which had been produced at our sole charge and trouble. And in this respect Spain had long before set us a just and laudable example, since followed by other principal European nations who have planted in America. We may here also note that, till this act took place, the Dutch in a manner engrossed the whole trade of Sweden; w'hereas hereby our English ships have since got a share of the trade thither.” The Dutch would have been reduced to the rank of a third-rate mari¬ time power without the loss of their more important East India posses¬ sions, because the Navigation Act led to an increased building of vessels in all parts of Europe. It was an encouragement to the different powers of Europe to build for themselves by excluding the Dutch from their export trade to England. The result was, a more general dif¬ fusion of the shipping of the Continent. This and the exclusion of the Dutch from the navigation to the American colonies, both things, told heavily against that busy people. Their navigation began to decline long before their expulsion from the East Indies. The latter calamity completed their decay. The Navigation Act remained in force for two hundred years. Changes were made from time to time, but its spirit was never relaxed in the slightest degree. Up to the time of the independence of the American colonies, the act was of a good deal of service to the people in this country. It prevented freedom of trade with the Continent of Europe, but it pro¬ tected them against the competition of Continental ships. They turned it to their advantage. They had an abundance of cheap building-ma¬ terials. They were better off in this respect than the mother-country —a fact which is shown by the circumstance that, in 1703, England offered a bounty of £4 per ton of eight barrels of pitch and tar, £3 a ton for rosin and turpentine, £6 for hemp, and £1 for masts, yards, and bowsprits, imported to England from the American colonies, the bounty being designed primarily to give England cheap building-materials. The New-Englanders and New-Yorkers made good use of their abun¬ dant timber and the Navigation Act, and by the close of the Revolution- UNDER THE NAVIGATION ACTS. 25 ary War had created a considerable fleet of merchant-shipping, nearly enough for the trade of the country. When the War for Independence was over, England foresaw the rise of a dangerous maritime rival in the New orld. ihe objective point of her policy now changed from Europe to the new continent. From 1783 forward it was leveled steadily at a rei)ression of the sliij)- ping of the American Kepublic. The Navigation Act was applied in all its rigor to the United States. The same policy exactly which had been pursued toward the Dutch was initiated in regard to America, only the result in the long-run was dilferent, because the Americans were quite a different race of people. They were not tame-spirited. They were bold, daring, and aggressive, and when a national interest was attacked they were ready at a word to sacrifice life and ease to defend and uphold it. English aggression began first by refusing to trade with the new republic. That was so clearly against the interests of the kingdom that the position was no sooner adopted than it was abandoned. A law was passed permitting trade, but putting it in the power of the king to suspend it at any moment, and for many years trade was legalized only by yearly proclamation of the king. Heavy taxes were levied on American vessels in the ports of the kingdom, and differential duties enforced against them. Americans were absolutely shut out of the ports of of the British West Indies and the Canadas at first. At sea, the ships sailing under the flag of the young republic were searched continually for contraband goods and British sailors, and sailors were taken from them in large numbers, and the ships and goods capt¬ ured. Down to the War of 1812 over 1,G00 American ships had been captured at sea while engaged in the peaceful missions of legiti¬ mate trade. In British ports American ships were detained and har¬ assed. This policy was pursued against remonstrances and counter¬ vailing duties in America, until it had made of the commercial ventures of the young republic a species of gambling operations. There was no guarantee whatever that any of her ships once sent to sea would ever be heard of again. British policy was successful for a while in giving the ships of the kingdom a good position in the trade to the United States. For nearly ten years after independence they had at least half of the business, and part of the time more. There was too much energy in the character of the people of the New World to submit to these regulations and interferences. They demanded the utmost liberty and security for their commerce at sea, and the right to trade to any port in the world with the government of which they were at peace. After exhausting the resources of negotiation and legislation, they went to war in 1812 in behalf of their commerce. They beat the mother-country in this war, and then followed it up with a de- 20 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. mand for reciprocity in trade to England and freedom of trade to her colonies. This aggressive demand revealed to England that she had a very different antagonist from the Dutch to contend with, and brought her Government face to face with the question of the propriety of main¬ taining the integrity of the Navigation Acts and its warlike policy in view of the changed circumstances of the commerce and politics of the world. Open aggression was now abandoned, and England sought to gain her end by diplomacy. In regard to the question now before it, the Government was willing to agree to reciprocity in direct trade. No other course was left open, in fact, and it was believed that reci¬ procity would at least be attended with the employment of two sets of ships in the trade, and that Englishmen would have half of the trade, if they did not get it all. To admit the American Republic to the West India and Canada trade was a different matter. It could not be thought of under any circumstances if it would destroy the sale of British manu¬ factures in those regions. If it would not affect the market for British goods, it still might be a dangerous precedent; and it would probably compel British ships to withdraw from the carrying-trade between the United States and the Canadas and Indies. The Government granted reciprocity at once in the treaty of peace of 1815, but hesitated-long over the other branch of the subject. Finally, it was seen that British ships would be placed under disabilities in the United States unless the trade to the Canadas and Indies was opened to American goods. It was so opened in 1822. It was, however, immediately followed by a regulation which made it a grant of barren privileges. It was enacted that, if the goods imported to those colonics or to England should be brought from English warehouses in English ships, there should be a reduction of ten per cent, upon the duties, afterward twenty-five per cent. The object of this was quickly seen in its results. British ships loading in England with manufactures sailed with them to America, where they landed their goods and took on cargoes of American prod¬ uce. Sailing thence to Canada, they put their cargoes into warehouses, actually sometimes, but more often nominally, and then went to the Indies or to England with their cargoes, where by reason of the differ¬ ential duty they could dispose of them at rates which made it difficult if not impossible for the Americans to compete with them. Bounties were at the same time given for the exportation of English goods in English ships, which often more than paid the freight to America, and thus placed the vessels in a position to take return freights to England at an exceedingly low rate. The regulations of England in regard to the colonial trade were combated in the United States, and in 1826 England returned for a time to her rigidly exclusive policy, and forbade American vessels to enter her colonial ports on or near this continent UNDER THE NAVIGATION ACTS. 27 under penalty of forfeiture of goods and vessels. As this again proved to be a disadvantage to the colonies, the regulation was repealed in 1830, and complete reciprocity of trade was granted. After the Peace of 1815 there was a ])eriod of twenty years of ex¬ treme depression to British shipping. The world had been exhausted by wars, and commercial depression was universal. But the Jiritish ship-owners had something more to eontend with than that. It was the enormous increase of the merchant-shipping of the world. The t('n- nage of England had grown from 1,500,000 in 1789 to over 2,000,000 in 1815, and the tonnage of the United States had siirung uj) from 280,000 to 1,100,000 in the same period. There had been an increase of 1,300,000 tons of shipping in these two countries alone, and the efficiency of the merchant-fleets of the two countries was so great, by reason of improvements in hulls and the greater ability of sailors, that the increase might reasonably be rated as amounting in fact to a quarter more. Besides this, there had been a vast production of mer¬ chant-vessels in the north of Europe. The Baltic trade in timber, naval stores, etc., had grown very large, and the exporting countries of the north had been able to build ships so cheap that they were taking the business into their own hands, and supplying the large fleets required to carry it on. The Italians, Russians, and Austrians, had built large fleets also in the Mediterranean. Shipping, in fact, had increased faster than commerce, and the world was flooded with it. The British ship-owner had to contend with a lack of cargoes, therefore, to begin with, and then with his brother ship-owner in England, and with the cheap ships of other countries in the matter of rates of freight. Freights fell very low in this period of depression. In 1827 it was found that the British ship¬ owners were nearly all losing money. A large proportion of merchant- vessels of the kingdom were heavily mortgaged. Owners were begin¬ ning to allow their property to be broken up rather than operate it at a continual loss. Building received a check, and the merchant-fleet of the kingdom ran down from 24,776 keels in 1824 to 23,195 in 1827. The situation was remarkably similar to that existing in the United States after the war of 1861-’65 for the preservation of the Union, What rendered it more grievous to Englishmen was exactly the same thing which made the maritime depression in America after 1865 so intolerable to Americans. It was the continual growth and prosperity of the principal rival of the country in maritime enterprise, and the fact that that growth was a large part of the cause of the depression experienced at home. America had made wonderful strides since her independence, and was now sailing the sea in trades where Englishmen could not, and was gradually expelling Englishmen from the whole of the trade to the New World. Two sets of ships were still used in that trade, but the American set was very large, and the British set hardly AMERICAN NAVIGATION. worth mentioning. In 1827 $145,000,000 of the commerce of the Unit¬ ed States was carried on in American vessels, and only $14,000,000 in all foreign vessels, the English only having a part of this very small share. Besides that, the Americans had nearly driven the British ship¬ ping out of the carrying-trade to the East liidies, whose ports England had been compelled to open to the vessels of the United States from motives of interest. The feeling which this condition of things produced in England can be understood from the following comments of the London Thnes in Ma}', 1827 : “ It is not our habit to sound the tocsin on liglit occasions, but wo conceive it to be impossible to view the e.\isting state of things in this country without more than apprehension and alarm. Twelve years of peace, and what is tlie situation of Great Britain ? . . . . The shipi)ing interest, the cradle of our navy, is half ruined. Our commercial monopoly exists no longer; and thousands of our manufacturers are starving or seeking redemption in distant lands. . . . We have closed the Western Indies against America from feelings of commer¬ cial rivalry. Its active seamen have already engrossed an important branch of our carrying-trade to the Eastern Indies. . . . Her starred flag is now conspicu¬ ous on every sea, and will soon defy our thunder.” This state of things continued for many years. There were occa¬ sional symptoms of revival, but the depression continued Avith a per¬ sistence which augured ill for the future of Britisli navigation. Ship¬ building was active in other countries, but in the United Kingdom it decreased from 1,719 vessels, Avith a tonnage of 205,000, in 182G, to 1,039 vessels, with a tonnage of 103,031, in 1831. Trade began to expand again, but the profits upon navigation continued to fall. The situation became so serious that the British people aAVoke to the necessity of taking some decided action to bring about a change, to reorganize their Avhole commercial system if necessary. The first step was taken in 1833, in response to a petition of betAveen four and five hundred ship-builders and merchants, praying that the Navigation Acts might be so amended as to permit Englishmen to build or buy ships in foreign countries. This proposed a startling innoAmtion on British policy. Still it came from a class of men who, more than any others, were directly interested in the Avelfare of the national marine, and it received prompt attention. England has never framed or altered an important policy without a mature consideration of all the facts of the case by men bred to public affairs, and qualified by long years of service to judge accurately as to the consequences of any special line of action. In the present instance Parliament ordered a thorough investigation of the whole subject of British trade, commerce, and navigation, as a necessary preliminary to any action Avhatever. Only in the light of all the facts could it be clearly seen Avhat the needs of the national marine were, and what UNDER THE NAVIGATION ACTS. 29 change of policy would lift it once more to its feet and make it pros¬ perous. Especial attention was given in this investigation, whicii was long and able, to the state of the manufactures, shipping, and trade, in other lands. The liveliest curiosity was manifested in regard to the United States, and everybody who knew anything about that country was impressed to give his testimony. From the testimony taken by this committee it appeared that it was almost the unanimous opinion among ship-owners that they had been injured by the acts of reci})ro- city of trade ; and they gave their opinions on this subject with a mani¬ festation of feeling which betrayed how they had suffered since 1815 better than the facts they recited. It was stated that several other countries enjoyed superior advantages with respect to ship-building. They had an abundance of material, while England was obliged to import. Vessels could be built for £8 a ton and less in Prussia, Den¬ mark, and the north countries ; for £11 a ton in France ; and for from £10 to £12 in the United States; while in England the cost was from £15 to £18 a ton in the more favored localities, and £28 a ton in Lon¬ don. The operating expenses of other nations were also less. The shij)s of the north countries and of the Mediterranean sailed regularly at less than and sometimes at half the expense of English vessels, owing to the lower wages of the sailors, and their contentment Avith a poorer quality of provisions. Even the Americans, who paid their sailors first- class wages, were able to navigate at less expense, because, their men being more efficient, fewer of them were needed ; and, besides that, the Americans had many labor-saving devices for managing the topsail, handling the anchor, etc., which also dispensed with men. These cheaper ships were carrying on a large independent commerce Avhich interfered materially with the British ship-owners, and in the direct intercourse Avith England Avere compelling them to sail at rates Avhich did not pay. In the trade to America, the ships of the United States noAv had monopolized five-sixths of the business. They not only obtained more freight but better prices for it, being paid of a penny more per pound on cotton. They Avere better ships. They sailed faster than English hulls, and Avere handled by men Avho could ahvays make one more voyage a year Avith them than Englishmen Avere in the habit of making in the same class of A^essels. They were insured better than English ships in England. The Ioav freights Avere by some considered as not calculated entirely to be a disadvantage to England in the long- run. Besides their effect in stimulating commerce, Avhich certainly had grown since freights broke down, they Avould be serviceable to England in reducing the cost of her ship-building materials. The general result of this investigation Avas, to convince Parliament that the time had not yet come for any material alteration in the naAu- gation laws, at least not for any of the sort described. If times Avere 30 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. dull in England, the proper remedy was not to take away more em¬ ployment from the people by transferring the profitable and important business of ship-building to other lands; and it was seen that even if, by granting the petition of the builders and owners, cheaper ships could be gained to England, still the matter of wages of sailors and general expense of operating was left untouched thereby. The investi¬ gation opened the eyes of