GOVERNMENTAL INTERFERENCE. 307 



ernraental interference with the natural course of industries, second in 

 importance only to that aflForded by the experience of sugar. 



Thus, to accomplish the purpose ahove noted, the French Govern- 

 ment offered in 1881 to give a bounty of $12 a ton on all ships built in 

 French yards of iron and steel ; and a subsidy of $3 per 10 tons for 

 every 1,000 miles sailed by French vessels ; and as they did not desire 

 to put any inhibition on the citizens of France buying vessels in for- 

 eign countries and making them French property, in case they desired 

 to do so, they proposed to give one half the latter subsidy to vessels 

 of foreign construction bought by citizens of France and transferred 

 to the French flag. 



At the outset, as was the case with the sugar bounties, the scheme 

 worked admirably. New and extensive steamship lines were organized 

 with almost feverish haste, and the construction of many new and 

 large steamers was promptly commenced and rapidly pushed forward 

 in various French ports, and also in the ship-yards of Great Britain and 

 other countries. The Government paid out a large amount of money, 

 and it got the ships. In two years their tonnage increased from a 

 little over 300,000 to nearly 700,000 tons for steamers alone ; while 

 the tonnage engaged on long voyages increased in a single year from 

 3,000,000 to over 4,700,000 tons. 



It was probably a little galling to the French to find out after two 

 years' experience that most of the subsidies paid by the Government 

 were earned by some 200 iron steamers and sailers, and that over six 

 tenths of these were built and probably owned in large part in Great 

 Britain ; so that the ship-yards on the Clyde got the lion's share of the 

 money. But as all the vessels were transferred to and sailed under the 

 French flag, and were regarded as belonging to the French mercantile 

 marine, everything seemed to indicate that the new scheme was work- 

 ing very well, and that the Governn^ent had really succeeded in build- 

 ing up the shipping of France. But the trouble was that the scheme 

 did not continue to work. The French soon learned by experience 

 the truth of the economic maxim, that ships are the children and not 

 the parents of commerce ; and that while it was easy to buy ships out 

 of money raised by taxation, the mere fact of the ownership of two or 

 three hundred more ships did no more to increase trade, than the pur- 

 chase and ownership of two or three hundred more plows necessarily 

 increased to a farmer the amount of arable land to plow ; or, in other 

 words, the French found that they had gone to large expense to buy a 

 new and costly set of tools, and then had no use for them. 



And, what was worse, they found, furthermore, that while they had 

 not increased trade to any material extent, they had increased the com- 

 petition for transacting what trade they already possessed. The re- 

 sult has been that many French shipping-companies that before the 

 subsidy system were able to pay dividends are now no longer able ; 

 fortunes that had been derived from the previous artificial pros- 



