The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade.
It may seem surprising that an American
House of Representatives should have been so ignorant
of the meaning of a common word as to apply the term
“commerce” to the carrying trade, when
in the session of 1869 it commissioned Hon. John Lynch,
of Maine, and his associated committee “to investigate
the cause of the decadence of American commerce,”
and to suggest a remedy by which it might be restored.
But, it was not more strange than
that this committee really appointed to look into
the carrying trade to which the misnomer commerce was
so inadvertently applied, should have entirely ignored
its duty by constituting itself into an eleemosynary
body for the bestowal of national charity upon shipbuilders.
Its Report fell dead upon the floor of the House,
and was so ridiculed in the Senate that when a motion
was made to lay the bill for printing it upon the table,
Mr. Davis, of Kentucky, suggested, as an amendment,
that it be kicked under it. Nevertheless, the
huge volume of irrelevant testimony was published
for the benefit of two great home industries paper
making and printing.
The theory of this committee was that
the Rebellion had destroyed another industry nearly
as remote from the proper subject of inquiry as either
of these. These gentlemen concluded that shipbuilding
was becoming extinct, because the Confederate cruisers
had destroyed many of our ships a reason
ridiculously absurd, in view of the corollary that
the very destruction of those vessels should have stimulated
reproduction. Since that abortive attempt to steal
bounties from the Treasury for the benefit of a favored
class of mechanics, Government, occupied with matters
deemed of greater importance, has totally neglected
our constantly diminishing mercantile marine.
By refusing to repeal the law that
represses it, it may truly be said that had every
ingenuity been devised to accomplish its destruction,
its tendency to utter annihilation could not have been
more certainly assured than it has been by this obstinate
neglect.
In the session of 1876, Senator Boutwell
of Massachusetts renewed the proposition of Mr. Lynch,
but his Bill was not called up in the Senate.
In the course of intervening years a little more light
may be presumed to have dawned upon Congress, and,
therefore, it is to be regretted that the Senator
did not obtain a hearing, in order that the fallacy
of his argument might have been exposed.
If any one cares to study the origin
of our restrictive navigation laws, he can consult
a concise account of it given by Mr. David A. Wells,
in the North American Review, of December, 1877.
It came out of a compromise with slavery. The
Northern States agreed that slavery should be “fostered” that
is a favorite word with protectionists provided
that shipbuilding should also be fostered, and that
New England ships for nearly all vessels
were built in that district should have
the sole privilege of supplying the Southern market
with negroes!
That sort of slavery being now happily
at an end, shipbuilders still inherit the spirit of
their guild, merely transferring the wrong they perpetrated
on black men by binding all their white fellow citizens
with the bonds of their odious monopoly. Moreover,
although the arbitrary law of the mother country forcing
the colonists to conduct their commerce in British
built ships was one exciting cause of the Revolutionary
Rebellion, Americans had no sooner obtained their
independence than they created a monopoly quite as
tyrannical among themselves. And yet, they were
not then without excuse. At the time when the
Convention for forming the Federal Constitution convened
in 1789, every civilized nation was exercising a similar
restrictive policy. But while all of them have
either totally abolished or materially modified their
stringent laws touching their shipping interests America,
“the land of the free,” the boasting leader
of the world’s progress and enlightenment, stands
alone sustaining this effete idea. She persists
in maintaining an ordinance devised originally for
the protection of the home industry of her shipbuilders,
which has now become a most stalwart protection for
the industry of every foreign shipowner whom we encourage
in the transportation of our persons and property
over the ocean an industry in which this
law forbids a similar of her own citizens to
participate!
Whatever may be the arguments in favor
of, or opposed to, the protection of industries under
the control of our own Government, none of them can
apply to those pursued upon an area which is the common
property of the world. It is a proposition so
evident that no words need be wasted in its demonstration,
that, other things being equal, the cheapest and best
ships, most adapted for the purpose, by whomsoever
owned, will have preference in the carrying trade over
the ocean. You may pile the duty, for instance,
on iron, and grant bounties on the production of the
American article if you please, to any extent; you
may, if you choose, prohibit the importation of ploughs,
and then assess farmers ten times the cost of their
ploughs for the benefit of the home manufacturer.
You would undoubtedly succeed in compelling them to
purchase American ploughs. They must have them
or starve, and we should all starve likewise if they
did not use those protected ploughs to cultivate the
soil. Indeed, in a less exaggerated way we are
doing something very like this continually under the
guise of “protecting home industry.”
It is a legitimate business for the
advocates of that doctrine. If they believe in
it they are quite right in “trying it on,”
and in making the people at large pay as much as can
possibly be got out of them for the benefit of a few.
But fortunately they cannot build
a Chinese wall around the country. We are necessitated
to have intercourse with other nations. We have
a surplus of agricultural products to dispose of to
them which they cannot pay for unless to a certain
extent we take the merchandise they offer in exchange.
This exchange, with all due respect to Mr. Lynch,
his committee and the House of Representatives appointing
those astute investigators, is commerce. The
carrying trade is the means whereby commerce is conducted,
and this carrying trade, an industry once of vastly
greater importance to our people than all shipbuilding
has been, is now, or ever can be, is a business that
Congress by its supine neglect has deliberately thrown
into the hands of Europeans, and sacrificed American
shipowners at the instigation of American shipbuilders.
In face of the prosperity achieved
in consequences of the abandonment of a ruinous system
by other nations, in face of the lamentable decadence
its maintenance has brought upon ourselves, we still
persist in packing this Sindbad of prohibition, the
worst offspring of protection, upon our back, and
then we wonder that we alone make no progress!
Certain political economists are in
the habit of raking up records of the past wherewith
to justify their theories for the present age.