England more fully than ever before to the dangerous rivalry growing up against her. But it was believed that the state of British manufactures was such that the kingdom could yet hold its own after a general revival of business. Steam had now been thor¬ oughly utilized in English factories, and these establishments were turn¬ ing out a prodigious quantity of serviceable and cheap goods, for which there was already a world-wide distribution, and which would be sold in increasing quantities as fast as trade improved. English ships would certainly have a large share in this distribution. To South America, they would have almost a monopoly of it. The clouds seemed to scatter as Parliament studied the sky. At any rate, the cmergencj' was not considered sufficient to amend the laws and permit vessels of foreign construction to fly the flag of England. An emergency would have to be dire indeed to permit English ships to be built in the United States. The owners and builders were left to work out their own salva¬ tion with the aid of the cheap materials supplied by the cheap freights, and of their own business skill and ability. An expansion of trade taking place after the investigation of 1833, the conservatism of Parliament was justified. Shipping again became active, and building revived. In 184G British tonnage had increased from 2,271,000 in 1833 to 3,200,000. When 1846 arrived, impor¬ tant changes had taken place in naval art, and new phases of the com¬ merce of the world began to attract the attention of British legislators. The Navigation Acts were now felt by all to be a hinderance to British enterprise. They had fulfilled the purpose for which they were framed, and Britain had grown beyond them. An advantage could be gained over the United States by repealing them. It was a period of great agitation in England over the commercial laws. In 1847 another in¬ vestigation was ordered of the state of British navigation. The com¬ mittee that was appointed remained in session for a long time, and laid hold of every British statesman, builder, and merchant, and of every American trader and sea-captain, who knew anything that a Briton ought to understand, about the subject in view. The committee did not pay the slightest attention to the subject of steam-navigation and iron ships, which every Englishman was thinking of at that time, but devoted itself closely to discovering if British builders and owners would be injured by repealing the laws. It was discovered that they probably would not be, and the Navigation Acts were accordingly STEAM AXD IKON. 31 repealed, as from the first day of January, 1850, the two hundredth year after the original enactment by the re])ublicans under Cromwell, England let go of the registry, coasting-trade, and direct-trade laws, because she was virtually secure without them, and she wanted to grasp at something better. She herself now wanted to gain the very indirect trade against which she had been legislating for two centuries. She believed that she could diive the United States from the sea by secur¬ ing- it. She demanded at once of the United States and other countries the right to enter their ports in indirect trade, and, gaining this, at once put her shipping into fields of profitable emjdoyment, which had never been opened to it—particularly into that between the United States and South America. She was prepared also to push another policy, which might give her the absolute maritime supremacy of the whole world. Steam and Iron. Steamboats had been invented and employed early in the century, both in Europe and the United States. The Americans had made a marvelous use of the new agency; steamboats had been used on the Clyde since 1813. David Napier had in 1818 proved the practicabil¬ ity of using them in deep-sea navigation by building boats to run to Ireland. When the Savannah arrived in England from America in 1819, the kingdom received a great shock. The event was discussed in counting-rooms, clubs, and cabinet, and in the papers, and it was generally regarded as the most dangerous thing which had ever oc¬ curred in the history of British shipping. The Americans making no use of the new motive power on the Atlantic, however, the alarm sub¬ sided, but not the impression which it had produced. David Napier and others gave themselves up at once to studying the capacities of steam upon the sea. In 1834 four steamboats were established in the trade to Ireland from Liverpool. They were successful, and the British mind, quick as lightning to seize upon the new idea, at once took fire with the ambition to build steam-packets to run to every part of the globe. In 1835 there was a furor in England over the subject. In TJverpool a vast number of projects were formed, and companies organized, one of them having a capital of £600,000 to build and operate steamers in the ocean-service. This was fifteen years before the Americans or any other people had taken a practical step in the same direction. The minds of the projectors had, however, run in advance of the progress of invention. When a close calculation was made of the cost of steam¬ ers and the enormous quantities of coal the engines of that day would consume, there was a sudden cooling of enthusiasm. A reaction took place, during which it was confidently predicted that steam would never supersede sails upon the ocean; the largest vessel that could be built 32 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. would not carry coal enough to get the steamer to any distant part of the world. The change in the current of feeling affected neither the builders nor the Government. The former are a class of men who in England and America have repeatedly attempted the seemingly impossible, and suc¬ ceeded. It is to their vigor and originality that the success either country has won upon the sea is prominently due. The builders gave themselves up to studying the problem before them. The Government aided them by large orders for steam-vessels for the navj', by moans of -which ma¬ chine-shops, yards, and tools, were created for producing merchant-ves¬ sels. England has earned from the rest of the world a thousand times over the public money thus invested in aid of the ship-builders. The Government also resolved to try a few experiments. Calculations were made as to the cost of steam and the amount of money which would be required to enable a company operating a line of steamers in any par¬ ticular trade to pay expenses and a dividend. Contracts were adver¬ tised for and awarded to steamboat companies to run to the Isle of Man at £850 per annum, in 1833; at £17,000 per annum, to run to Rotterdam and Hamburg twice a week, in 1834; at £30,000 per annum, to run to Gibraltar weekly, in 1836. These experiments were satisfactory to the Government. The cross¬ ing of the Atlantic was now conceived, and this important work was undertaken at once. In November, 1836, the Government advertised for proposals for mail service to America. One tender was put in by the Great Western Steamship Company, which offered to run to Hali¬ fax once a month at £45,000 a year. The company proposed to put into the service one steamer of 2,900 tons, to cost £40,000 ; another of 1,700 tons, to cost £60,000 ; and a third of medium size. It refused absolutely to run to New York, because, as its vessels expected to use sails half the time, and \vould go heavily loaded with coal, it was not believed that they could compete with the beautiful clipper-ships of New York City, which then had a monopoly of the mail and passenger business to that port, and almost a monopoly of the freighting. An¬ other set of merchants organized under the name of the St. George Steam-Packet Company, and offered to go to Halifax once a month for £45,000, and to New York for £65,000. Neither of these offers prom¬ ised to secure the object for which the Government had deliberately planned this service. While the two proposals were pending, Samuel Cunard, %vho had an idea of his own, went to the Government privately and presented it. He represented that, by going once a week to New York in swift steam¬ ers, he could get the whole of the letters and passengers which were being carried by the American packet-ships, and that they would cease to carry them. The Government entertained his proposal, but did not STEAM AND IRON. 33 at first wish to involve itself too deeply in what it regarded as in some respects an experiment. Besides, to send the steamers to New York would be to encourage the growth of New York; and England had, from the foundation of the first colony in the New World, legislated steadily against the building up of a great commercial foreign emporium on the American Continent, of which she had a dread. It was arranged that Cunard should have a contract to go twice a month to Halifax and Boston, with an occasional steamer to Quebec. He was to have i.‘G0,00() for the service. Sir Charles Wood, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Sir Francis Baring, afterward First Lord of the Admiralty, went into a series of elaborate calculations with Cunard as to the expense of the undertaking and the probabilities of success. The result was the oiler named. Cunard built his steamers, and began the service July 4, 1840. His ships being larger than the contract required, the compensation was soon increased to £90,000, £5,000 being taken off afterward on the dis¬ continuance of the occasional voyage to Quebec. Thus England had seized upon the American idea and turned it against her, backing it up by a governmental policy as protective as was ever evolved from her councils. Her example was not lost upon the United States. This republic, which left so much to private enterprise in that age, and did so little to help it, at length discovered the purpose of the British Gov¬ ernment, and, under the spur of alarm, decided to act. Two companies were formed in New York to send steamers to Europe, and the Gov¬ ernment was solicited to give them a contract. Learning of this, Cu¬ nard immediately went to England and laid the facts before the Govern¬ ment. .After a great deal of consultation it was agreed that the time had come to carry out the original purpose of the contract. Cunard was authorized to run once a week to Halifax, and thence alternately to New York and Boston. A subsidy of £145,000 w’as voted to him for the purpose, or more than double the amount of the original con¬ tract. The new plan went into operation immediately’’, and when the rival American line finally started, and began to compete with Cunard, the Government legislated in favor of the latter by taxing letters which came by the American line twenty-four cents more postage apiece than when sent by Cunard’s steamers. This discrimination was aban¬ doned upon the passage of a retaliatory law in America, but Cunard was still left with the protection of a subsidy twice as large as that enjoyed by Collins. It having been fairly demonstrated by the Cunard line that steam was available for the purpose of navigation to distant lands, England entered at once upon colossal schemes for putting steamers into all ocean-trades. The rest of the w’orld seemed asleep on the subject. France and America were the only countries in which there was any¬ thing doing ; but they did not act with vigor, and England was left to 3 34 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. pursue her schemes of maritime enterprise almost without a rival. In 1840 a subsidy of £37,000 was given for carrying the mails on from Gibraltar to Alexandria; in 1845 the service w'as extended to China and Japan, for £100,000. In 1840 the sum of £240,000 was voted to a company of responsible and eminent merchants in London to run steamers to the West Indies, Mexico, and the Isthmus; and in 1858 this company had twenty first-class steamers in the business, and was receiving £270,000 a year. In 1849, and again in 1853, the Government directed thorough in¬ vestigations of the steam-packet service, in order to determine how the new policy was working, and the amount of pay which steamers ought to receive. It went steadily ahead with its operations, which were proved to be working out marvelous results for the benefit of England. Money was advanced to merchants to build steamers, and a paying con¬ tract given to them when the ships were built. Old contracts were renewed as fast as they expired, with the same or larger pay, and to run ten years at a time. Every possible inducement was offered, to stimulate the building and operation of steam-vessels ; and the result was that, in 1858, when the x\merican competition broke down, and the United States was left with only seven steam-vessels in all its for¬ eign trade, England had one hundred and twenty, plying to the ex¬ tremities of the earth. She was at that time paying §5,000,000 a year in subsidies, and getting it nearly all back again in ocean-postages alone. Postages were high in those days, and the Government made several millions upon the Cunard contract alone. How frequently her expenditures came back to her in other ways we need hardly stop to say. England’s ocean steam-tonnage of 1,470,000 in 1876 is the fruit of her policy in aiding her ship-builders and steamship companies to take advantage of the great opportunity which opened up before them forty years ago. Now, with reference to iron. In 1787 a canal-boat of 32 tons bur¬ den was built in England, with an iron hull and wooden frame. It was regarded as a great curiosity in mechanical art. The wdiole boat onh' weighed eight tons. Another boat was built soon after, and both were employed on the canal from Birmingham. This style of craft be¬ came very popular, and from 1800 to 1810 they were built in large numbers. They were not so expensive, compared with wood, when the art of making them liad been mastered, because timber was dear in England, and coal and iron were cheap, and the boats outlived those of wood. In 1820 the principle was applied to the building of steamers, which class of vessels required a stiff frame and hull. Sir Charles Na¬ pier went into the business. The first boat was sent to France. After¬ ward others were built for English use. In 1834 John Laird was reg¬ ularly building iron vessel^, and in 1839 had launched two steamers of STEAM AND IROX. 35 570 and C60 tons burden, of iron, which afterward took part in the Chi¬ nese War in 184:2. The Government aided in the development of the means to build these vessels by ordering iron ships for the navy. It was seen that, if the new material should turn out to be as valuable as the lirst experi¬ ments with it gave promise, England would at last have gained a su¬ perior position in regard to building-materials. France and the Neth¬ erlands had no iron of any account. America had mines, but they were not developed, and linished iron was costly there. There was plenty of the metal in the north of Europe, but such were England’s advantages in the way of development that, if iron was to be applied extensively to the construction of hulls, it only needed that the peculiar machinery for producing ship-iron should be created speedily in order to place England ahead of the world in the matter. The orders of the Government for navy-vessels enabled the principal builders to supply themselves with all the tools, machinery, and appliances, for building merchant-vessels of iron on a large scale. So judicious and timely was this aid that iron-ship building became at once a feature of the manu¬ factures of England, and the business was practised there alone in Eu¬ rope for many 3 ''ears. In tl)n course of twenty-five years after I.aird began, iron hulls had been thoroughl^^ tested and found to be satisfactory in an eminent degree. They were stiffer than timber hulls, required less repairs, and accommodatcKl so much more cargo, that an iron ship of 600 tons burden was scarcelv larger than a 500-ton timber ship, and in 1857 were ten per cent. cheaj)er than the latter class of vessels. A remarkable incident in 1857 confirmed their value to the English. The Persia, of the Cunard line, encountered ice in mid-ocean while going at full speed. Her iron hull, stiff and sharp, split the ice and went through it unharmed. The Pacific, of the Collins line, a wooden steamer, meet¬ ing with ice on the same voyage, was broken up by it and went down. The ability and economy of the iron ships soon made them the favorite style of vessel among English merchants. A large proportion of the ship-owners have since 1840 supplied themselves with them. France and the United States both began to build iron vessels, stim¬ ulated by the example of England. Both gave up the experiment after a short trial. England had the cheapest materials. After 1860 the whole business of construeting iron hulls returned to the British Isles, where for ten or twelve 3 ’ears a substantial monopoly of it was enjo^^ed. The superior cheapness of iron vessels, and the preference they se¬ cured for a time in trade, owing to their speed and low expenses of operation, have been an advantage to the English merchant marine, and to-day it comprises one-third of the sailing-tonnage of the world. Surely, 20,300 ships, with a tonnage of 5,800,300, are something to boast of. 36 AMERIC.VN NAVIGATION. It has already been stated that the policy of England has been steadily directed to crushing out the competition of the United States. The cap-stone of her efforts in this direction was her course during our civil war. She did not dare to take an active part in our national quarrel, as she would have done gladly had it been certain that she would not have been molested by European powers ; but she had re¬ course to an almost equally effective plan, which will be described more at length in the chapter on “ American Annals.” She fitted out povv- erful men-of-war to cruise against us, and she had the satisfaction of seeing our supremacy receive a dreadful blow. It was the modern way of serving us as she had served the Dutch in an earlier age. Its object was gained by its removing the last obstacle to her temporary maritime greatness. IV. THE POLICY OF OTHER GOVERNMENTS. As far as it affects the navigation of the United States unfavorably, the case may be summed up briefly: Franco imitated the example of England in granting subsidies to steamship companies to ply in the trade of the Mediterranean and the American Continent. Her first company was the Messageries Impe- riales, formed to trade to the Levant and all Mediterranean countries. It was liberally compensated by the Government, and in 1858 had fifty steamships in the service. In 1858 contracts were offered as follows : $020,000 a year for twenty-six voyages between Havre and New York, or about $23,000 a voyage ; $940,000 a year for service to Brazil ; $1,300,- 000 for steamers to the West Indies and Mexico : in all, about $2,800,000. The General Transatlantic Company was formed to undertake the American service. The Messageries Imp6riales secured the Brazilian contract. In 1870 France paid $4,732,267 to her ocean-mail lines, and in 1876 was paying 23,388,892 francs, or something like $4,800,000. Two of these lines are a direct obstacle to American navigation—the one between New York and Havre, and the one to Brazil. Austria and Italy both granted mail contracts to ocean-lines. These, however, have not come into direct competition with American ships, except in the Mediterranean. In that sea, the policy of those two countries has been very much in the way of American enterprise. Spain refused us reciprocity the longest of any country in the world, and paid the Compagnie Gautier $25,000 a voj-age to ply semi-monthly AMERICAN ANNALS. 