Coasting trade

“ The sudden stoppage of our sea trade, including our coasting trade, by even a partial blockade of our ports, would change practically all the conditions under which we live. There is hardly a single organization in the country which would not be affected by it. ”

“ In addition to this enormous business in the over-sea trade, our coasting trade was represented in 1889 by over 90 million tons of entrances and clearances, which would probably add 20 to 25 millions additional to the gross income of our shipping interest, bringing up the total tonnage that entered and cleared from our ports in 1889 to 157 millions, and the gross income resulting from the business of transportation by sea to, approximately, about 90 millions sterling. ”

“ Now if all the American vessels engaged in the American coasting trade were exempt from the payment of tolls, the proportionate part of the cost to be borne by other vessels will be higher, and, therefore, the exemption of American coasting trade vessels is a discrimination against other vessels.
(2) The United States gives the term "coasting trade" a meaning of unheard-of extent which entirely does away with the distinction between the meaning of coasting trade and colonial trade hitherto kept up by all other nations. ”

“ Will the coasting trade, and that of the Baltic and Mediterranean, with the small intercourse we have in our bottoms with other nations, furnish seamen sufficient for a navy necessary for the protection of Great Britain and its trade? Will our mariners continue as they are, when our manufactures are laboring under the disadvantage of receiving their materials at higher and exorbitant prices, and selling at foreign markets at a certain loss. ”

“ Vessels entitled to engage in the coastwise trade are those which, being built within and owned by citizens of the United States, are enrolled for that trade. Vessels owned by corporations may not engage in the coasting trade unless 75 per cent. of the interest therein is owned by citizens.
The coasting trade consists of trade between continental ports of the United States, either directly or by way of a foreign port; that is to say, if you depart from New York with merchandise {14} for Miami, you are trading between American ports, even though you may touch at Bermuda en route. ”

“ Heavy products are carried to a few large cities, from whence they are exported, and the returns pursue the same route. If foreign importations are prohibited or diminished, and factories scattered sufficiently through the States to become markets for culinary goods, it must diminish or render unnecessary this coasting trade. But if this should not happen, and these factories should be so partially located, as to make some coasting trade necessary, yet the insufficiency of their manufactures to meet the demand, and the diminution of exchanges, must greatly impair it. ”

“ The trade in these staples, with the ownership or agency of the vessels which carried them and other commodities, such as rice, in which a large coasting trade was done, furnished a lucrative business for the merchants of the time. These were the days of the opium clippers, smartly found craft, which, carrying a valuable cargo paying a high freight, and being also the mail boats of those days, could afford a style and equipment not seen later on the coast. ”

“ When such restrictions are imposed upon the inland trade, the coasting trade, we may believe, cannot be left very free. Every owner of wool who carries or causes to be carried any wool to any port or place on the sea-coast, in order to be from thence transported by sea to any other place or port on the coast, must first cause an entry thereof to be made at the port from whence it is intended to be conveyed, containing the weight, marks and number of the packages before he brings the same within five miles of that port ”

“ In the above exemption is particularly comprised the imposition of one hundred sols per ton, etc., with the exception of the coasting trade to French vessels between their own ports, which the Americans are allowed to balance with a similar tonnage on French vessels coasting in the American ports. And even this coasting-trade tonnage is not to continue longer than the most favored nations pay it. ”

“ There was the trade, conducted principally either by steamboats or small vessels, consisting in the carrying of goods and passengers to and fro, and depending on local connection with the places between which the trade was conducted. With that trade foreigners could not compete; and, consequently, he illogically argued that it was not intended to disturb that trade or throw it open to foreign competition; so that he proposed to keep the coasting trade, which consisted of passing from one port to another of the United Kingdom, on its present footing. ”

“ Any chance we could have of getting from America a share of her coasting trade must depend upon our offering her our entire coasting trade, leaving her perfectly free to accept it or not, under the regulations now affecting British ships engaged in it. But we must not expect of America that she would fetter herself towards other countries by those particular regulations which it was proposed to lay down, and which do not give up the whole coasting trade, but only portions of it; to any such regulations we could not expect that America would agree. ”

“ In fact, a large coasting-trade is carried on, both in passengers and merchandise, the route by sea being preferred to travelling by land over badly-formed, and frequently unsafe, roads. In the first instance, some difficulty existed in procuring vessels, especially for the navigation of the rivers, where a light draught of water was necessary, as such vessels could not be trusted to make the voyage out from Europe or America. They are now, however, being gradually supplied by builders in the colony. ”

“ The exports consist chiefly of corn, salmon, cod-fish, and granite, for which the quarries of this coast have been so long known and appreciated. It is also a favourite fishing-station, and possesses a numerous fleet of boats engaged in the herring-fishery, which is here prosecuted during the season with great activity and success; an occupation that has been the means of training up a larger number of hardy seamen, and thus contributing to the naval supremacy of our country in a greater degree than any other branch of the coasting-trade. ”

“ It is well known that almost the whole of our immense coasting trade is carried on by vessels owned in the Northeastern States of the Union; and the far greater part of them are sailing under contracts like this. And upon our coast, stormy and dangerous as it is at certain seasons of the year, very serious damage is often sustained by these vessels, and heavy amounts frequently required and obtained in the ports of other States for repairs and supplies to enable them to proceed on their voyages. ”