They tell us of England’s protective laws in
Cromwell’s time, and say that as by them she
then established her mercantile marine, we should
endeavor to regain what we have lost, by a return to
the policy of that period, from which by the by, we
have varied only in a small degree. Upon the
same principle we should abandon steam, which, like
the progress made by our competitors, in free trade,
is merely another improvement in the train of advancing
civilization. When such men talk of the steamship
enterprises which have triumphed in spite of their
antediluvian ideas, they tell us that England supported
the Cunard line by subsidies, and thus put her shipbuilding
on a firm basis. The inference is that we should
go back to 1840, build some 1200 ton wooden paddle
steamers and subsidize them.
That this is no idle supposition is
shown by the fact that long after England had abandoned
that of vessels in favor of iron screw steamships,
we did build and subsidize the unwieldly tubs, some
of which are still in the employment of the Pacific
Mail Steamship Company. We became the laughing
stock of the rest of the world whoed us with
the Chinese, and our steamships with Chinese junks.
The Japanese just emerged from barbarism exceeded us
in enterprise.
They now own one line of fifty-seven
steamships, more of them engaged in foreign trade
than all the steamships we thus employ upon the ocean!
At a late day we did commence the use of iron screw
steamships of such description and at such cost as
one or two domestic ship-yards chose to supply, and
thus we were as far from resisting competition as
ever.
Now, if there was no ocean traffic
of which we should be deprived, the hardship to our
shipowners would be comparitively trifling, although
the tax upon ships of inferior workmanship and higher
cost would, like all the operations of the tariff,
be felt by the community at large. This is evident
enough.
The Pacific Mail Steamship Company,
for example, in order to pay expenses, to say nothing
of profits, are obliged to charge a higher fare to
passengers, to exact higher rates of freight from shippers
and to demand a larger postal contract from government
than they could afford to take, if by being allowed
to supply themselves with ships in the cheapest markets
of the world and of the best quality that competing
shipyards could turn out, they might save one-third
of their cost and have better steamers. If, therefore,
we had only the coasting trade to consider, we might
say that the prohibitory statute would not pinch the
shipowner particularly, but its evil would be generally
distributed. We are actually carrying on the coasting
trade in this way, and as it is all that shipowners
have left, of necessity they oblige the community
to pay them the excess of cost in order that protection
may inure to the benefit of the few monopolists who
build iron steamships and are able to force the quality
and price upon their unwilling purchasers. We
can, and do without considering the pockets of the
majority, make whatever laws we please for our own
coasting trade.
But now let us look at the ocean rolling
from continent to continent, unfettered by the chains
with which “protection” can bind the lands
and coasts upon its borders appropriated by nations
to themselves. It is independent of an American
tariff and of them all, as it was in the days when
“It rolled not back when Canute
gave command.”
It welcomes the people of all nations
on equal terms to its bosom, and Commerce is the swift-winged
messenger ever travelling from shore to shore.
Look at it, and if our eyes could scan it all at once,
we should see the smoke darkening the air as it rises
from hundreds of chimneys, telling of fires that make
the steam for propelling the mighty engines that bring
the great leviathans of commerce almost daily into
our ports and into those whom we supply and by whom
we are supplied with the products of mutual labor.
The flags of all nations are at their peaks the
British, German, Dutch, Danish, Belgian, French but
among the three hundred and more there are only four
that carry the stars and stripes, and these were put
afloat mainly at the cost of the Pennsylvania Railroad
Company. Three hundred steamships, employing
fifty thousand men earning a million and a half of
dollars monthly; these men supporting and educating
families, and themselves becoming reserves for their
respective countries to call upon for naval service
in time of war! Look at the ports from which these
vessels wherever built, now hail, and which they enrich
by the capital they distribute. Behold the warehouses,
repairing shops, foundries, and other various industries
connected with these enterprises, and the shipowners
engaged in promoting them pursuing a legitimate business.
Then look at home. First calculate
the sum of one hundred and thirty millions of dollars
that has been annually paid by us to those foreigners
for transporting ourselves and our merchandise.
Then go back in memory to the time when in the days
of sailing ships, our packets almost monopolized the
ocean on account of the skill of our officers and
seamen.
Reflect that if a policy of ordinary
foresight had prevailed in our national councils when
these sailing ships were killed off by the competition
of the newly-invented iron screw, their old commanders
and their noble crews would have kept their employment,
and as they died would have been succeeded by men
as worthy as themselves, adding to our revenue in
time of peace, and, when needed, supplying a navy
now maintained at an immense expense God
save the mark! for the protection of an
extinct merchant service!
See how few American steamship offices,
how few repairing shops we have need of for these
foreigners, who employ their own agents instead of
our merchants, and naturally endeavor to do all the
work required upon their vessels at home. Then
search for the American shipowners engaged in trade
beyond the seas. Look for them in their deserted
counting-rooms of South street, in New York. As
their old captains have retired in poverty and are
begging for such offices as that of inspector or port
warden, or for same subordinate place in the Custom-House,
while the seamen are mostly dead with none to come
after them, so South street is abandoned by its honorable
merchants, who have, in too many cases, moved up to
Wall street, and become gamblers by being deprived
of their original business. When you have done
all this, finish up your investigation by estimating
how much sooner the rebellion might have been overcome,
if in years past we had owned our share of the world’s
shipping, and multiply the $130,000,000 of freight
money we annually pay to foreigners by the number of
years we have been engaged in this suicidal policy
of protecting them in earning money that of right
belonged to our own people!
Having sketched this result of American
legislation, let us glance at that of other nations
in late years for it is as useless to dwell upon what
it was a century or two centuries ago as it would be
to study the navigation laws of the Phoenicians, or
to inquire if Solomon exacted that the ships bringing
his spices from India and his gold from Ophir should
be of Jewish construction. Old things did not
pass away and all things did not fairly become new
until the discovery of gold in California and Australia
revolutionized values, created universal national
intercourse, and by thus giving a sudden impetus to
commerce, made the carrying trade an industry of far
greater importance than it had ever been before.