37 Jjetween Cadiz and the West Indies. She has always interfered with our ships in the West Indian trade, and does so occasionally now. Brazil did not grant us maritime reciprocity until 18G7. She invites all nations to her coasting and river trades; but has subsidized a num¬ ber of native and British steam lines for those trades, which virtually excludes us from them. She pays $1,706,000 in subsidies annually, $96 000 of it having until recently been paid to a British line running to New York. The poliey of Brazil is at present friendly to the United States in intention, an exhibition of which is the grunt of a subsidy of $100,000 to an American line to ply between liio Janeiro and New York. About four years ago, China resolved to take the carriage of goods alon<>- her coast into her own hands. Foreigners, principally English¬ men, had put a large number of steamers into this immense trade, and made groat profits in it. Americans enjoyed a share of the business. A comjiany of Chinese merchants was organized to build and operate a fleet of native steamers. The Government lent them 1,000,000 taels to build their vessels and get a start, and then gave to them a monopoly of the transportation of government grain, in which the revenues were paid. The foreign companies lowered their freights, but were unable to meet the native competition. One company has been forced to sell out, and the foreign shipping has been greatly diminished generally. The full details of the policy of China are not yet known in this coun¬ try, but that it is an aggressive one against foreign shipping is apparent. The Chinese newspapers are felicitating themselves that their junk-peo¬ ple, who were ruined by the swarm of foreign steamers running on the coasts and rivers of China and to the outlying islands, have obtained fresh employment on native vessels, and are making good seamen. There appears to be no prominent government ii\ the world which, while legislating directly in favor of native shipping, does not give it financial support, except the United States. V. AMERICAN ANNALS. The history of American navigation can most profitably be con¬ sidered b}' dividing it into periods. It is difficult to suggest an exact division of the subject, but the following will do for practical purposes : 1. The time down to 1815, comprehending the period of struggle to obtain security for our shipping on the high-seas ; 2. From 1815 to 38 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. 1850, wliich formed the era of establishment of reciprocity ; 3. The period of steam and iron. During the first period our navigation was explicitly a national cpjestion. During the second it gradually ceased to be. The third is the period of decadence, our shipping having been left to its own re¬ sources, the. regulation in regard to registry and the coasting-trade being the onlj' thing which saved it from extinction. Our Early Navigation. The first vessels built on our shores were for the fisheries and coast¬ ing-trade, but principally for the fisheries. The people were poor, and had to pay for their vessels in grain, calicoes, and similar commodities. The fisheries were very profitable. They had attracted attention in Europe at a very early period, and large numbers of vessels went out to America for no other purpose than to visit the fishing-banks. A voy¬ age generally yielded from £3,000 to £4,000 profit. The consequence was, that as early as 1G60 there were often as many as six hundred sail from Europe on the banks at one time. The New-Englanders went into this business at once. Ship-builders were sent out to them from London in 1631, and they fitted out a large number of vessels of very respectable size for that age, some of them being of three hundred tons burden, and put them at once into the fisheries, and subsequently into trade. The New England colonies had very little transatlantic trade of their own until shortly before the Revolution, but they supplied the principal part of the colonial shipping which went into the transatlan¬ tic commerce of the other portions of the coast. The Navigation Act protected them against the Dutch, and their abundance of timber and naval stores, and frugal liabits, enabled them to compete for the carry¬ ing-trade with the mother-country. A very fair share of the fish, to¬ bacco, rice, timber, and hides of this country, were sent to England in our own shipping. At the time of the Revolution we owned nearly half of the tonnage employed. Besides this transatlantic trade, the shipping of the early colonies was employed somewhat in trading to the Spanish West Indies. This was against the law. It was in contravention both of English and Spanish policy. It was, however, the principal resource of the colo¬ nists in obtaining a supply of silver for ready money, and they carried it on in spite of its illegality and dangers. The enforcement of restric¬ tions upon the freedom of our navigation to the Spanish colonies and to the different ports of Europe was one cause of the Revolution. During the Revolutionary War, navigation received a check, but the building-art improved. Nearly all the ships built for the foreign OUR EARLY NAVIGATION. 39 p trade were privateers, made for strength and speed, and carrying an I; armament of guns. The loss of our shipping in that war was very great, for, able as were our sailors, the cannon of the English were superior to ours, and tlieir shi])s generally larger and stronger as well as more numerous. Mr. Currier, the historian of ship-building on the I:’ Merrimac, tells how twenty-two gallant vessels sailed from Newbury- t: port alone during that period, which, with the thousand men on board ^ of them, were never heard of again. But tliis very superiority of the royal navy in weight of metal and size of ships was tlie most direct and C powerful stimulus to our native builders, and they began to produce ' excellent vessels, which, before the war was over, attracted attention even in Europe. s’ John Adams, in a letter to Senator Varnum, gave an illustration of k' this. He said : “ In June, 1779, I dined with M. Thevenot, intendant of the navy at I’Orient, certainly one of the most experienced, best i-ead, and most seientific naval commanders in Europe. That excellent ollieer I; said to me in the hearing of the Chevalier de la Luzerne, M. Marbois, and twenty officers of the French Navy, ‘ Your country is about to be¬ lt come the first naval pow'er in the world.’ My answ’cr was : ‘ It is im- p possible to foresee what may happen a hundred or tw’o or three hun- fe dred years hence ; but there is at present no appearance or probability I of any great maritime power in America for a long time to come.’ ‘ Hundred years! ’ said Thevenot; ‘ it will not be twenty years before you will be a mateh for any maritime pow'er of Europe.’ ‘ You surprise me, sir; 1 have no suspicion or conception of any such great things ; ! will you allow me to ask your reasons for such an opinion ? ’ ‘ My rea- ; sons,’ said M. Thevenot—‘ my reasons are very obvious ; you have all the materials, and the knowledge and skill to employ them. You have timber, hemp, tar, and iron ; seamen and naval architects equal to any in the world.’ ‘ I know we have oak, and pine, and iron, and we may have hemp, but I did not know our shipw’rights were equal to yours in Europe.’ ‘ The frigate in which you came here,’ said M. Thevenot (the f Alliance, Captain Landais), ‘is equal to any in Europe. I have ex- ? amined her, and I assure 3 ’ou there is notin the king’s service, nor in the English Navy, a frigate more perfect and complete in materials and workmanship.’ ” Other incidents could be cited to show' that, even be¬ fore this country had obtained its independence, the building-art had so improved here as to make American ships respected everywhere for their speed, strength, and beautj'^, and to excite the liveliest anticipa¬ tions as to the future of this republic in navigation. Building revived after the Revolution. It is not known wdiat the tonnage was at that time. It could hardly have exceeded 100,000 tons, if it was as nnieh as that. The facts do not appear in the colonial records, and the national Government had no control over the registry' of shipping until after the 40 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. adoption of the Constitution. The prominent fact was the preponder¬ ance of European bottoms in the foreign trade. In 1789 the regb- tration was 123,893 tons in the foreign trade ; G8,C07 in the coasting- trade ; and 9,062 in the fisheries; and there were still 100,000 tons of foreign shipping in the external commerce. In the commercial intercourse of the world prior to the struggle for American independence, there had been little in the nature of equitable dealing by one nation toward the vessels of another trading to its ports. The colonists in America had been made to feel the burdensomeness of this, and one of the principles they fought to establish during the war was the freedom of commerce and entire reciprocity in the intercourse of nations. In 1778 Franklin negotiated a treaty with Holland which gave expression to this principle, by providing for putting the ships of both nations on a footing of exact reciprocity in the ports of each other. It was with some difficulty that the treaty was obtained, because, libcrakspirited as were the Dutchmen, political con¬ sequences were involved in it from which they shrank. It was con¬ summated at length, however, and was signed b}-^ John Adams in 1782. Holland lost a great deal by this act of friendliness to the American Republic, because England went to war with her on account of it, took from her the most valuable of her East India possessions, and crippled her commerce, as a punishment for countenancing rebellious colonies. The Americans gained little by it at the time, it may also be said, be¬ cause, while it established a principle, England took care to interrupt our commerce with the Netherlands, so that it should be of no practical benefit to us for many years. It was useful afterward, but not then. After the treaty of peace the United States proposed a treaty of reci¬ procity in commerce to England. Negotiations were delayed for sev¬ eral years, to enable the king’s counselors to study the situation care¬ fully. It was then refused. England believed that, by applying the Navigation Act rigidly to the case of the United States, supplementing it with discriminating tonnage duties, she could get the carrying-trade to this continent entirely into her own hands. So far from conceding to this young and poor republic what she had refused to the richest monarchies of Europe, and which was obviously to her disadvantage, she adopted a policy toward us even more severe than to the European governments. Our representatives labored for some time in London to bring about a favorable arrangement, but every negotiation ended in failure. In 1785 John Adams wrote home indignantly to the Govern¬ ment: “This being the state of things, you may depend upon it the commerce of America will have no relief at present, nor in my opinion ever, until the United States shall haYm generally passed navigation acts; and, if this measure is not adopted, we shall be derided when we suffer more and more, and our calamities be laughed at.” Some OUR EARLY NAVIGATION. 41 of the colonies immediately complied with this suggestion. They found, however, that this drove trade to the other colonies. The sit¬ uation became embarrassing both to business interests and to national pride. The first Congress under the Constitution met in April, 1789. It gave its attention immediately to shipping. Revenue was the upper¬ most object of legislation, but protection to navigation and industry was also explicitly aimed at. Within two days after the meeting of Congress, Mr. Madison had brought into the House bills for duties upon imports and tonnage, both of which legislated directly in behalf of American interests. Shipping at that time needed little if anytliing more, in the way of protection, than a law which would place it on a par with foreign vessels in transatlantic and coasting trade with refer¬ ence to taxes and port charges. Our vessels were cheaper than tliosc of England, France, and Spain. Tliey were of equally good models, and were sailed by better seamen. Only an equality in regard to taxa¬ tion was required to enable our shipping to play a creditable jmrt in the operations of a rapidly-rising and valuable commerce. It did not have to Avait for what it wanted. The spirit of the hour was protection to American interests against foreign policy, and it was resolved that there should be no half-way work about it. Mr. Madison, though a free-trader himself, proposed tlie protective legislation looking directly to the building up of our navigation. There was some debate on his bills, in which the general indifference of agricultural States to the shipping business was illustrated, thougli temperately, by the remarks of Southern representatives, who feared that their part of the Union would bear most of the burden of the new duties; but there was no opposition to the protective principle, and the third law of Congress was an act imposing discriminating duties in favor of American ton¬ nage. This law, signed July 20, 1789, provided that, on each entry from a foreign port, American ships should be taxed six cents a ton; vessels built upon our shores but owned abroad, thirty cents a ton ; foreign ships fifty cents a ton. American ships in the coasting-trade and fish¬ eries were to pay the tax of .six cents per ton once a year only, while foreign ships were to pay a tax of fifty cents on each eniry, which was virtually a prohibition of tliose trades to foreign flags. By the second law of the same Congress it was provided that, from the duties on all goods imported in American vessels, there should be a discount of ten per cent. A regulation in favor of the national flag was also made with reference to the China and India trade, which gave that valuable business entirely into our hands. A schedule of discriminating duties was fixed upon as follows : 42 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. IMPORTS, U. S, Vvtult coming U. S. Vetselt ftom Foreign VeneU. V h 1 06 .08 .15 lionc^^per jw ^ .10 .13 .22 .HO .ao .45 .12. .16 .27 Olhtr green as, p po On all other goods from India and China there was to be 12| per cent, ad valorem if imported in foreign vessels, but no duty if imported in American vessels. This legislation did not stop with putting a tax upon European bot¬ toms in our ports equal to the charges imposed upon our ships in Eu¬ rope. It went further than that, in fact and in intention. It proposed to give Americans a decided preference in their own commerce over foreigners, of whatever nationality, and to extend an inducement to Europeans to buy our ships ; thus giving explicit protection and en¬ couragement to ship-building. The laws would have been made more stringent yet, had there been a sufficient supply of national tonnage to insure the rapid and convenient exportation of our rice, tobacco, grain, timber, and other produce, without recourse to the services of foreign¬ ers. A moderate effort was made to have the tax on foreign ships placed higher than fifty cents. The possibility of this being an incon¬ venience to Virginia, which had few ships, but did have a vast surplus of agricultural produce, deterred Congress from adopting the more radical policy until the effect of the experimental schedule of taxes could be observed. It was not supposed in Europe that the United States would act with such vigor. With little wealth except the produce of her farms, and no means of obtaining an abundance of manufactured goods at moderate prices, except by exporting the surplus tobacco, rice, grain, and forestry produce of the country, the United States was depended upon to pursue a passive policy, and, at any rate, not to strike back in such spirited retaliation. The passage of the tonnage and duty acts irpperiled the employment of 200,000 tons of foreign shipping, which, according to current estimates, was then trading to these shores. The laws which placed this tonnage under disabilities would probably com¬ pel its withdrawal in the course of two or three years, unless something was done to counteract their effect. The passage of the laws, therefore, created an extraordinary sensation in Europe, especially in the mother- country. There the policy of the United States was regarded simply in the light of retaliation. There was in consequence, at first, a truly British disposition to go on and adopt a harsher policy than ever toward the new republic. Our representatives abroad, however, found that on the whole prudence got the better of feeling, and it induced the powers to lend a more favorable ear to our applications for commercial treaties. Negotiation now became possible where before it was refused. It took OUR EARLY NAVIGATION. 