30 OPERATING PROBLEMS OF THE AMERICAN SHIPOWNER. 
tant Committee on the Seagoing Personnel. The captain in his paper lays emphasis, as I 
am sure we all in our thoughts lay emphasis, on the great Shipping Bill now pending in the 
Congress of the United States. I imagine that not one of us regards that as a wholly per- 
fect measure, looking at it from our own separate standpoints, but I am very sure that all 
of us agree on this, that with its faults and its lacks, it is the very strongest and most satis- 
factory measure of legislation ever presented for the permanent upbuilding of the merchant 
marine. 
The bill has been, as you know, the subject of long hearings. It will pass in a few days 
into the hands of the House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, a leader of which, 
Representative Edmonds, we have listened to with so much pleasure and so much instruction 
tonight. I imagine that that committee of responsible legislators, thoroughly versed in the 
shipping question, may make some changes in detail in that measure, may improve that meas- 
ure, make it more workable and politically stronger, because they know far better than we 
know the political aspect of this question of the merchant marine. 
On that bill, gentlemen, there hangs the fate of the ocean shipowning and shipbuilding 
industries of the United States. We are having or will have soon our day in court in Wash- 
ington. It behooves us all, as men identified with these maritime industries, to acquaint our- 
selves thoroughly with the provisions of the measure when it appears again in its perfected 
form from Mr. Edmonds’ committee; and it behooves us as citizens to see to it that all of 
us, every one of us, gives the fullest possible support as citizens to that measure while it is 
under consideration in the House and Senate. 
It has been well said here, in the course of the address presented to you, and well said 
by President Raymond of the Shipowners’ Association, that that measure, if it succeeds, if 
it becomes a law, is destined to be the Magna Charta of the new American merchant marine. 
Most of you here this evening are identified with the shipbuilding industry. I can 
assure you that that bill means as much for you as it means for us, who are identified with 
the navigation of ships. I am betraying no secret, I am simply stating a fact that I know 
is known to you, that a great many of the American shipowning companies have very active 
and well advanced plans at this time for extensive and valuable shipbuilding. Those plans 
hang in a measure on the success of this pending legislation. I find that even our coast- 
wise companies, our companies engaged entirely in the domestic trade, are waiting to see 
what happens to this Shipping Bill for subsidies and other aid to shipping in the foreign 
trade, before they close their contracts for coastwise steamers. 
Of course, on the fate of this legislation hang absolutely all plans for larger steamers for 
the overseas trade. And under this bill, while it may take some time to get out of the way 
the very large volume of government-owned shipping, it is only a question of time and not 
a question of many years, nor even a few years, before the great shipping companies en- 
gaged in commerce overseas will be going to your yards to build a fleet of the finest steam- 
ers ever launched under the American flag. 
We realize better than the outside public does, better than the legislators do, that this 
tonnage of the Shipping Board, valuable though it is in the development of our merchant 
marine, is not a satisfactory fulfillment of an effort to make that merchant marine again 
symmetrical and worthy of the American nation. The ships that shipowners will build, if 
left to themselves, are not in the government fleet today; they are not included among the 
hastily war-built tonnage. The ships that will distinguish the American merchant marine, if 
we get that American merchant marine going in earnest on the ocean, are ships of a higher 