At that epoch, our restrictive laws
were productive of no harm to us, because it so happened
that most of the business of the seas was done in
wooden sailing ships, and it also happened, fortunately
for us, that we had the faculty and the means of constructing
them better and cheaper than they could be produced
elsewhere. Accordingly our shipyards became wonderfully
active in supplying the demands of our shipowners,
and the personnel as well as the material of
our merchant fleet being of the highest character,
it was consequently in active employment. In
the ratio of the increasing value of our carrying
trade there was a corresponding decrease in that of
Great Britain, simply because her restrictive laws,
which were the same then as ours are now, prevented
her people from owning such magnificent clippers as
we were able to build, on equal terms with us.
But British statesmen were not inattentive
to the situation. They wasted no time in appointing
committees to investigate the cause of the difficulty,
for it was as clear to them as the noonday sun, as
clear as the occasion of our “decadence”
should have been to the House of Representatives that
appointed Mr. Lynch as clear as it should
be to the Congress now assembled.
Parliament deputed no half dozen of
its members to spend six months in running around
among shipbuilders, asking them what bounty they required
to build clippers like the Americans, and how long
it would take them to equal American shipbuilders
in skill, material and cost.
But, realizing that the interests
of commerce and ship owning were of infinitely greater
value than that of mere shipbuilding, they did not
propose to lose them, while the latter industry should
endeavor to gain a new life. Regardless of any
such consideration as that which solely actuated our
investigators, Parliament at once abolished the prohibition
to purchase foreign built ships. The greatest
good of the greatest number was the motive of this
wise decision.
As soon as they were thus allowed
to do so, English shipowners ordered clippers from
our shipyards, and putting them into profitable employment
under their own flag, kept on with their business,
sharing with us the supremacy of the seas, which but
for the timely action of their government they would
inevitably have lost. In this way they maintained
it until there came a new era in shipbuilding, when
circumstances becoming reversed, their mechanics were
enabled to accomplish what ours could not, in the
construction of iron screw steamships. Had Congress
then been as wise as Parliament was in 1849, our shipowners
would, in their turn, have maintained their prestige
by supplying themselves from abroad with the new vehicles
of commerce they could not procure at home, and we
should never have heard of “decadence.”
Instead of such obviously judicious action, it has
done nothing but condemn us year after year to enforced
idleness in the name of “protection.”
So we have endeavored to compete with these new motors
on the sea by means of wooden sailing ships and paddle
steamers, until they are of service only in our coastwise
monopoly or rotting at the docks, if not broken up.
We have gone on steadily protecting ourselves to death,
and protecting England and Germany, the chief of our
rivals, to life at our own expense of vitality.
England’s justice to her shipowners, which at
first seemed harshness to her shipbuilders, was eventually
the means of their prosperity. It set them to
“finding out knowledge of witty inventions,”
and now they have one hundredfold the capital invested
and labor employed in iron steamship building, more
than ever found occupation in their old shipyards.
In a recent address before the New
York Free Trade Club, Mr. Frothingham humorously described
a visit made by him a few years ago to the studio
of an artist. He found him seated in despair,
amidst a gallery of his unfinished pictures, his pallet,
brushes and colors scattered about upon the floor,
complaining bitterly of his lack of business.
“This importation of French pictures,”
he said, “is ruin to American artists.
Something must be done for our protection; we intend
to get Congress to raise the tariff on those productions
so that we shall not have to contend with the cheap
labor that takes the bread out of our mouths.”
It may be noticed that this common phrase is very generally
employed by those who are too lazy to supply their
own mouths with bread. “Something,”
added the desponding artist, “must positively
be done, and that very soon, or our occupation will
be gone!” “I thought,” said Mr.
Frothingham, “that I could more easily convince
him of his mistake by entering for the time into his
humor, and so with apparently deep sympathy, I condoled
with him and promised to exert my influence in behalf
of his profession. He thanked me heartily for
my good will. But then I continued, “I
want you to do something for me and for my profession
in return.” “How can I!” exclaimed
my friend with some amazement. “Why,”
I replied, “We must get up what they call an
omnibus bill, including relief for painters and preachers.
Don’t you know that one of the Presbyterian
churches in New York, has imported, duty free, the
Rev. Dr. Taylor from England, another, the Rev. Dr.
Hall, from Ireland, and the Princeton Theological
Seminary has brought over, without Custom House charges,
the Rev. Dr. McCosh from Scotland? Now that is
“taking the bread out of our mouths.”
There are plenty of American clergymen who would be
glad to obtain these positions, and what right, therefore,
have those congregations and that institution to supply
themselves from abroad? The wants of the people
ought not to be considered, but an art monopoly, a
pulpit monopoly, a monopoly of any kind should be
protected.” In a style of satirical reasoning,
of which the foregoing is an abstract, conviction was
brought to the mind of the painter. Changing
his tone to one of serious advice, the clergyman counselled
him to go to work, to let competition become an incentive
to action, instead of paralysing his energy. He
then told him how the advent of these foreign divines
had been a stimulus to him and to his brethren in
the ministry. The result was that to-day there
is a higher standard of pulpit eloquence in New York
than in any other city of the Union.
The lecture of the preacher was serviceable
to the artist who is now at the head of his profession,
caring no more for French rivalry than for that of
a tavern sign painter. The appositeness of this
illustration will be evident when it is applied to
the subject under consideration.