43 several years to eflfect anything practical at any of the courts, but when it was finally observed that American vessels were being built in large numbers under the protection of the national laws, and that the new flag was beginning to crowd European sliipping in European ports, the Old"World yielded to our requests. A treaty was secured from England in November, 1794, from Spain in October, 1795, and from France in 1800. We already had a good one with the Netherlands, dated in 1782. Our first victory was won. These treaties were not entirely satisfactory, however, because they did not guarantee full equality of tonnage and other duties between American ships and those of other foreign nations. They left room for the imposition of heavy discriminations against us. The treaty with England only opened the West India trade to a very limited extent, and to vessels of not over seventy tons burden, and it was expressly stij)ulated that this arrangement should end within two years after the war in which England was then engaged. The best that could be said of the negotiations was that tliey opened the East India trade fully, and se¬ cured some sort of recognition for our flag on the seas, and paved the way for future more equitable arrangements. The Navigation Act was revised in 1790, and the discriminations therein contained made permanent. They continue in force to the present day, except where suspended by the operation of reciprocity laws and treaties. Their effect on this country after their enactment was remarkable. Ship-building revived spontaneously all along the coast. In less than five years, tonnage enough had been produced to enable us to carry on the larger part of our commerce in our own ves¬ sels. By 1800, enterprise had been so stimulated by protection that seven-eighths of the imports and exports of the country were being transported under the American flag. The China and India trade was ours exclusively. A large number of vessels were being built for for¬ eigners, the sales from 1798 to 1812 being 197,000 tons, a large amount for those times. Our flag became the most aggressive in peaceful commerce. Secure in the protection of our laws, our merchants pushed their enterprises farther and farther, every year, against all opposition, and entered upon the present century a class of prosperous men, and full of confident anticipations for the future. Shipping had increased in tonnage as follows: YEARS. Reglitcred for Foreign Trade. Coaiting-Trad*. Fiiherira. 1T89. 128.898 08.007 9.062 1795 . 529.4T0 104.796 84.102 1800 . C69.921 245.29r) 80.078 1805. 749.841 801,866 5S,863 In March, 1804, Congress levied an additional tonnage duty of fifty cents on all foreign shipping for light money. A few Southern men 44 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. had previously asked for a repeal of all tonnage duties. They were willing to abandon navigation, to secure a repeal of the duties on to¬ bacco in Europe. Public policy was decidedly against giving up the profitable industries of ship-building and navigation, and an additional tax was levied as stated. Commerce was bringing to us capital and prosperity. One of the annoyances to which our vessels were subjected in these times was the searching of them by English cruisers for the seamen of that nationality who had gone into our merchant-service. A large num¬ ber of those mariners, seeking to better their condition, had engaged tliemselves to our captains. It was a maxim w'ith England, “Once a subject always a subject.” She asserted the right to impress a citizen- seaman, wherever found, for the purposes of the king’s navy ; and this was made a pretext for delaying American ships, and taking from them G,257 of their men. This was a great injury to our commerce. Re¬ monstrances were made against it, but were of no avail. One of the measures taken to guard against this interference was the arming of our merchant-vessels with cannon. In 1805, however. Congress forbade armed vessels to sail from our ports unless specially permitted, it being the desire of the Government to carry its point with England by peace¬ ful negotiation. In April, 1806, a non-importation act was passed in Congress by immense majorities designed to give weight to our applications for an abolition of this practice of search and impressment. England paid no attention to our demands. On the contrary, the fact that it annoyed and injured us was to her a reason for persisting in it. A further in¬ terference with our commerce took place by her blockade of the coast of France and the Netherlands, as a war measure against those powers. It will bo recolle^cted that France retaliated in 1806 in the Berlin Decree by forbidding all commerce with England ; that the latter adopted or¬ ders in council forbidding commerce with France and the Netherlands ; and that Napoleon then published the Milan Decree in 1807, in further¬ ance of his previous proclamation. Both of these jealous powers now began an active interference with American ships, while pursuing their peaceful voyages upon the high-seas, which continued for five years, with greater or less severity. Over 1,660 of our ships, worth millions of dollars, were captured, and either condemned with their cargoes or else compelled to suffer loss by detention. Others w’ere thrown out of their course, and forced to run into neutral harbors for protection. They were delayed in port, searched at sea, and seized even at the mouths’ of our own harbors. Against this reckless aggression the United States protested in vain. The Embargo Act of December 22,1807, was finally passed in retaliation; and another, .January 10, 1809, to make the first more effectual. March 1, 1809, commerce with England and France OUR EARLY NAVIGATION. 45 was forbidden by the Non-intercourse Act. The quarrel in Europe was something we had nothing to do witli, and we looked with impatience on the disastrous interferences with our commerce and navigation, for which it was made a pretext. There was only one sentiment in this country on this subject. In May, 1810, France announced the rej)eal of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, and a slight relief was granted to our shipping. Groat Britain did nothing. The orders in council remained in force. It was denied that the French decrees were extinct, and tliey were made the excuse for a continuance of the exasperating policy, which, whatever the plausible explanation of it, aimed only at an ex¬ tinction of the maritime pow'er of America, and the maritime aggran¬ dizement of England. The War of 1813 was the consequence. This was purely a commer¬ cial war. Its object was liberty of navigation and the rights of citizen¬ ship. It proposed to protect an important national interest against a foreign policy which left no room for honorable competition, but em¬ ployed only the arts of force and injustice. This costly war was a dreadful tax upon our 3 ’oung republic. It involved an expense of $150,000,000. It made double duties necessary. It cost us thousands of lives, and millions of property on land and sea. It left us w-ith a business crisis and financial collapse upon our hands. Prof. Sumner, who scoffs at the idea of being governed in these matters by the senii- ment of nationality, speaks of this war as a piece of folly and imbecil¬ ity. Without it, however, we should have been destroyed as a com¬ mercial power. Shipping had in two years declined 250,000 tons. Merchants were ruined b}’’ the losses of their property and goods at sea and in foreign ports. Working-men were out of employment. Agricultural production was checked. The disci-iminating duties of Europe were in force in all their rigor. Without a vigorous assertion of our rights and nationality we should have been left in the condi¬ tion of a commercial and industrial vassal of England, and have been the laughing-stock of the world. With the war, American nationality gained the respect of the whole world, and our shipping a glorious prestige and leading position. The boast of England— “ The winds and seas are Britain’s wide domain, And not a sail but by permission spreads ”— which, though here expressed only in a poetical trifle, was the assertion of a claim which no other nation could endure with self-respect, was chastistid. Dominion upon the seas wms overthrown so effectually that England never again dared to reassert it. Reciprocity, and liberty, and security of navigation, within a few years were made sure bv it, and the shackles wdth Avhich England had sought to restrain our mari¬ time expansion, for thirty-two years, were shattered to atoms. In Julj', 46 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. 1815, England conceded to us a commercial treaty in u hich equality of port charges and tonnage and other duties were provided for, and the shipping of each power placed on a footing with the most favored nations in each other’s ports. Some sly attempts at evasion were after¬ ward made by England, but they were ])romptly met by us, and reci¬ procity was soon carried out to the letter. During the war ship-building was badly depressed. The yards were not entirely deserted, it is true, for Congiess having an inadequate navy permitted private citizens to send out privateers. The construc¬ tion of these gave considerable employment to the builders. A number of armed merchant-vessels for regular trade were also built by those who had the capital and were willing to risk it. Shipping decreased steadily, however, until the declaration of peace. Our total tonnage was 1,385,000 in 1810. On January 1,1815, it was 1,028,000. The capt¬ ures of the war, large as they were, did not check the decadence of our tonnage. The captures in the three years amounted to more than 2,300 vessels, but our privateers destroyed many of these at sea, and 750 were retaken, and we in turn lost 1,407 of our own merchant-ves¬ sels and fishing-boats, so that the balance -was only slightly in our favor. The hostilities of the eight years following 1806 performed only one im¬ portant service for our shipping. It improved the already fine models of our vessels immensely. Speed became an important element. Special study was given to that branch of the subject, and we came out of the war in 1815 with a fleet of the ablest vessels in the world. At the outbreak of hostilities, an additional tax of $1.50 was placed upon foreign tonnage until the declaration of peace. Tliis was con¬ tinued until January 4, 1817. On that day a law was passed restoring the duties of 1789. The Establishment of Recipkocity. We now enter upon a period extending down to 1850, which was one of uninterrupted growth and prosperity. It is here designated as the ora of the establishment of reciprocity. Absolute equality of duties in the direct trade was essential to the growth of our merchant marine. We never obtained it until after the War of 1812. Neither did we obtain the right to trade to anj* country from countries other than our own until after the same point of time. The United States demanded both of these things, and now devoted its efforts to obtaining them. The first step was the law of March 3,1815, in regard to equalizing tonnage and import duties. This law enacted : “ That so much of the several acts, imposing duties on the tonnage of ships and vessels, and on goods, wares, and merchandise, imported into the United States, as impose a discriminating duty on tonnage, between foreign vessels and THE ESTABLISHMENT OF RECIPROCITY. 47 vessels of the United States, and between goods imported into the United States in foreign vessels and vessels of the United States, be, and the same are hereby repealed, so far as the same respect the produce or manufacture of the nation to which such foreign shij)s or vessels may belong. Such repeal to take effect in favor of any foreign nation whenever the President of the United States shall be satisfied that the discriminating or countervailing duties of such foreign nation, .so far as they operate to the disadvantage of the United States, have been abolished.” This was a warning and an invitation to all the nations of the world. It applied both to Franco and the Continental nations which conceded to us equality in theory but denied it in important respects in prac¬ tice, and to England which until then denied it to us every way. Tlie treaty with England of the following July was the first fruit of this enactment. The next step was an important law passed in March, 1817, which substantially reenacted the navigation laws of England, and made vari¬ ous regulations for the promotion of our shipping. The law provided: ” That, after the thirtieth day of September next, no goods, wares, or mer¬ chandise, shall bo imported into tho United States from any foreign port or place except in vessels of tho United States, or in such foreign vessels as truly and wholly belong to the citizens or subjects of that country of which tho goods are tho growth, production, or manufacture, or from which such goods can only be, or most usually are, first shipped for transportation. Provided, nevertheless, that this regulation shall not extend to tho vessels of any foreign nation which has not adopted and which shall not adopt a similar regulation.” The coasting-trade was reserved exclusively to Americans. An en¬ couragement to employ native mariners was given by a section taxing ships in the foreign trade fifty cents a ton unless two-thirds of the officers and crew were Americans. This law cut off England from the triangular trade to Brazil and the Indies, thence to the United States, and thence home, and reserved it to the United States, but offered to open it to England and the world upon the concession of general reci¬ procity to us. Another law was passed in May, 1828, offering still more explicitly to the nations of the world, to admit them to our ports on equal terms with our own citizens, provided that our citizens should be admitted to theirs on similar terms. It was a full, frank, fair offer of reciprocity. It proposed to put commerce upon the high plane of fra¬ ternity among nations, and leave all the victories within that field of action to the intelligence and enterprise of the different peoples of the world. These offers were, however, fifty years in advance of the times, and the United States had many struggles to secure the object of them. England took about the same view of the matter, no doubt very prop¬ erly for her, as we, very properly for us, have since then taken of her ■offer of free trade to all the world. However beneficial a free commerce might have been in quickening the civilization of the age, it would not 48 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. have been at all advantageous to England, because the United States had such natural advantages that she would have beaten England out of her carrying-trade. The same was true in regard to France. Ac¬ cordingly, those two nations tried to circumvent us and defeat our policy in many ways. England first closed the West India trade to us outright. Then, when by reason of a law we passed in 1818, forbidding British ships to enter our harbors from ports to which we were not al¬ lowed to trade, she was forced to permit us to enter her AVest India ports, she adopted regulations intended to injure us in another way. She ordained that goods of American production—naming the most im¬ portant of them—if imported to England or her colonies from British warehouses, should pay a lower duty than when coming from the United States direct. The object was to secure the importation of our produce to England and the colonies from the Canadas in British ships, confining our ships to the short voyages to Canada. France conceded to us equality in tonnage-dues and light money, but she discriminated against us in another way. She had a large number of vessels trading to New Orleans and other Southern ports. She provided that, upon goods coming to France in those ships, the duty should be less than in other cases by 1^ cent a pound on tobacco, 1-| cent a pound on cotton, and of a cent per hundred-weight on potash. This actually more than paid the freight. An American ship of 300 tons tobacco-laden would have to pay $6,300 more duty than its French competitor. The United States acted promptly in retaliation. In 1820 a duty of $18 a ton was levied on French vessels, and British ships were for¬ bidden to enter our ports from any colony of England on or near this continent. In both eases our rivals were brought to reason. Matters were arranged with France by treaty in 1822, and the British orders in council were amended. Tn 1830 a permanent arrangement was made with England. Our struggles were so successful that, within fifteen years after the Peace of 1815, reciprocity in direct trade had been secured with all the principal trading nations of the world. General reciproeity had been gained with Russia, Sweden, Norway, Prussia, Denmark, and Austria. England conceded general reciprocity in 1849. Since then every other nation of any account not theretofore in treaty with us has followed her example. Our legislation in behalf of our shipping was timely, and attended with the happiest results. AVith the restoration of peace, commerce expanded in an extraordinary manner. From a total of $270,000,000 in 1815 it rose to $480,000,000 in 1836. Travel and immigration grew from 20,000 a year before the war to 75,000 within twenty years after it, and in twenty years more to 300,000. The mails became very heavy between this country and Europe. In 1850, the ocean traffic and travel the establishment of reciprocity. 