10 SPECIAL MAY MEETING. 
I will say only just a few words about the subsidy, because the congressman has ex- 
plained that quite fully. I am in hearty cooperation with him about the subsidy. We 
need a subsidy and we must have some subsidy. The subsidy they propose is only going 
to be a help. But what I have got to say is this, if | am able through all the hard times we 
have had to operate British ships and ask no subsidy, never got any, and have made a cer- 
tain amount of success out of it, if our laws and our regulations were exactly the same why 
couldn’t I operate American ships just the same? Every law that ever was put on the 
statute books recently is on it today. Those laws put our merchant marine off the ocean, 
drove it right off the ocean, and those laws are all on the statute books; but they are not 
enforced. But it is like holding a club over a fellow’s head; some day it will come down and 
break our heads for us. 
On the Pacific we had the Pacific Mail. That was the oldest company there; they were 
driven off the ocean. James J. Hill, the grand old man, put ships on the ocean and lost a 
fortune by operating them and had to go off. The Boston Towboat people from Boston put 
a fine fleet of ships on the Pacific, and they are gone. Two months ago there was not a 
privately American owned cargo ship on that great Pacific Ocean. I repeat that again, there 
was not one privately American owned cargo ship on the Pacific Ocean. Is that not a com- 
mentary? Not a single one. There are four now; I bought four from the Government and 
put them on there, and God knows whether I will succeed with them or not. (Laughter and 
applause.) I told Mr. Lasker when I bought them that I was going to put them on the ocean, 
and I was going to try, and I said, “I am going to do my damnedest, and whether I will 
succeed or not I don’t know.” (Laughter.) 
There has been a great deal said about the cost of ships. That is something we are inter- 
ested in. I read in the paper, I do not know whether the party was correctly reported or not, 
but he said that he did not know of ships having been sold in Great Britain previous to the 
war at less than $45 a ton. Now I have contracted to get. ships built in Great Britain, sev- 
eral of them, and I never paid $30. 
As to the wages, a great deal has been said about them. ‘Oh, there is only just a little 
bit of difference between American wages and the British wages. It doesn’t make much dif- 
ference. And then, our conditions are just about the same, and all it wants is the superior 
energy and get-up of the American shipowner, and he will overcome it all.” I want to tell 
you it is a mountain to overcome. 
I have taken some figures off my own books; not what some fellow told me. I took 
them just before I left home. An American ship that I am operating with an American 
crew costs $3,718.50 a month. A British ship that | am operating with a Chinese crew costs 
me $1,567.20 a month. A Japanese ship that 1 am operating—I have got six of them—cost 
me $1,403.12, very nearly the same as the British. 
Take the American ship for twelve months and the British for twelve months; it is 
$25,715 more that I would have to pay with my American ship than with my British ship. 
Some good people tell us, “Oh, that is not much”; but I want to tell you, if you multiply that 
by about twenty, if you have got about twenty ships, they would soon begin to think it is 
plenty. (Laughter. ) 
The subsidy which is proposed on a 10,000-ton ship operating on the Pacific, just as 
our ships are operating, would give us $12,375a year. That, you see, taken off from the 
wages, would be only about half what we have to pay for the crews, just for the wages and 
the board. That is the reason I say it will help; it will help some, just a little. (Laughter. ) 