Almost immediately after the repeal
of the British Navigation Laws the revolution in shipbuilding
to which I have referred had its commencement, and
we have seen how British shipowners availed themselves
of it. Nor were they alone in adopting the change
from sail to steam and from wood to iron. We
can remember what a large trade we had with Germany
twenty-five years ago, although it was small compared
with that of the present. At that time it was
chiefly conducted in American vessels. But when
iron steamships came into vogue, wooden vessels, both
American and German, were abandoned. If we had
been permitted to do so, we should have still kept
the greater part of that important carrying trade
in our hands. But we were shackled by our navigation
laws, while the Germans were unconstrained by any such
impediment.
The personnel of our mercantile
marine was, in every respect, superior to theirs,
but it was consigned to annihilation by our protective
government; while Hamburg and Bremen took their old
galliot skippers in hand and educated them to the
responsible places they now fill in command of the
splendid lines of iron steamships, making their semi-weekly
trips across the Atlantic, having absolutely monopolized
the whole American trade!
Thus our government protected the
Germans as well as the English. By citing other
examples, we might show how the “fostering”
hand of protection has been extended by our government
to every nation choosing to trade upon the necessities
of prohibited Americans.
Now, if the United States persist
in maintaining a policy long since abandoned by Europeans,
South American and Asiatic nations, even by Japan,
leaving us only China as a companion, there must surely
be some arguments to support it, and to account in
some other way than has been pointed out for the decadence
of our carrying trade. It was the theory of Mr.
Lynch’s committee that we were going on very
successfully until the civil war supervened, and then
the Confederate cruisers destroyed our “commerce,”
as they termed the industry we have lost. If
this is not disposed of by what I have already said,
permit me to quote from my scrap-book an extract from
a letter addressed by me to the New York Journal
of Commerce, in the spring of 1857, nearly
four years previous to the commencement of the rebellion:
“In an article, written some months
since, it was assumed that steam was destined
to be the great moving power for emigration, and
that it would supplant, almost entirely, the use
of sails. Experience is every day justifying this
view, and still more, it is becoming evident that
in proportion as steam can be economized, it will
serve for the transportation of very much of the
merchandise now carried by sailing vessels.
In fact, the time is not far distant when the latter
class of ships will be required only for articles
of great bulk and comparatively little value.
“The only question now
is, who are to be the gainers by this
revolution in navigation?
Figures are very convincing
arguments to American minds. Let
us use them:
In January last it was stated that less
than eighteen years have elapsed since the first
steamship propelled wholly by steam crossed the
Atlantic; and now there are fourteen lines of
steamers, comprising forty-eight vessels, plying between
Europe and America." Upon looking into this
with a view to test its correctness, it was found
to be within the truth; for, including transient
steamers, the number was greater than stated.
And it incidentally appeared that of them all, there
were but seven under the American flag all
seven, side wheel ships and, on the
average, unprofitable, even with the support of
government, upon which they leaned.”
Maintaining then, as now, that the screw
must supersede the side-wheel for all purposes,
excepting perhaps those of mail carriage, and
that iron screw steamers are, in all commercial respects,
preferable to wood steamers, the argument was adduced
that England, being able to construct this of
vessels more economically than we can, must of
necessity have the monopoly of building them.
Her monopoly, in this respect, we cannot prevent;
but it depends upon ourselves and our government
whether she shall share with us the monopoly of owning
and sailing them.
I have taken a bold, and it may be,
apparently, an unpatriotic stand, in assuming
that the only way in which we can participate
in ocean steam navigation is by adopting a system
of reciprocity with England in so changing our laws
that we may buy her steamers as she now buys our
sailing ships, because she finds it for her interest
to do so.”
These views, entertained twenty-one
years ago, were applicable then. They have
been applicable ever since they are applicable
now. They have been the staple of all that I
have ever written on the subject before the war, during
the war, and since its termination.
Iron steamship building was in its
infancy in 1857. Its great development was merely
coincident with our civil war. That war was a
horrid nightmare. We found that our navigation
interests, with many other things we could ill afford
to lose, the lives of hundreds of thousands of our
young men, vast sums of our money, and not a little
of our morality, were gone. Those lives can never
be restored, while our money may be regained, and
it is to be hoped our morality may be improved, but
as to our ships, we simply refuse to replace them with
those that are better.
One argument in opposition to free
ships is founded upon the injustice that would be
done to our shipbuilders. Were this true, it might
be said that ship-owners and the general public have
some rights that shipbuilders are bound to respect.
The interests of our whole people are paramount to
theirs as were those of the English people in 1849,
when the proportion of their shipbuilders was greatly
beyond that of ours at this day.
In point of fact, however, the suffering
of our shipbuilders by the repeal of the navigation
laws, would, from the first, be scarcely appreciable,
and, in the end, would be more than compensated by
increased business.
It would matter very little either
to the builders of wooden vessels or to the public
if that provision of the statute which touches that
department, and which really was intended for that
alone, should be repealed or not. Our mechanics
build mainly for the coasting trade, and they build
wooden vessels so good, and at such low prices, on
account of the material at their hands, that there
is little danger of any competition with them on the
part of foreigners. We never had any reason,
and probably never shall have, to fear the rivalry
of other nations in this particular line of business.
So long as it constituted the only method of construction,
as we have seen, England found her advantage in coming
to our market for her ships.
Therefore, what Congress does, or
neglects to do, regarding this branch of shipbuilding,
is of very small moment. Our wants do not lie
in that direction.
The iron screw steamship is now the
great and profitable carrier upon the ocean, and all
we care to ask is the privilege to avail ourselves
of this “survival of the fittest.”
Whence then comes the opposition to what should be
the inalienable right of an American citizen to own
the best ship that he can buy with his own money?
Naturally, from the few iron shipbuilders
in this country, the chief of whom happens to be an
Irishman. I would not be understood as speaking
disrespectfully of his nationality, for I am aware
that our political machinery depends very much upon
the votes of his countrymen for its running order.