49 of the United States gave employment to 2,335,000 tons of shipping. Tbe total tonnage entering and clearing from our ports in 1850 was 8 , 000 , 000 . , In this brilliant story of expansion the United States marine would probably have played a passive part except for our protective laws and aggressive policy. The causes which operated to our advantage during this period may be briefly summed up as follows: ... 1. A widening field of commerce and equality of competition within it owing to the operation of our reciprocity laws and treaties. 2 . The United States ships cheaper and abler than those English- built. There was a constant difference in prices in favor of the United States. In 1824 a 300-ton ship would cost from £4,500 to £5,000 in this country, from £5,500 to £6,000 in Canada, and from £6,000 to £G 500 in England. In 1847 a 500-ton vessel would cost £7,500 here, ao-aiiist £8,750 in England, for the same grade of construction. In the north of Europe only were ships as cheap as in the United States, but those ships did not compete with ours. In twenty-five years after the peace, the United States sold 340,000 tons of shipping to foreigners. There was a good demand on account of the low cost and the ex¬ cellence of the vessels. Our ships in that period made four voyages a year where the English and Dutch craft made three, and five where they made four. Our packet-ships were displaying a speed which toward the close of this period caused people to believe that they w'ould never be superseded by steamers. They made from 200 to 275 miles a day in a fair wind. They have even made 300 miles a day, the average of transoceanic steamer speed. Our builders fixed their standard very high, and continually strove to excel it. The testimony of all witnesses taken during this period by the com¬ mittees of Parliament, who were appointed to ascertain what was the matter w’ith British navigation, which was going into a decline, was unanimous in regard to the superiority of American ships. This tes¬ timony also went to show that high wages did not prevent the Ameri¬ can ship from sailing more cheaply than its English competitor. A London ship-builder and owner, engaged in extensive trade to all parts of the world, made a statement of the facts, which the testimony of other witnesses corroborated, as follows ; Co“ Coft of. Year'. Amomit of VESSELS. Voyatfe. Eof^lish ship of 600 tons. £8.760 £2,028 £786 American ship of 600 tons. 7,260 2,191 669 3. American mariners were the best in the world. The larger pro¬ portion of these men received their training in the whale and other 4 50 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. fisheries. They were largely cf New England origin. They combined with the discipline of long and rough voyages the energy and adapta¬ bility of the American character. They loved their art, and were proud of the exploits of their ships. The country was proud of them. Those who lived during the War of 1812 received a special education in the privateering of that jjeriod, and went back into the peaceful merchant- service at its close the most capable tars in the world. The country is indebted to them for the special maritime task which devolved upon our nautical world just after that war. England renewed the struggle for commercial superiority at once, and fitted out a large number of superior ships, manned by her best men, to go into the American trade. For one year she got one-third of the carrying-trade. We were not pre¬ pared to meet her prompt enterprise. But the United States replied to her movement by building a larger and better class of ships than we had ever employed before, and put upon them the flower of the mariners of 1812. In three years more, these able men had handled their vessels so well, making such flying trips across the Atlantic, delivering their car¬ goes in such adniirable condition, and serving their masters so well, that they had reduced England’s proportion of the trade to one-sixth. In 1850 England’s proportion was still only one-fourth. This was as much due to the character of our mariners as to any other cause. They were well paid, temperate, read}', efficient men. They took good care of the ship ; they got it into and out of port with a surprising saving of time ; they saved it from wreck under circumstances which would have insured its destruction if it was in less capable hands ; and they served their masters and the public in a way that gave their flag the preference in all trade into which it could be lawfully put. Our sailors were very temperate, a point which was brought out in a report to Par¬ liament in 1838 on temperance in the navy, from which it may not be inappropriate to quote. The committee said that “ the happiest effects have resulted from the experiments tried in the American navy and merchant-service to do without spirituous liquors as an habitual article of daily use, there being at present more than 1,000 sail of American vessels traversing all the seas of the world in every climate, without the use of spirits by their officers and crews, and being, in consequence of this change, in so much greater a state of efficiency and safety than other vessels not adopting this regulation, that the public insurance companies in America make a return of five per cent, of the premium of insurance on vessels completing their voyages without the use of spirits, while the example of British ships, sailing from Liverpool on the same plan, has been productive of the greate.st benefit to ship¬ owners, underwriters, merchants, officers, and crews.” 4. The establishment of the packet-lines to Europe. Into these lines were put the finest and fastest of our ships. They were the mail THE ESTABLISHMENT OF RECIPROCITY. 51 and passenger boats of those days, and they carried large quantities of freight besides. They made the run across tiie Atlantic in an average of less than twenty days, which was three or four days faster than the time of the English vessels in the same trade. The regularity of their departure was found to bean advantage by American buyers, who there¬ fore insured the goods in this country, stipulating that they should come by packet. The packets accordingly soon came to monopolize all the valuable business between this country and the principal ports of Europe, and European ships were beaten out of it, 5. An exclusion of foreign flags from our coasting-trade and fish¬ eries. After the war there was a great increase in the coasting-trade, especially about 1831. The jiroductiveness of the South began to sup¬ ply an enormous quantity of rice, tobacco, cotton, etc., for exportation. A large demand for these commodities for local consumption s[)rang up in the North, as in that part of the country the conveniences had been created both for their manufacture on a large scale for general home and for foreign consumption, and for dispatching them abroad, either in a raw or manufactured state. A heavy movement of Southern products accordingly took place along the coast, a return-current of domestic and foreign manufactures flowing back by the same route to pay for them. After 1830 the carrying-trade had grown so large that ships and brigs began to be put into it where before schooners and sloops only had been employed. After 1846 another increase of the trade took place consequent upon the settlement of California and the discovery of gold there. The greater part of this trade had to be carried on for several years by means of the long voyages around Cape Horn, and it gave employment accordingly to a class of vessels which soon came to rank in this country with the East Indiamen in England, being the largest and most powerful in the national marine. Such was the growth in this general department of our maritime activity that a trade which in 1812 found work for 500,000 tons of shipping only, employed in 1850 1,900,000 tons, and, to anticipate this story a little, 2,800,000 in 1871. Our ship-masters found the coasting-trade useful to them in their international voyages. It enabled them to make combinations of voyages in the intercourse with Europe and Asia. A foreign ship was compelled to sail from one part of our coast to another in search of a cargo empty. A national ship might carry a load of na¬ tive goods, which placed it in a position to compete powerfully with foreign ships in the port of entry for the carrying-trade across the sea. 6. The aggressive policy of our Government. Aware of the supe¬ riority of our advantages for transacting the carrying-trade of the world, a constant effort was made to break down the foreign regula¬ tions that kept our shipping out of particular fields of employment. A jealous watch was kept upon the policy of other countries, and our 52 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. representatives abroad were continually pressing for an abandonment of all rules of intercourse which shackled in any way a general liberty of navigation. Interferences with our ships were promptly resented and chastised. In the last century the pirates of the Mediterranean and of the Chinese seas respected only one flag besides their own. That was the Cross of St. George, and British ships accordingly had a decided preference in the general trade to those seas. That preference was de¬ stroyed by the appearance of American ships in those seas. Several conflicts with pirates look place, and in every instance a severe lesson was taught to those who had interfered with our navigation. Our flag accordingly came to be respected in every part of the world, and the security of the commerce it protected guaranteed. The English com¬ plained after 1830 that they had lost their former preference in the Mediterranean on this account. The result of all these causes was an increase of American shipping as follows : DATE. for Foreign Trade. Enrolled for Couttng-Trade, etc. Ucenied. January 1, 1815. 674.fi82 388,198 1 16,4.68 July 1. Ib50. 1,686,711 60,188 The proportion of the foreign trade of the country transacted in na¬ tive and foreign vessels, in 1821, the earliest day when we have exact statistics, and in 1850 was as follows : DATE. 1 Amerlcen Veueh. Foreign VeueU. 1850 .... .1 289,272,000 $14,858,000 90,764,000 Three-fourths of the cotton export went in our vessels, and we got better pay for the service. All the mails and passengers, and a vast majority of the immigrants, were transported under our flag. The British whale-fisheries were almost extinct, while the Americans had over 700 ships and 17,000 seamen actively employed in that field. While ship-building stagnated in England, and owners were losing money, building was active here, and owners had many exceedingly jirosperous years. From 1820 to 1850 this country built 3,900,000 tons of shipping. In 1831 $5,000 was often paid for a ship over and above the contract price when she was completed, property was in¬ creasing so rapidly in value. In 1840 many vessels repaid their original cost in freight-money. The interest was rich, prosperous, aggressive, and public expectation on both sides of the Atlantic would not have been disappointed had America become in twenty-five years the leading maritime nation of the world. It was already only second. Why it THE DECADENCE OF OUR MARINE. 53 did uot reach the first position will be explained by the events of the third period. Tue Decadence of our Marine. Now for the period of the decadence of American navigation. Tracing things down to the bottom, the causes of the decline of our shipping may be stated to be as follows : 1. The temporary decline of national feeling in this country. 2. The policy of foreign nations—of England preeminently—but of other nations also who imitated her in an important‘respect. 3. The backwardness of the development of our iron-mines. 4. The high prices of the last fifteen years. 5. The discovery of petroleum. The operation of these causes will be discovered in what took place in regard to the employment of steamships for the Atlantic and Pacific trades, the building of iron vessels, the decay of the whaling-fleet, and the destruction of our merchant-shipping during the War of 1861. Before proceeding to a consideration of tliese subjects, it might be well to say that several things took place in and after 1850 which were of great advantage to our shipping for the time being, and would have contributed greatly to our attainment of maritime preeminence, had they not been offset by the greater influences above referred to. They were the repeal of the British Corn Laws, which increased the exports of this country enormously, tliey rising §50,000,000 in the single year from 1850 to 1851. Another was the Crimean War in 1854, which caused the withdrawal of a great deal of British steam and other ship¬ ping from the Atlantic trade. Another was the unprecedented immi¬ gration of 2,598,000 people in the ten years after 1850. It was b}^ reason of the operation of these and the other favorable causes con¬ tinuing from the preceding jieriod that American tonnage increased from 1850 to 1861 from 3,530,000 to 5,350,000. It ought, however, to have grown more, to have kept pace with the age. It speedily became less. The first check to our navigation arose out of the apathy of the people in regard to nourishing the employment of steam in transatlan¬ tic commerce. Steam was first applied in this country to the tiaviga- tion of the rivers to which it was well adapted. A class of large and beautiful boats was constructed for river-service, and so rapidly did trade increase upon the great streams of the country that, as a result of it, the steam-tonnage of the Mississippi Valley in 1847 alone ex¬ ceeded that of the whole British Empire. And, indeed, it is believed, and is so reported at Washington, that the steam-tonnage of the United States to-day still equals if it does not considerably exceed that of the AMERICAN NAVIGATION. 5i empire referred to. Tlie steamboat played a great part in the develop¬ ment of this country, and it was not only employed upon the rivers and lakes, but upon the coasts. By 1840, lines of serviceable boats were plying between all the jjrincipal commercial cities of the Atlantic sea¬ board. This country not only led the way in the utilization of steam for propulsion, but it was the lirst to attempt the passage of the Atlan¬ tic with paddle-wheels. The voyage of the Savannah in 1810 is famous. She ran from the port of that name to Liverpool in twenty-two days steaming fourteen days, and advertised in Europe the mission of the American people, which is to conquer the elements of Nature and render them submissive to man. The electrical effect of this adventure upon the English mind has already been noted. It is surprising to ob¬ serve how little was thought of it in this country. Twenty-two davs— why, that was no faster than the American packet-ships! People dis¬ missed the matter from their minds. They supposed that steamers would never be of particular value in deep-sea navigation. The Savan¬ nah returned, landed her machinery, and went back to sails. It was not until 1838 that pojjular interest in the subject revived to any extent. In that year two English steamers, the Sirius and the Great Western, enterprisingly attempted the crossing of the Atlantic, and steamed into the harbor of New York almost together. This event gave as great a shock to the public mind here as England had ex])eri- enced in 1819. The subject of steam now secured the attention it de¬ served in commercial and political circles. A short examination of what England was doing sulBccd to create a feeling of alarm among public men, who regarded the aggressive policy of our rival as a menace to our maritime prosperity, and saw the necessity of prompt action to counteract it. The subject came before Congress in 1841, and was a prominent feature in the debates of every succeeding session down to the outbreak of the civil war. The idea of framing a policy in regard to ocean steam-navigation was taken up by Congress at first in the largest and most patriotic spirit. The ablest and most ardent advocates of it were Mr. King, of Georgia, and Mr. Rush, of Texas, whose section was purely agricultural, and which felt the least interest, therefore, in adopting any policy which would increase the taxation of the people. It was seen from the be¬ ginning that this Government could meet the new and dangerous com¬ petition which was springing up against its foreign navigation only by authorizing companies of merchants to build vessels to carry the mails to Europe, and by paying them a sum of money sufficient to enable them to meet their expenses and hold their own against the foreign lines. No part of the republic shrank from this at the time, particularly as it was seen that another important interest could be secured by en¬ couraging private citizens to build able steamers, namely, national de- THE DECADENX’E OF OUK MARINE. 