226 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. (AMERICAN SHIPPING.) 



per cent. These should be imported free, fash- 

 ioned and ready for being put together in the 

 vessel. Certainly, the portion of the labor to 

 be done in putting the parts together may riot 

 amount to much ; but if it do not, then the 

 cost of the vessel is less. This is a desidera- 

 tum not to be despised in a desperate case like 

 that of our ship-building, where such odds fa- 

 vor our competitors. 



"2. May I not ask why a tariff which kills 

 commerce should be continued? The people 

 are giving answer ; but whatever that answer 

 is, the entire and beneficent revision of the 

 tariff, with the resultant reduction in the 

 price of materials and labor, is not contem- 

 plated. Nor is the revival of commerce on a 

 large and normal scale likely to happen as the 

 sequence of our tariff reform. 



"Commerce means barter, exchange; buy- 

 ing and selling, both. If we would sell our 

 products abroad, we must buy abroad. The 

 tariff, by preventing importations or exchanges, 

 as in the South American examples which the 

 report of the minority shows, destroys com- 

 merce. Commerce being absent, of what use 

 is the ship or its revival? Of what use is the 

 telescope if there were no stars, or the spindle 

 without cotton, or any instrumentality with- 

 out that which gives it employment ? So that 

 when we revive commerce by revising the 

 tariff, which is the grand obstacle to recipro- 

 cal trade, we make, and make profitable, the 

 means of commerce namely, ships. 



"But it will be said that the revisal of the 

 tariff, especially as to iron, steel, cable and 

 cordage, sail-duck, plank, deals, lumber, wire- 

 rope, rivets, tubes, bolts, pipes, iron screws, 

 etc., touches other interests, and that these 

 are 'protected,' and that the protection is 

 riveted upon our Government as an American 

 policy. This would seem to have been and to 

 be our shackled condition. Nor do I see how 

 to free and enlarge either ship-building or com- 

 merce except by the liberalization of our bar- 

 barous and prohibitive tariff. The San Fran- 

 cisco traders are more politic. They accept 

 the outrage as accomplished ; they regard the 

 tariff as perpetuated. Hence they ' beg ' that 

 is their word to have the loot returned to 

 them, to draw back the plunder and place it 

 where it will do the most good. 



"Well, I say to them, and to my constitu- 

 ents who have been largely interested in both 

 building and using vessels, that just now there 

 is no chance to so revise the tariff on the com- 

 posite parts of a ship as to allow us to make 

 it as cheap here as it can be made or bought 

 abroad. 



'^'Nor is it possible just now to so revise our 

 tariff as to make our trade with other coun- 

 tries mutual, and thus have incoming as well as 

 outgoing cargoes, which bring paying freightage. 



"What then? This and only this as the 

 remedy for the revival of both* ship- building 

 and ship-using: purchase in the open market 

 of the finished ship. Eepeal the odious navi- 



gation laws, so as to allow registry free of 

 duty as to all vessels the same as if built and 

 owned here. 



"If I am answered that this will destroy 

 our ship-building, I answer 



"1. That as to wooden ships and ships that 

 are ' auxiliary,' having steam and sail, such as 

 Maine is now making for California, we are 

 assured that we can build as acceptably and as 

 cheaply as any other nation. The last year's 

 showing in Maine demonstrates that her ship- 

 yards are doing well ; there being 80,000 tons 

 completed and on the stocks since last year. 

 They need no bounty. 



U 2. That as to iron or steel vessels, could 

 we be worse off than we are now by any 

 change of fact or law ? The catalogue of our 

 iron and steel vessels is the humiliation of our 

 enterprise. It is the one bar sinister on our 

 escutcheon. 



" If it be said again that the repeal of the 

 navigation laws will destroy our ship-yards, 

 we reply that there is nothing on our stocks 

 of much general consequence in iron ship- 

 building; and since the business will not re- 

 munerate without subsidies or bounties or 

 general taxes on all the people for one inter- 

 est, let us try the experiment which other 

 nations have tried successfully, namely, buy 

 abroad, since we can not fyuild at home. 



"It is argued that, because a great many 

 poor ships are built in England, those are the 

 ships that we would buy if we could! Un- 

 doubtedly there are many poor carriages built 

 in England. We are at liberty to import land 

 vehicles, while we can not import vehicles to 

 be used on the water. When we do import 

 carriages we import the best. The Americans 

 are not fools. Let the buyer of a horse or a 

 ship beware. Why should not trade and 

 labor be left a little to natural laws? Are 

 there not regulations more powerful than 

 Congress can make? Repeal burdens and re- 

 straints; stop the talk about stimulation; 

 practice non-intervention these are maxims 

 only less radical and wholesome than the nat- 

 ural prescripts which ordain them. 



" Could we have seen ten or twenty years 

 ago to-day what others saw, we might have 

 had to-day a splendid fleet of screw-steamers 

 under our flag. The earnings might have 

 been saved to us. We relied on our own 

 ship-yards, and in 1881 but eight of the 44,463 

 tons of steamers built on our seaboard were 

 for the ocean, or only 1 per cent, of the Brit- 

 ish tonnage built the same year. Our citizens, 

 had they been allowed, would have bought the 

 ships of iron and steel we could not build. 

 One of the oldest ship-builders and owners of 

 the United States, formerly a member here, 

 writes me that had we had the privilege of 

 buying iron ships there would to-day have 

 been two hundred of them under our flag; 

 and he says: 



" I do not believe there would have been many 

 more ships in the world than at present, only we 