Nevertheless we do object to this perpetual cry of
the “Protection of Home Industry” which
simply means the protection of Mr. John Roach at the
cost of the forty million citizens whom he has adopted.
This personal allusion is unavoidable.
Mr. Roach is omnipresent in the lobbies of Congress,
and by his persuasive blarney exerts an undue influence
there. Withal he is my personal friend, and I
have often had occasion to compliment him upon the
ingenuity of his appeals.
When we approach Congress with the
modest request to be allowed to buy ships where we
can do so upon the most satisfactory terms, Mr. Roach
is always on hand to give assurance that it is needless
for us to go abroad, for by his skill and his labor-saving
processes he is able to supply us with all the ships
we require cheaper than they can be bought upon the
Clyde. Again when there is a subsidy bill before
the Senate or House, our versatile friend is equally
ready to go down upon his knees as a beggar, telling
Congress that the only way to regain our ocean prestige
is to subsidize the companies from whom he expects
to get orders, as otherwise they cannot compete with
the “pauper labor” of the country he has
abandoned. In either case, as will be readily
seen, the object is to have us contribute to the prosperity
of Mr. Roach.
With pride the iron shipbuilders of
the Delaware point to the increase of their business,
infinitesimal as it is, compared to the ever multiplying
production of British shipyards. But whence does
this increase arise? From the demand of our people
for carrying grain, cotton and other products to Europe,
and bringing back merchandise therefrom in competition
with the great fleet of foreign steamers to whom we
have given the monopoly of that business? By no
means. It will be found upon critical enquiry
that every one of our home-built iron steamers, excepting
two or three in the W. India business, is built for
our coastwise trade or for some line that had been
subsidized. Even the three or four ships belonging
to what is called the “American Line,”
running between Philadelphia and Liverpool, may be
said to be subsidized, as without an entire remission
of taxes from the State and the aid of the Pennsylvania
Railroad, they could not have been put afloat.
Now, why cannot American shipbuilders
compete on equal terms with those of Great Britain?
That they cannot is evident from the fact that they
do not; for it would be unreasonable to suppose that
the ability to sail ships, on the part of our seamen,
vanished with the departure of wooden vessels.
It is true that we need a revision of other maritime
laws besides those under discussion, but it is sufficient
now to say that we cannot prove our ability to sail
ships unless we are permitted to own the ships we
desire to sail.
Ships are but the tools of commerce,
and if we have not the tools we cannot do the work.
Foreign mechanics cannot sell us these tools; our
own mechanics cannot provide them; therefore the workmen
of the sea are idle.
If one of Mr. Roach’s theories
is correct, if he can build steamships cheaper and
better than those we desire to buy, why does he object
to the introduction of an article that can do him
no harm? If the other is true, and undoubtedly
it is, that he cannot build the ships that are needed
without the aid of a bounty or a subsidy, what then?
Manifestly, unless the prohibition to purchase such
ships is removed, it being the duty of Congress to
protect the individual interests of Mr. Roach and
his confreres by subsidies, equal justice demands that
every person as well as every company who is forced
to come to them for ships, should be subsidized to
the extent of the difference of the cost of a ship
in the United States, and that in the country where
they are most advantageously built, and this difference
is at least twenty-five per cent. Call it rather
more or rather less as we please, but a vast difference
is on all hands acknowledged, and the fact of our
non-production proves it. The shipbuilders have
already had exceptional legislation by a considerable
remission of duties in their favor. But it is
not enough.
In order to compete successfully with
foreigners, they should obtain the repeal of all duties
which make their daily life so much more expensive
to them than it is to their fellow craftsmen in Scotland.
But having already more protection than any other
of mechanics, they have scarcely the presumption to
demand any partiality to that extent. Another,
and a more forcible reason for their lack of success
is that there has been no competition in the importation
of ships to stir them to exertion. Had there
been, the first difficulty might more readily be overcome.
The illustration used by Mr. Frothingham already given,
applies with greater force to ship building than to
any other industry. The importation of ships
is absolutely prohibited, whereas that of all other
articles is either free or accompanied by a duty.
And it is worthy of notice that the smaller the duty
on whatever is introduced, the greater is the constantly
improving skill of our domestic manufacturers in its
production.
As an argument against free ships,
opponents of the measure a few years since circulated
and placed on the desks of members of Congress, a
lithographed drawing. It represented among other
things the destruction of our vessels by the Alabama,
and a personal caricature, the compliment of which
it does not become me to more than acknowledge.
Its chief ground was occupied by starving mechanics,
standing listlessly around deserted ship-yards and
machine-shops.
There was some truth in this part
of the picture. There was no reason why mechanics
should starve at that time when a common laborer obtained
from two to three dollars per day for his work, but
there was a reason for the abandonment of wooden ship-yards
and old-fashioned machine-shops.
Wooden ships were no longer in demand
at home or abroad, and the world had discovered better
machinery to propel better ships. As an offset
to this pictorial argument, another might have been
introduced, exhibiting in the background the mere
blacksmiths’ shops of the free cities of Hamburg
and Bremen, as they existed before the era of iron
steamship building, and in the front the subsequent
appearance of great workshops and foundries, first
built for the purpose of keeping in repair the fleet
of steamships bought by unhampered Germans to do our
American carrying trade, and afterwards kept in more
active employment, by the ability their workmen have
since acquired to supply their home market with steamers
of their own construction.
The advocates of subsidies have committed
a grievous error in arguing that postal contracts,
given to one or more steamship companies, will tend
to a revival of shipbuilding for public benefit.
It is evident, on the contrary, that those ships,
a part of whose cost is defrayed by National bounty,
would be run as monopolies against individuals who
have no such charitable aid. A subsidy given for
the protection or the assistance of shipbuilders is
a downright robbery of the people’s purse.