55 for the steamers would at all times be available for the navy, out was generally favorable to it, and there was very little delay a praciical reply to England’s attack upon our mariiiine pros- plan ,)roposcd by Mr. King in 1841 was, to appropriate $1,000,- 000 annually for the transportation of the foreign nnuls For this sum Tmonev it was believed that there could be secured a hue ot four lamers frotn Boston to Havre to accommodate the growing commerce and immigration Over that route; a line of four steamers from x^ew Ixrk to Liverpool to contest the ground with the Canard steamers ; a llie of three vessels from Norfolk to the West Indies; and anotlmr of three from New Orleans to the same islands. Ihis plan was unfortu- natelv not carried out. In 1845, however, the Postmaster-General was authorized to go ahead and contract for ocean-service m steamers wherever the public interests required it, leaving it to him to decide upon the routes and ports of the several lines. Under this law he contracted with Edward Mills for four ships and twenty trips a year from New York to Bremen and Havre, for $400,000 ; and with E. K. Collins & Co. for four ships and twenty trips from New York to Tiverpool, for $38 j,- 000. Contracts were also made for service from New York^to New Orleans and the Isthmus of Panama, and from Panama to California and Oregon, for $489,600. Congress approved these contracts, and ad¬ vanced part of the money upon them to assist in building the ships. It was stipulated that their hulls should be strong enough for war pur¬ poses. Service began on tlie Bremen line with one sliip in July, 1847 ; on the line to California in 1848; and on the line to Liverpool in 1850 with two ships, two more being added within a year. By 1851 we had three steamships trading to Bremen and Havre, and four to Liver¬ pool, under the pay of the Government—and our reply to England had been made. The United States entered the field against the ari.stocratic Govern¬ ment of England with true republican deliberation, but her ships once put into the trade established their superioritv within two years. The Bremen steamers were no better, perhaps, than those of the English lines, but the Collins ships were marvels of naval construction, and sur¬ passed their competitors of the Cunard line in every point. Collins entered upon his contract with the distinct purpose of restoring the prestige of our navigation to Europe, which had been shaken by ten years of delay in utilizing the new motive power of steam. It had been said in England that we could not build ocean-steamers. His contract called for ships of 2,000 tons burden. This was larger tlian the Cunard ships, which averaged 1,200 and 1,500 tons; but,not content with fulfilling the letter of the contract, he built four ships of 3,250 tons burden, at a cost of $2,900,000, and in 1855 built one^of 5,000 tons AMERICAN NAVIGATION. 5« burden, at a cost of $1,100,000. Speed, beauty, style, and cxcellenoe of passenger accommodations, were aimed at, and the first four ships each had besides cargo-room for 1,000 tons of freight. The exploits of these ships amazed both our own countrymen and the merchants of England. They made the run across the Atlantic in ten days (the aver¬ age of trips at the present time), against thirteen days by the Cunard- ers. The ships were without superiors in the world, and they gave great strength for a time to the Government policy of a vigorous sup¬ port to navigation. This policy had able and patriotic advocates in Congress at that time from all parts of the country. In 1850 lines from the Western coast to China, and from the Eastern to Africa, were proposed, and a line was started to run from Charleston to Havana, under a pay of $50,000 a year. Generous support was given to Collins, whose pay was increased in 1852 to $858,000 a year. In that year the Government was expending $1,840,000 in subsidies, namely: For the service to Liverpool, $858,000; from New York to Charleston, Havana, and New Orleans, $290,000 ; Panama and Oregon service, $348,250; to Bremen and Havre, $294,000 ; Charleston and Havana, $50,000. Our policy, however, did not go far enough. Good such as it was, it sto})ped short of the point where the greatest good would have been gained. It never got beyond the preliminary stage of a few experi¬ ments. The English. Government was doing better. It had begun earlier, and was acting more energetically. It was paying a single line, that to the West Indies and the Isthmus, nearly as much as we were sustaining all our lines with. It gave that company $1,350,000 a year. A great error was committed in not acting soon enough to save our packet-business to England. The Cunard steamers had now secured nearly all the valuable part of that business. We had only the share of it which one small line of steamers could secure; and as for our sail¬ ing-packets they were being bankrupted and withdrawn. A worse than the original error was, however, now about to be committed, namely, the abandonment of all support to our rising steam-navigation to Europe. Private enterprise was to be left unaided to meet the pow¬ erful competition of the capital and governmental backing of Eng¬ land. The agricultural interests of the United States appeared in Congress in 1853, and demanded a cancellation of the contracts. Debate began in the session of 1853-’54, upon a proposition to reduce the compensa¬ tion of Collins. It was continued through several succeeding years, the whole pdlicy of protection to steam-navigation undergoing a thorough and protracted discussion, and being, at times, the leading topic before Congress. The opposition to the subsidy S 3 ’stem came chiefly from the South. The politicians of that section had become predominant in THE DECADENCE OF OUR MARINE. 57 politics, and the interest they represented was dictating the whole policy of the Government on economical questions. x\n abolition of the protective tariff had been conceded to it years before, among other things. Jefferson Davis and Judah P. Benjamin were active advocates of an abandonment of the carrying-trade of the Atlantic to British hands, and hardly a voice was lifted in opposition to them from the ag¬ ricultural States. Mr. Clingman, of North Carolina, proposed that an attempt should be made to induce England to abandon the subsidy system—a suggestion at the same time liopeless and absurd. Tlje argu¬ ments of the Congressmen from the agricultural States were su])ple- mented in 1855 by offers from the North-German Lloyd Company, which had begun to run steamers from Hamburg, and by Mr. Vanderbilt, who had two or three steamers for which he wished to find employment, to carry the mails at reduced rates. Whether political designs controlled in any degree the action of the representatives who proposed an aban¬ donment of the American transatlantic marine to the severity of for¬ eign competition, it would not be patriotic to attempt to say. But it is certain that the debates of that decade, on maritime and all other sub¬ jects, indicate that national sentiment had decayed in this republic, and that the agricultural interest cared far less for the glory and pros¬ perity of the American people than for the promotion of its individual ends. There was nothing in this, perhaps, peculiar to the American agriculturists. The same phenomenon appears in the history of all the governments of the world. It was no less a fact, however, that the too exclusive devotion of the country in this period to agriculture caused an abandonment of the public-spirited policy of 1845 with refer¬ ence to steam-navigation. The compensation of Collins was reduced in 1856 to $385,000. The contract was canceled by failure of renewal in 1857. The steamers were then withdrawn and sold to the Pacific Mail Company for the coasting-trade. In 1857 the Bremen and Havre contracts also expired. The former service went into the hands of Mr. Vanderbilt. The latter was continued by Mr. Livingston, with his two splendid 2,600-ton ship.s, which he could not withdraw from the trade, for there was no other to put them into; which, however, he continued to operate after this at a loss. A policy conceived with the highest motives, in 1845, which had in ten years given us the finest steamers upon the sea, which we were abundantly able to carry on, and in which every laudable motive of public policy operated to induce us to persevere,, was abandoned after a short and feeble trial. Tlie worst of it was that our tardy and vacillating action had caused the Europeans to put into our trade the steamers which we refused to encourage the building of ourselves. Our withdrawal of support to Atlantic steam-navigation left us in 1858 with five steamers only, of 11,000 tons burden, trading to European 58 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. ports. The Europeans had thirty-one steamero, of 57,000 tons burden, trading to the United States, namely : LINES. 1 6EEV1CE. NumW. 1 Tocnkge. 12 1 16,800 4 1 10,000 4 j 8,700 8 1 6.200 4 1 8,800 4 I 7,800 Europoan and Ainferican Steamship Co..' Bremen. Antwerp. Southamidon, N. Y. LlveriK)ol. Philadelphia, and >'ew York. Liverpool and New York. Ola,>;i;ow and New York. GlasRow and New York. Beljfian Tran.satlantic. i Antwerp and New Y'ork. Hamtiurg and American.| Hamburg and New Y'ork. The United States had in all only 52 ocean-steamers afloat in all its foreign and coasting trade, of a tonnage of 71,000. England had 156 steamers, of 210,000 tons burden, and the rest of h^urope 130 steamers, of a tonnage of 150,000. England was paying 85,330,000 in subsidies, and France had just offered 82,800,000 for the service to various parts of America alone. It may be remembered that England still pays in subsidies to steamers the sum of $4,420,000 annually in gold. Before any other effective cause came into play, the United States had abandoned the struggle for superiority upon the sea in the only class of vessels in which the bulk of the commerce of the world was thenceforward to be carried on. It had made a present of its foreign carrying-trade to Europe. The gift was accepted as fast as ships'could be built to take advantage of it. The change which took place imme¬ diately will be illustrated by comparing the proportion of the commerce of the country transacted in American and foreign ships before and after 1858, as follows ; YEARS. IMPORTS. EXPORTS. American Veuelt. Foreign Veueli. American Veuels. Forelitn Veaieli. law. $202,284,000 $.’)0,22.8,0fl0 $208,250,000 $71,905,000 law. 240.072,000 64,667,000 282,295,000 94.688,000 iaY7. 2.W.116,000 101.778,000 251,214,000 111,745,000 law. 20.8,700,000 78,91.8,000 248,490,000 81.144,000 law. 216,128,000 122.644,000 249,617,000 107.171,000 I860. 228,164,000 184,001,000 279,084,000 121,088,000 The increase in foreign vessels was from 24 per cent, of the whole to 33 per cent. After the War of 1861 broke out a complete revolution took place. The United States persisted in its passive policy, the rest of the world in an aggressive policy. The results of all this, as far as the commerce of the United States is concerned, may be seen in the following statement for the year ending June 30, 1877; IMPORTS. EXPORTS. American VeueU. Foreign Veu.1i. American VeueU. Foreign Veiselt. 1877. $151,826,000 $.329,565,000 $164,826,000 $520,854,000 THE DEC*U)EXCE OF OUR MARINE. 59 Americans actually carried less than sixteen years ago, when the total commerce was only half as large, and they had only 27 per cent, of the whole ! The United States made no further efforts in behalf of its steam ma¬ rine after 1858 until 1835, wdien a contract for §500,000 was given to the Pacihc Mail Company for carrying the mails to China and Japan, and another to a New York line to carry the mails between that j)ort and Brazil for §150,000. Both contracts were terminated at the end of ten years. The latter line being unable to maintain itself with tlie (Jd- fashioned steamers it then had against those of more modern construc¬ tion put by English merchants into the same trade, withdrew from the business. Five private efforts have since been made from Atlantic ports, but four were failures. The United States finds itself to-day without a policy in regard to foreign navigation ; with only tln-ee steam lines to transoceanic ports, two of which barely keep alive, and the third of which maintains itself only by reason of the Australian sub¬ sidy ; with a marine diminished 1,000,000 tons since 1860 ; and with nothing in the world to preserve its shipping from total extinction, ex¬ cept the regulation in regard to registration and the coasting-trade and the efforts of a handful of able and enterprising ship-builders. The United States lost in this matter of steam not only by failing to create a steam marine of her own, but by allowing another power to create an agency which took business away from American sailing- craft. In order to save a paltry million or two to the public Treasury for the time being, it had subjected its shipping in the foreign trade to ruin, thrown thousands of its people out of employment, and brought upon the country a tax of more than §20,000,000 a year for freight and passenger-money paid to foreigners. It is fortunate for the United States that the agricultural South and West, which are responsible for these evils, are themselves now demanding a government policy for the revi¬ val of American shipping. Before passing on from this branch of the subject, allusion may properly be made to the policy of England toward this country during the War of 1861. The unhappy conflict in this republic presented an important opportunity to commercial nations in the Old World, whoso conduct was guided sufficiently by a regardless self-interest to permit them to take advantage of it. England actively promoted the attempt to bring about a division of the country with a view to secure an en¬ larged sale of her manufactures in the Southern States, and at the same time she put in operation the means of bringing about a great destruc¬ tion of our shipping and a diversion of its carrying-trade. The war'it¬ self was a great calamity to navigation by reason of the fact that a re¬ public like this, which does not care to support a large armed navy, can Co AM/"KICAX NAVIGATION. only engage in naval operations by making a draft upon its merchant- shipping; and in the present case there were 1,175,000 tons of our sail¬ ing-craft and steamers diverted from legitimate trade and employed in the service of the Government. This was not, however, so severe a blow to our shipping as the arming of Confederate cruisers in British ports, and the sending them out to prey upon our commerce. In the former case, at least a million of tonnage had been thrown out of em¬ ployment in the coasting-trade by the prevalence of war. In the latter case, our shii)ping, engaged in profitable and peaceful navigation of the liigii-seas, was interfered with, captured, destroyed, and finally com¬ pelled to withdraw from trade, because there was too much insecurity in commerce under the American flag, and merchants gave their business in large part to the vessels of other nationalities. The cruisers de¬ stroyed only about 104,000 tons of shipping, but they threw hundreds of thousands more out of business. The English profited the most bj' this, as they intended to. They su])plied nearly all the ships needed for our trade, doubling their ship-building from 208,000 tons in 1861 to 462,000 in 1864, and forcing themselves into our commerce against our own crippled and helpless navigation; until to-day the harbor of New York flutters with British flags, and little resembles the principal com¬ mercial emporium of a great independent republic. Philadelphia is to¬ day the only great port on our seaboard that ev’en looks like an Ameri¬ can possession, and even there the foreigner also predominates in trade. The second great cause of our maritime decline is found in the facts in regard to the iron-industry. The United States is by Nature better qualified for the production of cheap iron of the best quality than England. It has an inexhaustible abundance of the metal and of coal, and the mines are more conveniently situated for getting out both ma¬ terials with a minimum of labor. The lack of capital here prevented a general utilization of our iron-mines, however, for a long period, and, when they did begin to be productive to any extent, it became impos¬ sible to obtain the iron in a manufactured state as cheaply as the manu¬ facturers in England could produce it, owing to a great variety of causes. The high tariff of 1842, the free-trade tariff of 1846, the de¬ mand for railway-material, and the high tariff of 1861, each operated to put this country for a time at a disadvantage in regard to iron-produc¬ tion. Iron ship-building was practised to a considerable extent here be¬ fore 1842. It began about 1825, when a steamboat called the Codorus was constructed, a light-draught affair, intended to run on the Susque¬ hanna River. This boat was subsequently sent South to run on some of the rivers of that region. Several others were built in the North along through the next twenty years, some of them on the Hudson. One, launched in 1834, was employed on the Savannah River, where in 1843 THE DECADENCE OE OUR MARINE. 