John Codman

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 25 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 9 shipyards could turn out, they might save one-third of their cost and have better steamers. ”

“ The carrying trade 7 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. ”

“ 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 22 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. ”

“ Our mechanics build mainly for the coasting trade, and they build wooden vessels so 20 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 23 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 11 maintained at an immense expense—God save the mark!—for the protection of an extinct merchant service! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 class 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 6 area which is the common property of the world. ”