There can be no question about the propriety of giving
a proper compensation to steamship companies who carry
the mails. They ought to be paid as liberally
as railroad or stage-coach companies, according to
the miles they traverse and the difficulties they surmount.
Their true policy is first to advocate a measure whereby
they can be supplied with the best ships for their
purposes in the cheapest markets of the world, not
only because in ordinary traffic they can thus better
compete with rivals under foreign flags, but because
they can better afford to accept a moderate compensation
from our government for carrying its mails.
Mr. Charles S. Hill of New York, has
recently published a pamphlet of elaborate statistics,
his object being to prove that Great Britain has protected
not only her commerce, but her shipbuilding, by subsidies.
In one respect he is right. By liberal payment
for the carriage of her mails she has indirectly fostered
commerce in maintaining regular postal intercourse.
But there is not the slightest evidence to show that
she paid out her public money to encourage either private
shipbuilding or ship owning. In England each of
these industries stands by itself, and is able to
maintain itself. All that either of them asks,
and all that they both receive, is liberty. It
is this, and this alone, that has given them their
overshadowing success.
It is the want of it, and only
the want of this great element of prosperity, that
has brought upon them in the United States the oft-lamented
“decadence." In this one sentence the whole
story may be read.
In giving her postal contracts, England
never enquires where the ships that carry the mails
are built. It is sufficient that under her flag
they perform their work.
It was only the other day that a British
subsidized line on the coast of South America, bought
the steamers of a bankrupt French line, put them under
the British flag, and went on with their accustomed
regularity in carrying the mails all that
was required at their hands.
Now, if any of the companies who are
seeking for postal contracts from our government are
to have their proposals acceded to, it should be with
the express proviso that they and all of us may be
provided with the best and cheapest ships wherever
they can be obtained, as in this way the public and
individuals can be most profitably and advantageously
served.
I have observed in the preceding pages,
that the reason why our American shipbuilders are
unable to compete with those upon the Clyde is, in
a great measure, owing to the fact that a high tariff,
making it more costly for mechanics to live, necessitates
the demand, on their part, for higher wages.
In the construction of an iron steamship,
as will be seen in reading a communication herewith
presented, the labor may be estimated at 27-1/2 per
cent. of the total cost. The writer, of course,
means to be understood as speaking of the labor in
putting the ship together, having the material in
shape of angle iron, plates, &c., &c., already prepared.
If the labor from the time of extracting
the iron from the mines, reducing it to ore, and working
it up from thence to the shape required by the shipbuilder,
had been included, nearly the whole cost of the ship
would be comprehended under that term. Indeed,
in working out this problem, we ought actually so
to consider it. It will be seen that the difference
in the cost of labor, even in its depressed condition
in this country, without taking the higher cost of
materials into account, is so great as to absolutely
preclude any attempt at equality upon our part, notwithstanding
what may be said to the contrary by Mr. Roach, when
it suits his convenience to boast of his ability to
compete with foreign shipbuilders.
At Dumbarton, I once carefully went
over the books of Messrs. Wm. Denny & Brothers, a
member of whose firm, Mr. James Denny, now furnishes
me with some statistics. It was found that to
build the Parthia, a Cunard steamship of 3,000
tons, 162,500 days’ labor was required; I mean
with the materials already prepared.
Now, although the figures given in
the tables below ought to be convincing at a glance,
it is easy for any one with an ordinary knowledge
of arithmetic, to make a close calculation of the labor
difference in cost of British and American steamships
of the same quality. I do not deny that
a teakettle may be cheaply rivetted together anywhere.
Naturally, in this line of argument,
I shall be met by the oft-repeated question:
“Do you then advocate the reduction of the wages
of our mechanics to the level of ‘pauper labor’
in Scotland?” By no means but while explicitly
in favor of such free trade in general as will make
a dollar go as far in the United States as four shillings
now go in Great Britain, I maintain that in the particular
industry of ship owning, so long as the necessity for
higher wages is imposed upon us, we ought to avail
ourselves of any labor, “pauper” or otherwise,
by which steamships are built, because other nations
are so doing and are prosecuting for their manifest
advantage this vastly more important business upon
the ocean, which we are forbidden to engage in, because
we cannot build ships. The homely illustration
at the close of the parable on the concluding page,
is certainly applicable. We are not allowed to
whittle, because we cannot make jack-knives.
On the other hand, my friend Mr. Roach
will, if he is not engaged for the moment in asking
for subsidies for the very reasons I have just adduced,
most confidently assert that, on account of the superiority
of his machinery, and the energy of his workmen, attained
by “breathing the pure air of liberty,”
he can overcome all the difference in wages, that
he has already done so, and that he “can now
build steamships cheaper and better than they can be
built upon the Clyde.”
Mr. Denny sends the following memorandum
under date of February 5th, 1878:
“Prices of steamers
of various sizes similar to those at present employed in the Atlantic
passenger trade.
1st, 2,000 gross tons, speed on trial, 13 knots, cost 44,
2d,
3,000 " " 13-3/4 " " 62,
3d, 4,000 " " 14-3/4
" " 96,
4th, 5,000
" " 16
" " 147,500
The whole of these prices
include the builders’ profit, whichhas been put down at the usual
one we expect for our work.
I enclose rates of payment our men get
while employed on time, but our boiler-platers
work almost wholly by the piece. Also rates
paid to men in the ship-yard while on time, but this
system of payment has been almost entirely abandoned
there in favor of piece work, which you may safely
say reduces the cost of labor from ten to twenty
per cent., as compared with time work. However,
for such of them as are employed on time, the rates
I give you are correct.
In the foregoing prices of ships I have
given you, you may say that 27-1/2 per cent. of
the total cost at present price of materials may
be put down against labor, but of course this will
vary as the prices of materials vary.