61 five iron steamers were being actively employed. These boats sus¬ tained snagging wonderfully. In 1838 an iron steamboat called the Valley Forge was built at Pittsburg, to run as a packet between Nash¬ ville and New Orleans. She was a light, fast boat, and had other ad¬ mirable qualities, among them being that of rigidity of hull which fitted her well for Western navigation. She was run until 1815, when, the trade of the West having grown beyond her capacity, she was dis¬ mantled and made up into nails and spikes. Iron steam lines began also to be used on the coast. One ran between Hartford and Philadel¬ phia in 1842. The rise in the price of iron at different periods, and the increase of trade which required the construction of a new and larger class of ves¬ sels, checked the use of iron hulls in this country. We had the skill to build them, but the disproportion between their cost and that of wooden vessels became too great. After 1861 iron became so dear in this country that its use for anything except the armor of men-of-war was impossible ; and for more than ten years the construction of iron merchant-craft was entirely sus¬ pended. The tariff of 1861, however, brought about an extensive de¬ velopment of iron-mines. How well that tariff has done its work, and how much this country owes to it, need hardly be repeated. It gave us cheap iron among other things, and has put us in 1877 into a position to build iron vessels against any country in the world, Wiiile this development was taking place, however, England was actively building iron ships, sailers as well as steamers, which being cheaper than wooden ships, and being found to be, when well made, durable, needing little repair, and fleet, took the preference in many important trades over tim¬ ber ships, and added another weight to the burden oppressing our navi¬ gation. It is yet doubtful whether the iron sailing-ship is destined to enjoy a permanent advantage over the timber ship. Sailors prefer the latter, and Americans are content to compete for trade in the same sort of craft with which they once had almost won the flag of maritime supremacy from England. There is no movement in this country tow¬ ard the construction of iron sailing-craft, although our builders offer to manufacture them for the same prices for which they can be made in England. The building of wooden vessels still continues. If it were not for the rapid destruction of American forests now going on, it might be said still to be an unsettled question whether iron sailers would play any considerable part in the future commerce of the country'. What¬ ever may be the case in the future, however, it does not affect the fact that, in the past, it has been a disadvantage to us not to be able to build of iron as cheaply as the English. The present state of the iron-build¬ ing interest will be described in another chapter. The high prices which prevailed during, and for ten years after, the 02 A M ERIC AX X A VIC ATIOX. war were another cause of the decadence of our shipping. Labor con¬ stitutes so nearly the whole of the cost of a ship, that a small ikictua- tion in its market value is suflicient to put a building country in the van or in the rear of other nations. It was always a chief cause of our maritime growth that we could build cheaper than England. The high prices of the war immediately gave England the superiority over us, even in the construction of timber ships. It is only in the present year that her superiority in these important particulars has been practically destroyed, and the expense of construction somewhat equalized. The high prices also increased the cost of operating ships. American sail¬ ors demanded higher wages in order to live. That was a vast disad¬ vantage, which, however, has now been remedied in great degree by the return of more frugal times. The discovery of petroleum had an important influence upon the fleet engaged in the' whale-fisheries. We once had 700 sail in that business, and 17,000 seamen. The use of petroleum rendered the busi¬ ness unprofitable, and the tonnage ran down from 198,000 in 1858 to 39,000 in 1876. The Americans still do about all the whale-fishing, sea-elephantiiig, and sealing, that is carried on, but there are now only about 170 vessels in the business. Employment to shipping and valu¬ able training for mariners are lost by this change. The game itself is scarcer than in old times, and part of the decline may be attributed to that fact. The use of mineral oils was, however, the principal cause. Is it anj’ wonder that American shipping declined ? Is it strange that our total tonnage fell away from 5,353,868 in 1860 to 4,279,458 in 1876; and that part of it registered for the foreign trade from 2,546,- 237 in 1860 to 1,392,820 in 1876? Is it likely that the decline will go a step further except by reason of our subserviency to the ambitions and designs of foreign powers, and a failure to do something for our own legitimate interests ? Is there anything in the present situation which discourages in the slightest degree, except foreign policy ? And how are we to meet that ? WHAT MAY BE DONE. Various things may be done to meet the foreign competition against our navigation. One is a change of policy with respect to international trade. A revival of the law of 1817, which forbade any ship to bring a cargo to the United States except from the ports of the country to which it be- WHAT MAY CE DONE. 03 lon'^-s would work out an interesting result in regard to the navigation to South America and Asia. There are few ships native to those coun¬ tries trading to the United States. Less than twenty South American keels arrive in this country yearly out of a total of 1,100 entries from that part of the world. The vessels, not American, in the trade, are principally English. A law such as is referred to would instantly place in our hands the whole transportation between the United States and South America and Asia. We have all the steamers and sailing-craft needed to take advantage of it immediately. A law of that descrip¬ tion would also assist us in the Mediterranean trade, in which field English steamers are now making triangular voyages, to the injury of our navigation. It would also work out a most important result in the trade from the whole Continent of Europe confining the cheap sailing British, Italian, and Norwegian craft to the navigation from their own countries. This measure would secure an immediate ex¬ tension of the operations of our shipping without costing the country a dollar. It would give employment at once to the tens of thousands of tons of sailing-craft lying idle in our harbors. It would (uiablc the Government to withdraw the subsidy from the Pacific Mail steamers to China and Japan without injuring the line. It might, in fact, bo a better thing for the line than a subsidy. It would assist us in the sale of manufactures. A regulation requiring direct trade would no doubt be responded to by England by an enactment depriving American ships of whatever general trade from foreign countries to English ports they now enjoy. Whether we should lose more by that than we should gain is extremely doubtful, and we can afford to abandon the lesser for the greater. There is no doubt at all but that a policy so radical and aggressive would be regarded as a step backward toward the barbarism of the middle ages by free-traders, and by a number of delicate people, who deem it really the most dreadful thing in the world to think of doing anything to stir up the British lion and make him growl. Such a pol¬ icy would certainly have some of the masculinity and single-hearted devotion to country in it which distinguished the doings of the mid¬ dle ages, and it would, doubtless, make the British lion growl. Eng¬ land would reply to it by interfering with our ships at sea, and by send¬ ing a fleet to cannonade our cities, if she dared to. But it seems to the writer that Americans should not be governed by too excessive a regard for our British rival, and that the only question to be considered is. What will be proper and beneficial for our own country ? Some better man may be able to see grave reasons why direct-trade laws should not be adopted by the United States which do not occur to the writer; but, probably, no one will deny that the first effect of such a policy would be to give us a better position in the navigation to every 64 AMERICAN NAVIGATION. pjirt of the world immediately without cost to the country, thus giving employment to all our idle ships ; and that in its further operation it would confer a favor and a benefit upon South America, with which we so much desire to cultivate close and friendly relations, and uj)on every other great nation of the world, England alone excepted, and that it would, therefore, be regarded in a friendly light by them; and that England would not have the shadow of a right to complain that it was either unjust or unfriendly to her, or founded upon anything except coininou-sense and legitimate business principles. One change which has been suggested many times is in regard to the abolition of duties on ship-building material. There may have been a time when that would have benefited the foreign navigation of the United States. It would not be of the slightest advantage now. Timber is as cheap here as anywhere in the world. Thirty years ago the north of Europe had cheaper timber than the United States. But the forests of the north of Europe are fast becoming exhausted, and timber has risen in consequence. In Canada, where they have cheap building-stuflf, the wood is inferior in quality to that of American growth, and American ship-owners do not care to use it. Italy has en¬ joyed the advantage of cheap building-material in the past, but her situation is not superior to that of the United States, because her builders are obliged to import their masts and spars from America. Our position in regard to timber is as good as could be desired. No encouragement need be given to the importation of it. Advantage has never been taken of the law of 1872, which allows the importation of lumber for the construction and equipment of vessels for the foreign trade, more than to the extent of a few thousand dollars a year. Under the law of 1872,-copper, iron, and steel rods, bolts, spikes, nails, hemp, and manila, can be imported free of charge for shipping purposes. These things are all so cheap in the United States that the importation under the law is only about S100,000 worth a year. The only material for ship-building which cannot now be imported free of duty is iron. Five years ago it might have been an important help to builders to be able to obtain their iron free of duty. The price was then $48 a ton. The duty was $7. To have permitted the importation of iron free of tax would have qualified our builders to com¬ pete with the English in the construction of iron ships on something like equal terms. Since that time, however, the price of iron has fallen to $20 a ton, and in Ohio they are producing it for $16 a ton. No law abolishing the duty would put our builders in a much better position in regard to this class of raw material than they now enjoy. It may be mentioned that our builders do not at present ask for a repeal of the duty on iron. The demand for this does not come from them. On the contrary, it is believed they are generally opposed to it. WIIAT MAY BE DONE. 65 It does not clearly appear where the recent demand for a repeal of the duties on ship-building material comes from, or what those who j)ro- pose it expect that "we will gain by it. A brief consideration of the sub¬ ject ouglit to convince an .\iiierican, however, that nothing can be done in this direction which would be of any special value to American shipping. A repeal of duties on all the supplies of a ship, so as to cheapen the expenses of operation, has been suggested by various ship-owners as of probable utility. Its value would be slight, but as far as the law would go it would probably be beneficial. AVould a change of the registry laws be of any avail ? The free¬ traders arc very active now in asserting that it would be. The ques¬ tion is. Would such an extraordinary change of our national policy secure a larger field for the employment of American ships ? AVith reference to the coasting-trade, it is not clear how our ship-owners would gain by it. They enjoy an exclusive monopoly of that trade already. An abandonment of our policy in regard to the registration of vessels could only diminish the number of American ships in the business, if it had any effect at all. Would there be an increase of American tonnage in the foreign trade if Americans could buy their ships in other lajids ? That would appear to depend on the probability of obtaining ships at a ma¬ terially reduced cost in foreign'ship-yards. Seven years ago, when this subject was under discussion, Joseph Nimmo, Jr., chief of the tonnage division of the Treasury Department, collected a large amount of infor¬ mation in regard to the cost of ships. From his report it appears that the expense of building timber ships in the United States at that time was from $50 to $60 a ton in gold for oak ships, and from $40 to $50 a ton in Canada for spruce ships. The cost of iron sailing-vessels in Eng¬ land was $95 a ton in gold, and in the United States $125 a ton. A remarkable change in the expense of building has taken place since that time. It will be recollected that gold has fallen from 1.30 to 1.03; labor has depreciated thirty per cent.; and iron has fallen one-half. In¬ terest has also been materially reduced. The result is, that the cost of building in this country does not now exceed the cost abroad by ten per cent. It is doubtful whether as great a difference as that exists. Our builders now offer to construct steam and sailing vessels, grade for grade, for the same prices as the builders abroad. What fine point of advantage, then, would our ship-owners gain by buying their ships abroad ? Do American ship-owners want to buy ships abroad ? It is believed that they do not, and that the whole agitation of this subject originates outside of American ship¬ ping and mercantile circles. The principal effect of a repeal of the registry laws for the foreign trade would be the importation of old English hulls to America to be cut up as scrap-iron. It would afford no relief to American navigation. 5 66 AMEKICAN NAVIGATIOX. There is one thing which may be done, which would liave an impor¬ tant influence in increasing the amount of American tonnage in our for¬ eign trade, and at the same time stimulate the industrial interests of the country in a useful manner. This is, to encourage our countrymen to build and operate lines of first-class steamships in our foreign trade. There can be no important revival of American navigation without a large and prosperous steam marine. Steam is superseding sails the world over. It is cheaper than the winds of heaven in certain trades, and more serviceable. No civilized nation of the earth dreams of mari¬ time expansion in this age except in the direction of fleets of steam packet-ships. The day of the sailing-vessels for all regular and valu¬ able trade is passing away, and the United States might as well equip its armies for the next foreign war with bows and arrows as expect to regain its maritime eminence with anything except iron steamships. The present is a very interesting period in our national history. Our trade has grown to enormous proportions, yet we are under the necessity of expanding it still further. To employ our population, it is necessary to extend the sale of our manufactures in foreign lands. We can compete with our industrial rivals in the great markets of the South and West as far as exeellenee and prices of our goods arc concerned, but we cannot get the goods to those markets rapidly and conveniently for lack of transportation facilities. A great opportunity opens before the country for maritime and industrial expansion. The Government would betra}' the people it has been created to aid and protect if it hesitates to discharge its duty in the matter. The plan of encouraging our own citizens to build steamships, and to trade in them to Africa, South America, Europe, and other markets, by the grant of mail-contracts, is probably the best of those proposed for the revival of our navigation and the extension of our commerce. It will accomplish the end desired without sacrificing any other impor¬ tant national interest, and it is a simple and effective plan. The argu¬ ment in behalf of mail-contracts is the old one, which has been re¬ garded as valid in every age and every country, and is still influential with all the civilized governments of the world, our own included, that projects of vast public utility, of which individuals cannot bear the risk and expense, and which promise to promote the national w’ealth, and in time to be self-sustaining, may safely and prudently be treated as enterprises of public concern and directly encouraged by the Government. It was exactly this principle which led the State of New York to build the Erie Canal at its own expense—a work which repaid its whole cost of construction in ten years—reduced the cost of freight from Lake Erie to the Hudson from $100 to $7 a ton, and added $100,000,000 to the value of the farms of the State, to say nothing of what it did for the West. It is this principle which led the United WHAT MAY BE DONE. G7 States to grant 183,000,000 acres of the public lands to aid in the construction of railroads, 38,000,000 of the grant having now been patented, a gift for which it has been fully reimbursed by the increased money-value of the other public lauds in the neighborhood of the rail¬ roads, built by the aid of the land-grants, and which has proved of in¬ estimable profit to private citizens by adding to the market-value of their lands, and reducing the cost of freight to one-tenth what it was before the roads were built, and often to less than one-tenth. The Government has been patriotic and liberal in its application of this principle to the benefit of the agricultural interest, and has been re¬ warded for it satisfactorily and completely. It is now asked that the principle shall be applied for the benefit of the shipping and manufacturing interests of the country. The profit which will accrue to the people from taking this step will not be so palpable as in the case of Government aid to internal improvements, but it will be no less real and immediate. The expenditure of a few millions annually in compensation to steamship lines to enable them to meet the foreign competition, and get a foothold in trade, will save to the country $50,000,000 or more of tribute now paid to foreigners for freight and passenger-money. It will give employment on land and sea to American labor, and insure an enlarged sale of American manufactures abroad. It will secure to our countrymen the profits of their own vast commerce and its beneficial influence be felt in every part of the republic. This policy will be fully in accord, too, with the spirit of the age and the example of the older nations, whose example in other respects we regard as worthy of all imitation. A thorough-going congressional investigation of the whole subject of our commerce, manufactures, and navigation, would be of great ser¬ vice in enabling merchants and the Government to cooperate harmo¬ niously and intelligently. It would bring about a better understanding between the agricultural, industrial, and mercantile classes, and would reveal the directions in which effort should be expended. It would tend to give us what we so greatly lack and so much need, a national policy with respect to our foreign navigation. THE END. W. _ The Two Toremost Fopular Scientific Magazines, THE POPOLAR MCE MONTHLY, POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY SUPPLEMENT. Conducted by E. L. YOUMANS. PUIC'LIS. PEU NUMBER. PER TEAR. