236 THE IMPORTANCE OF PORT FACILITIES IN THE 



vice. For by possessing a thoroughly well-equipped transportation and delivery service, 

 making prompt and efficient deliveries, he has one of the important elements that enables 

 him to compete successfully with other merchants and thereby maintain and enlarge his 

 sales. A merchant would undoubtedly consider it suicidal from a business standpoint to 

 entrust the delivery of his own products or merchandise to the delivery service of a com- 

 peting concern. Besides this, the merchant's efficient delivery service has a great adver- 

 tising value and, if this is combined in suburban routes with the solicitation of orders, 

 it becomes an important adjunct of the sales department. 



Of course we can always export and sell our agricultural and industrial products where 

 they are absolutely necessary to foreign customers and cannot be secured from other sources, 

 and even export such products in foreign bottoms successfully. But to build up a large for- 

 eign trade we must not alone sell what no other country can supply, but also what other coun- 

 tries can supply, by selling in competition with them by means of their excellence, cheap- 

 ness and availability, which means delivery of them. Having a great American merchant 

 marine entails shipping agencies in all parts of the globe and exchange of information as 

 to what our foreign customers require and prefer, and active competition in remote coun- 

 tries and with foreign competitors and knowledge of what their goods are — ^not alone their 

 quality but their terms and commercial credits; in other words, all the facilities and ma- 

 chinery which seek for and find business. 



We cannot expand foreign trade if terms and prices at which we can afford to sell 

 are higher than foreign competitors can sell for, always assuming that the products are about 

 equal in quality. In these prices from our foreign customers' standpoint are always included, 

 and must necessarily be absorbed as an overhead, handling and terminal costs together with 

 freight rates. The American merchant or transporter would for various reasons prefer to 

 use American ocean carriers but, as a matter of business, rather than lose the opportunity 

 for sale entirely, he will, and with justice, employ foreign bottoms if the freight charges are 

 lower than in American bottoms. No idealism in the form of patriotism can long sustain an 

 American merchant in employing American bottoms at a cost higher than in foreign bot- 

 toms. Such course would eventually result in bankruptcy. Therefore if we want an Ameri- 

 can merchant marine — and we realize that we do want it, not for general reasons of vague 

 and indefinite type but for the specific reasons that in the long run we cannot hope for a 

 large and increasing foreign trade without it — we must seek to establish this merchant ma- 

 rine on a firm and solid basis by all of the various means outlined by Admiral Rousseau in 

 his able paper, and by striving to make the cost of transportation in American bottoms at 

 least no higher than would be the case in foreign bottoms. This must be done by an actual 

 reduction in cost of the various items that go into making transportation costs, or, failing in 

 this, we inevitably face either some type of national subsidy to overcome the difference or 

 the abandonment of our ambition for an American merchant marine, and with it eventually 

 a large and increasing foreign trade. If we can only build, maintain and operate ships at cost 

 much in excess of those of foreign builders and operators, we must either abandon the build- 

 ing and operation of ships, make up the difference by some t}T)e of national charge — in 

 reality a subsidy — or ships will be built and operated undef foreign flags. 



The obstacles to our maintaining a large and successful American merchant marine with 

 its consequent foreign commerce is very ably set forth in Paper No. 6, "How Can American 

 Ships Compete Successfully with Foreign Ships," by Mr. Winthrop B. Marvin. Mr. Mar- 

 vin's detailed analysis of the situation leaves nothing to be added to it. We must find a way 