Rates of wages paid on
Clyde to men employed in the manufacture of iron ships apprentices
excluded:
d.
Carpenters
Joiners 7-1/
Blacksmiths 6-1/
Platers 6-1/
Rivetters 5-3/
Laborers 3-3/
Angle iron-smiths 6-1/
Riggers 6-3/
Hammer-men 4-1/
Holders up 4-1/4
Rates of wages paid on
Clyde to men employed in the manufacture of marine engines
and boilers apprentices excluded:
| d. |
---|
Smiters |
6.6 |
Strikers or
hammer-men |
4.23 |
Angle
iron-smiths |
6.5 |
Boiler platers |
7.07 |
Rivetters and
caulkers |
6.23 |
Holders up |
4.7 |
Iron turners |
6.47 |
Iron finishers |
6.10 |
Engine fitters
and erectors |
6.16 |
Planing
machinists |
5.64 |
Shaping |
5.17 |
Slotting |
5.3 |
Drilling |
4.9 |
Pattern-Makers |
7.53 |
Carpenters |
7 |
Joiners |
5.5 |
Engine-drivers |
4.55 |
Ordinary
laborers |
4 |
N. B. The above
are the average rates of each of men as
detailed, and the rates given are the amount paid in
pence and in fractions or decimals of pence per
hour. Fifty-one hours constitute a working
week. Boiler-platers work mostly by the piece,
but the rates given are those paid when they are
on time.
January, 1878.”
I have endeavored in vain to procure
from Mr. Roach his corresponding prices of steamships
and labor rates. The nearest approach to the
latter has been obtained from the Secretary of the
New York Free Trade Club, who has handed me a note
under date of February 7th, from a well known iron
ship and engine building firm of New York. They
enclose their tariff of wages with those remarks:
“In regard to shipyards, you know
there is no such thing around New York any more,
but I give you such rates as we are now paying.
We are building three small iron steamers at present.
“In regard to rates
of wages, compared with Wilmington and
Chester, they are about 8
to 10 per cent. under us.”
RATES OF WAGES IN SHIPYARD.
Carpenters $2 50 @ $2
Joiners 2 50 @ 3
Blacksmiths 2 10 @ 2
Platers 2 25 @ 2
Rivetters 2 10 @ 2
Angle iron-smiths 2 00 @ 2
Hammer-men 2 00 @ 2
Holders up 1 60 @ 1
Riggers 2 00 @ 2
Laborers 1 40 @ 1 50
ENGINE AND BOILER WORKS.
Carpenters |
$2 50 @ $2 75 |
Joiners |
3 00 |
Hammer men |
2 00 @ 2 25 |
Smiters |
1 50 |
Angle iron smiths |
2 00 @ 2 25 |
Boiler platers |
2 25 @ 2 75 |
Rivetters and caulkers |
2 10 @ 2 50 |
Holders up |
1 60 @ 1 75 |
Iron turners |
2 25 @ 2 75 |
Iron finishers |
2 50 @ 3 00 |
Engine fitters and erectors |
2 50 @ 3 00 |
Planing machinists |
2 25 @ 2 75 |
Shaping machinists |
2 25 @ 2 75 |
Slotting machinists |
2 25 @ 2 75 |
Pattern makers |
2 75 @ 3 25 |
Engine drivers |
2 25 @ 2 75 |
Laborers |
1 40 @ 1 50 |
Having quoted both these lists, their
data will now be arranged in a tabular form, so that
the difference in the cost of labor employed on the
Clyde and on the Delaware will be at once apparent.
For this purpose, the Scotch prices are reduced to
American money, one pound sterling being represented
by five dollars currency, and the hourly pay multiplied
by ten, to make a day’s work.
An average is made of the wages paid
in New York, and 10 per cent., the largest allowance
mentioned by the New York firm, is deducted from the
average prices paid by them, resulting in the rates
upon the Delaware.
There are two horns to the dilemma,
either of which Mr. Roach may lay hold of, but he
cannot swing on a pivot between them. If he accepts
these figures, or anything approaching them, and
the fact that the ocean is covered by foreign built
ships to the exclusion of his own is proof of their
correctness, he may go on asking for a bounty
on every ton he builds equivalent to the difference
in cost. Will he get it? No!
If, on the contrary, he chooses to
repeat his assertion that his ships cost less than
those built in Scotland, what inference is naturally
drawn? Simply, that his ships are too cheap to
be good.
Whatever position he may take, Section
21st of the new Tariff Bill meets every just demand
of the ship owner whose rights have never been considered
at all, and of the ship builder who has always been
a mendicant in the lobby at Washington.
“All materials for the construction,
equipment or repair of vessels of the United States
may be imported in bond, and withdrawn therefrom
under such regulations as may be prescribed by
the Secretary of the Treasury; and upon proof that
such materials have been used for such purpose no duties
shall be paid thereon. And all vessels owned
wholly by citizens of the United States shall
be entitled to registry, enrollment and license,
or license, and to all the benefits and privileges
of vessels of the United States; and all laws, or
parts of laws, conflicting with the provisions of this
section shall be, and the same are hereby, repealed.”
This is all the privilege that ship
owners demand, and with the favoritism over all other
mechanics shown to shipbuilders, how can they complain?
Even now, Mr. Roach says that he “can build steamships
cheaper and better than they can be built on the Clyde.”
What will he not be able to accomplish with the provisions
of this bill! His angle iron and his plates,
his rivets and his brass work, his copper, his wire
rigging, his sails, his paints, his cabin upholstery,
mirrors, and everything appertaining to the completeness
of his equipment a great part of which
would cost him vastly more at home anything
and all that he requires may be imported, duty free!