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.50 cenU.|;5.00 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 8UPPLE.MENT.25 “ . .S.OO TUK MONTHLY AND SUPPLEMENT, TAKEN TOOETHEK. 7.00 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY Was started (in 1872) to promote the diffusion of valuable scientific knowledpe. In a readable and attrac¬ tive form. atnoiiB all classes of the couimuiiily, and has thus far met a want supplied by no other magaalno in the United States. It is published in a larpo octavo, handsomely printed in clear type, and, when the subjects admit, fully Illustrated. Each number contains not less than 12s napes. Ten volumes have now ai)peared. which are filled with instructive and interestinp articles and ab¬ stracts of articles, original, selected, translated, and illustrated, from the pens of the leading scientific men of different countries. Accounts of important scientific discoveries, the application of science to the prac¬ tical arts, and the latest views put forth concerning natural phenomena, have been given \>y 8(tvanU of the highest authority. Prominent attention has been also devoted to those various sciences wliich help to a better understanding of the nature of man, to the bearings of science upon the questions of society and government, to scientific education, and to the contiicts which spring from the progressive nature of scien- tifle knowledge. The following quotations illustrate the way it has been habitually spoken of by the press: “It is 60 plainly written that he who reads can fully understand.”—ji/hnny Sunday Press. “Is striving' to give us the ideas of the very ablest men upon all scientific subjects.”—.BrooWyn Daily Times. “ Will enable an ordinary business¬ man to keep himself informed of the most important scientific events and discoveries of the day.”—-Syracuse .Morning Standard. “ That there is a place for ‘The Popular Science Monthly,’ no one can doubt who has watched the steady , increase of interest in scientific investigation manifested in this country, not only by a select class, but by the entire community.”—AVo) York Times. “This is the best magazine ever published in America.”—Aiew York World. “Promises to be of eminent value to the cause of popular education in this country.”- New York Tribune. “Is, beyond comparison, the best attempt at journalism of the kind ever made in this country.”—//o/n<\oa.anTO."—Daily Courier, Buffalo, N. Y. “This new venture of Appleton & Co. ought to be very successful.”— The Daily Spy, Worcester, Mass. “The ‘Supple¬ ment’ contains several able and interesting Hartford Daily CourarU. “It is a work of rare interest and ability.”— Bulletin. D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. I. II I S T O II Y or EUROPEAIs^ MOEALS, From Augustus to Charlemagne. By WILLIAM E. II. LECKY, M. A. THIRD EDITION, REVISED. 2 vols., 12mo.Cloth, $3.00. “It has been subjected to such critical attack, and sustained by such able defense, that its worth is universally known. It is a mine of information in a restricted but important province, and will long be quoted for its thoroughness in opening a study which, though touched by other writers, never before had such exhaustive consideration. Those who have not read it will find their study richly rewarded .”—Albany Evening Times. “In his methods, Mr. Lecky is a model of clearness and force. Holding firmly the doctrine of evolution in morals, he finds the origin of typical vices and virtues in the ideal standards of the people, tracing the specific virtues and vices of each epoch considered to the special characteristics of a preceding epoch, which have been handed down as ideals. That his conclusions do not command universal acceptance is undoubtedly true, but they do command respect wherever honest thought and faithful labor, in search after truth, are appreciated.”— Detroit Free Press. “There is a vast fund of information in the work, wdiich the student of the broad theme that it treats will find of great interest, and one to which he may refer, as occasion requires, with a certainty of finding something to the point. The volumes are arranged with foot-notes, giving authorities, references, and quotations .”—Evening Wisconsin. “ The controversial part of the first chapter having given rise to a good deal of discussion, and to some little acrimony of feeling, perhaps, the author has softened it by the omission of a few lines, and strengthened his position by the insertion of some brief passages, explaining the meaning, or enforcing it.”— Ne^o Yorh Evening Post. “The excellence of this work is already attested, and it has long ago been considered a standard. The controversial ])ortion of the work is clear in its statements, and so masterly in its handling of the salient points that none but an exceedingly obtuse person could fail to catch the full force of the argument presented. The author’s object is to trace the changes that have taken place in the moral standard and moral type through the different ages, and he concerns himself mostly with the period between Augustus and Charlemacne.”— Indian¬ apolis Journal. New York: D. APPLETON & COMPANY. “ No more stirring chronicle of adventure zuas ever penned." —LONDON QUARTERLY. New Lands within the Arctic Circle. NARRATIVE OF THE DISCOVERIES OF THE AUSTRIAN SHIP TEGETTHOFF IN i872-’74. By JULIUS PAYER, ONE OF THE COMMANDERS OF THE EXPEDITION. Containing upward of One Hundred Illustrations from Drawings by the Author, engraved by J. D. Cooper, a Colored Frontispiece and Route Maps, and Preface comparing the Results of the English and Austrian Expeditions. I vol., medium 8 vo . Cloth, extra, $3.50. ** We advise all who desire to enjoy a genuine and unalloyed pleasure to read his book, which will bear more than one perusal. We are mistaken if it does not take rank with the best of our English arctic narratives, and become a permanent favorite with old and young. The well-executed illustrations from the pencil of the author add greatly to the value and attractions of the book.”— London Times. “ Lieutenant Payer has written its story in a style not surpassed in fascinating in¬ terest and scientific value by any of those old narratives that are still the delight of all who love to read of the adventures of daring men.”— Nature. “No arctic navigator, since the days of W^illiam Barentz, has had a more startling tale to tell, and not one has told it better.”— Athenceum. “ Cold-blooded, indeed, must the reader be who can study these volumes without a thrill of almost too intense excitement. For literary power, the story of the Tegetlhofl stands in the very front rank of arctic narrative.”— Graphic. “ The result of the voyage is given by Lieutenant Payer in a magnificent work. . . . No more stirring chronicle of adventure was ever penned. ... It is impossible to avoid recording our tribute of admiration to the heroic endurance with which, after abandoning their ship, they struggled for months across a treacherous floating desert of ice in their return home.”— London Quarterly. “ This remarkable adventure, the record of which stands, in many respects, alone amid the stories of arctic discovery. , . . The book presents a singularly vivid picture of a marvelous expedition.”— Edinburgh Revirw. “ M. Payer tells his story with the simple directness of a man who knows that his unvarnished tale has power in itself to move the reader. There is throughout his nar¬ rative a charm rarely to be met with in the tales of arctic adventure and discovery.”— London Spectator. “It is one of the most interesting tales of personal experiences, of hardship, toil, and peril, of valiant endurance and performance, to be found in the records of seaforing life and enterprise. Lieutenant Payer relates it altogether well, simply and modestly, without any self-glorification, but fully setting forth, in justice to his comrades and shipmates of all ranks, their actual labors and privations.”— London Saturday Review^ New York: D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers. THE AET JOHEML EOE 1878. The Art Journal for 1878 will contain features that will Tender it invaluable to artists, amateurs, and all persons interested in Painting, Sculpture, Arohi- TECTURE, Decoration, Furnishing, Ornamentation, Engraving, Etching, or Designing in any of its branches. It will be a record of Progre.ss in the Arts; it will afford instruction to amateurs and students; it will furnish designers with innumerable suggestions; it will give examples of what is doing in Europe and America in the different arts; it will be a choice gallery of engravings, executed in the best manner, on both steel and wood. Among the varied features for 1878 will be the following: DECORATIVE ART.—A series will be commenced immediately, designed to give instruction in the principles of Decorative Art, in the application of natural forms to or¬ namentation, with designs for China-Painting, Furniture, Carving, Embroidery, Lace, Wall-Decoration, Pottery, and for all industries into which decoration or ornament enters, AMERICAN INTERIORS.—Illustrations of artistic furnishing, as exemplified in American homes, will be given, engraved in the best manner possible. THE HOMES OF AMERICA.—This series, hitherto so popular, will be con- tinned, giving views of residences in different parts of the country, including the stately mansions of the wealthy, the picturesque homes of the people, and views of the residences of noted men. AMERICAN PAINTERS.—The series of articles on American Artlsts, accom- panied by examples of their works, has been very popular, and will be continued during the present year. The engravings in this series afford some of the best examples of wood¬ cutting ever given to the public. THE PARIS EXPOSITION FOR 1878.—Illustrations of contributions of an Art-character to the French Expo.sition of next spring will also appear. Large space will be given to this feature. STEEL ENGRAVINGS.—Each number will contain three Steel Engravings, in many instances a single plate being worth more than the price of the number. The steel engravings will consist of examples of BRtTisii, American, and Continental Artists. Views of subjects in Sculpture will be given. OTHER FEATURES.—Papers on contemporary British Artists, with e-xamples of their works, engraved on wood, will appear; American and Foreign Art-Manufact- UREs will be illustrated; new Churches, Buildings, and Monuments, will be described and engraved. Nothing will be loft undone to sustain the reputation of this publication as the most valuable and beautiful of all the Art Periodicals in the world. Printing, paper and een oral get-up. will continue to be of the best character, such as to win tlie commeiidadon of ail critics. uauuu The Art Journal contains the Steel Plates and Illustrations of the London Art Jour- nal (the exclusive right of which, for Canada and the United States, has been purchased by the ptiblishcrs), with extensive additions relating to American Art and American topic.-!. The proprietors give notice that some of the steel plates and illustrations appear¬ ing m the ^xiWN Art Journal are engraved and copyrighted in this country, and that copyr?ghTof thlrwoi English issue are an infringement upon the n!.l monthly. &ld onht by Subscription. Price, 76 Cents per Number (pay- Publishers per Annum, in advance, postage prepaid byVe D. APPLETO.V & CO., Publishers, 549 i 551 Broadway, N. T. Philadelphia; 22 Post-Office Avenae, Bal- Agencies ; timore; .V '' 8t.. Chicar. FranciBco. APPLETONS AMERICAN CYCLOPAEDIA. ISTEW EX)ITI01Sr- Entirely rewritten by the ablest writers on every subject. Printed from new type, and illustrated with Several Thousand Engravings and Maps. Tlie work originally published under the title of The New American Cyclop^du was completed in 1863, since which time the wide circulation which it has attained in all parts of the United States, and the si^al developments which have taken place in every branch of science, literature, and art, have induced the editors and publishers to submit it to an exact and thorough revision, and to issue a new edition entitled The American Cyclopedia. Within the last ten years the progress of discover^’ in every department of knowledge has made a new work of reference an imperative want. The movement of political affairs has kept pace witli the discoveries of science, and their fruitful application to the industrial and useful arts and the convenience and refinement of social life. Great wars and consequent revolutions have occurred, involving national changes of peculiar moment. The civil war of our own countrv, which was nt its height when the last volume of the old work appeared, has happily Been ended, and a new course of com¬ mercial and industrial activity has been commenced. Largo accessions to our geographical knowledge have been made by the indefatigable explorers of Africa. ^ The great political revolutions of the last decade, with the natural result of the lapse of time, have brought into public view a multitude of new men, whoso names are in every one’s mouth, and of whose lives ever)' one is curious to know the particulars. Great bat¬ tles have been fought, and important sieges maintained, of which the details are as yet preserved only in tne newspapers, or in tlio transient publications of the day, but which ought now to take their jilace in permanent aud authentic history'. m preparing the present edition for the press, it has accordingly been the aim of the editors to bring down the information to the latest possible dates, and to furnish an accurate account of the most recent discoveries in science, of every IVesh production in literature, and the ncw'est inventions in the practical arts, ns well as to give a succinct and original record of the progress of politicitl and historical events. The work has been begun after long and careftil preliminary labor, and with the most ample resources for carr)’ing it on to a successful termination. None of the original stereotype plates have been used, but every' page has been printed on new type, forming in fact a new Cyclopa?diA, with the same plan and compass as its predecessor, but with a far greater pecuniaiy expenditure, and with such improvements in its composition as liave been suggested by longer experience and enlarged knowledge. The illustrations, which are introduced for the first time in the present edition, have been added not for the sake of pictorial effect, but to give greater lucidity and force to the explanations in the text. They embrace all branches of science and of natural history, and depict the most famous and remarkable features of scenery, architecture, and art, as w'ell as the various processes of mechanics and manufactures. Although intended for instruction rather than embellishment, no pains have been spared to insure tlieir artistic excellence; the cost of their execution is enormous, and it is believed that they will filid a welcome re¬ ception as an admirable feature of the Cycloptedia, and w orthy of its high character. This w'ork is sold to subscribers only, payable on delivery ol' each volume. It is now completed in sixteen large octavo volumes, each containing over 800 pages, fullv illustrated with several thousand Wood Engravings, and with numerous eoloredLithographic Maps. PRICE AND STYLE OF BINDING. In extra cloth, per vol. .... $5.00 ' In half russia, extra gilt, per vol. . $8.00 In library leather, per vel. . . . (>.< 3 a\ In full morocco antique, gilt edges, per vol. 10.00 In half turkey morocco, per voL . . 7.00 ! In full russia, per vol. .... 10.00 •%* Specimen pages of the American Cvclopedia, showing type, illustrations, etc., will be sent gratis, on. application. D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 549 & 55 1 Broadway, New York. I y r.'- •t- i I is- m-.- iPliv I: I r' Hr