Happy Mr. Roach! Why need he fear the effect
of the clause in favor of ship owners? Who will
avail themselves of it? But alas for the ship-builders
upon the Clyde, in Newcastle and Belfast! Their
occupation will be gone. Already building ships
at a lesser cost than theirs, this remission of duties
will enable Mr. Roach to build them from ten to twenty
per cent. cheaper still. What will England then
do? Will she grant bounties to her ship-builders,
to meet the emergency? She did not do it in 1849,
to sustain her wooden ship-builders; she will not do
it now in order to “protect” an industry
infinitely greater than ours, but infinitely less
in importance than that of her ship owning. She
will protect that, by leaving it free, and every
Englishman who desires to buy a ship will come for
that purpose to the Delaware. Mr. Roach objects
to our buying British ships now; will he decline to
sell American ships then?
In view of this glorious future, how
can you, Mr. Roach, oppose the 21st section of this
bill?
I have thus adduced some of the principal
arguments in favor of the free importation of ships,
the only method by which the lost prestige of our
commercial marine can be restored. I have given
a very close attention to the subject for many years,
having in the outset come to the conclusion which
subsequent time and events have abundantly confirmed.
If this essay should prove too long
to be carefully read by our law-makers, for whose
perusal it is mainly intended, I still trust that
they may turn over the leaves sufficiently to recognize
the condition of our carrying trade compared with
that of England and Germany, as I shall endeavor to
portray it in the shorter form of a parable, of which
I earnestly hope they will make the application.
THE THREE FERRIES.
There are two large towns on the opposite
banks of a wide river. There is a constantly
increasing passenger and business employment, supporting
several ferries, between them. In former days
the principal ferry masters were an American, an Englishman,
and a German. They all employed boats propelled
by sails, and especially the first did a very profitable
business. Indeed, the American was the most successful,
as he and his boys had a way of handling their craft
much superior to either of the others. Each had
a large family of relatives, and, naturally, as these
relatives of theirs were willing to work for the same
wages as other people, they built new boats for their
kindred whenever they were required.
It so happened, however, that the
American’s family built much better than the
Englishman’s. When the latter noticed that
the superior craft of the former were better patronized
by the public than his own, he asked the Yankee boys
if they wouldn’t build some boats in their style
for him? “Sartain,” they said, “if
you’ll pay us what Uncle Sammy pays for his’n?”
“Aye, of course I wull,” said Mr. Bull,
“for boats like yon I mast have, or Sam will
run away with all my business, and my family will
starve.” So Uncle Sam’s boys built
the boats for Mr. Bull, and the two old gentlemen
got on amicably, for there was business enough for
them both, and the Dutchman did not interfere with
them a great deal. The few carpenters among Mr.
Bull’s relations did not like this very well,
but the old man said to them squarely, “Look
you here, now, d’ye think I’m going to
let fifty of my relatives stand still because two
or three of you, who can’t build boats as well
as Sam’s people, are growling about it?
That’s not my way; I work for the good of my
family at large. Go to work, now, and see if you
can invent a better boat than they build; if you can,
I will employ you, and so will Sam.” They
took the old man’s advice, for they saw the sense
of it, and in a short time they studied out a craft
superior in every respect to anything they had before,
or that Sam had now. “That’s right,
boys,” exclaimed old Bull, rubbing his hands
with glee, “now build some of them, and I’ll
buy them of you, and so will Sam if he isn’t
a fool.” They did build some excellent boats,
to which the public took at once; and everybody who
wanted to cross the river, or to send any goods over
immediately, gave Mr. Bull their custom. He grew
rich suddenly, not so much from building boats
as from using them. Nobody patronized
Sam’s now old-fashioned craft. Uncle Sam,
generally supposed to be a “smart old cuss,”
couldn’t understand it at all. “It’s
one of those things that no fellow can find out,”
he said, “but next time we have a family meeting
we’ll appoint a committee to get at what this
here ‘decadence’ comes from.”
So he appointed a committee, and they ran around six
months among the carpenters of the family, and came
back with a report that “Whereas, a few years
ago, during a family row, a lot of old ferry boats
had been stolen by or sold to Mr. Bull, this had killed
boat building ever since and it always would be dead
until every one of the family put their hands in their
pockets and supported the carpenters till they had
learned to build just such boats as Bull was using.”
In the meantime it may be remarked that the Dutchman
had got Bull’s boys to build some new boats
for him, and he was now doing a better business than
he had ever done before. Uncle Sam looked on
and observed, “By jingo, this here’s a
fix; I’ve asked my family to hand over the cash
to support these carpenters of mine, and they say
they’ll see me ; well, never
mind what, and now that whole raft of boys, who were
earning money for me on the ferry, are digging clams
or gone to farming, and when I want to go across the
river I have to go with Bull or the Dutchman, and pay
them for it, instead of getting money for doing what
they do, myself.” His boys, who were thrown
out of employment on the ferry, thereupon approached
the old gentleman and said, “Uncle Samuel, don’t
you remember how, a while ago, when those carpenters
of ours built better boats than Mr. Bull’s could
build, the old fellow came to you, and asked you to
let them build some for him? If he hadn’t
got them from us his fellows would shortly have been
high and dry, as we are now; but we sold them to him,
and so he kept up his business on the ferry.
Now, why don’t you do what he did, and give us
something to do, instead of spending your money going
across in his boats and the Dutchman’s?”
Uncle Sam reared right up at this mild remonstrance.
“Git out,” he exclaimed, “you ain’t
no account, the ferry’s no account, there ain’t
nothing of no account in this here family but just
a half a dozen boat builders. Say, Jonathan,
what are you doin’ with that ar jack-knife?
Did you make it?” “No, sir I bought it
of one of Bull’s boys.” “Well,
then, lay it right down; I ain’t a goin’
to have you whittle till you can make one for yourself.”
And then the old man went off mad!
And in another sense of the word, he is still mad.