“ In a few years, the fertility of the soil enables them to send surplus produce, in exchange for European or West India productions, to the stores of the country traders in some neighboring town, who, in their turn, transport it to the sea-coast, for home consumption or exportation. In this manner an active trade is maintained between the seaports and the interior, and as the new settlers stand in actual need of many foreign articles, which they require on credit, to be paid for from the next year’s crop, it follows, that the interior is invariably in debt to the merchants on the seaboard. ”

“ The coast is the natural habitat of the middleman. One strip of seaboard produces a middleman people, and then sends them out to appropriate other littorals, if geographic conditions are favorable; otherwise it is content with the transit trade of its own locality. It breeds essentially a race of merchants, shunning varied production, nursing monopoly by secrecy and every method to crush competition. The profits of trade attract all the free citizens, and the laboring class is small or slave. Expansion landward has no attraction in comparison with the seaward expansion of commerce. ”

“ But, if I am mistaken in these views, and it should experience any reduction, the increase in our coasting tonnage, resulting from the greater activity of domestic exchanges, will more than compensate the injury. Although our navigation partakes in the general distress of the country, it is less depressed than any other of our great interests. The foreign tonnage has been gradually, though slowly, increasing, since 1818. And our coasting tonnage, since 1816, has increased upwards of one hundred thousand tons. ”

“ Even more significant in its relation to sea power than the revolution in armaments during the 19th century was the extraordinary growth of ocean commerce. The total value of the world's import and export trade in 1800 amounted in round numbers to 1-1/2 billion dollars, in 1850 to 4 billion, and in 1900 to nearly 24 billion. In other words, during a period in which the population of the world was not more than tripled, its international exchange of commodities was increased 16-fold. ”

“ All comparison is at once defied, as there is nothing like it afloat in the world.
The extent of the lake-trade is prodigious. Its aggregate value for 1850, imports and exports, amounts to 186,484,905 dollars, which is more by 40,000,000 dollars than the whole foreign export-trade of the country! The aggregate tonnage employed on the lakes is equal to 203,041 tons, of which 167,137 tons are American, and 35,904 British. The passenger-trade is not included in the preceding sum; it is valued at 1,000,000 dollars. 'The mind is lost in astonishment at so prodigious a commerce. ”

“ The facilities for building and repairing vessels along the coast, while the sale of timber was unrestricted, not only allowed a more abundant supply of shipping at a cheap rate for the convenience of the native trader, but attracted the beneficial visits and the intercourse of foreigners, and encouraged a species of trade, which under the recent system has been lost. ”

“ The experience of the world has shown that nations do not become commercial or manufacturing, so long as the products of the soil are sufficiently abundant to yield them wealth; and, hence, it may be reasonably inferred that the carrying trade to and from South-America will, if proper measures be taken, fall into the hands of American ship-owners. ”

“ When the opening and development of the Atlantic trade deprived the Mediterranean ports of their pride of place, an Atlantic stage of world-commerce began, in which England, an island with good harbours on its western coasts, was in the most favourable position. The Pacific stage which is now beginning must inevitably give the primacy to America. We had also a long start, industrially, over all our rivals, and our possession of great coal-fields and iron-fields close together gave us a still further advantage. Our labour was then cheap and good; our manufacturers capable and energetic. ”

“ Our commerce depends largely on this study for its perpetuation, for without harbors commerce must cease; and without harbors that will admit vessels of the largest class it must deteriorate. If commerce finds increased profits in large vessels it demands increased facilities, and the bars to the harbors with but six or eight feet of water on them a few years ago, must have ten, perhaps fifteen feet now, or the people must suffer their trade to pass to some more fortunate or energetic neighbor. ”

“ Primitive or early maritime commerce has always been characterized by the short beat, a succession of middlemen coasts, and a close series of staple-places, such as served the early Indian Ocean trade in Oman, Malabar Coast, Ceylon, Coromandel Coast, Malacca, and Java. Therefore, many a littoral admirably situated for middleman trade loses this advantage so soon as commerce matures enough to extend the sweep of its voyages, and to bring into direct contact the two nations for which that coast was intermediary. ”

“ But the ocean coasts—where alone natural [Pg 38] wave-power is constant—are exactly the localities at which, as a rule, it is the least practicable to build up a manufacturing trade. Commerce needs smooth water for the havens offered to its ships, and inasmuch as this requirement is vastly more imperative during the early stages of civilisation than cheap power, the drift of manufacturing centres has been all towards the calm harbours and away from the ocean coasts. ”

“ With such a seaboard they would be independent, could develop the country, and sell the produce of their mines and other exports direct, and with the proceeds of such trade could import whatever war material or other goods they required, and strengthen themselves without the knowledge of or interference from their neighbours. ”

“ Each country, of course, has a foreign trade, but the people of the interior, the Indians or mixed breeds, live in isolated communities which are self-sufficing, raise their own food and make their own simple manufactures, knowing little or nothing of the products of foreign countries.
The whole coast and its hinterland is engaged almost solely in what are known as "extractive" industries—that is, in mining or agriculture. The exports consist mainly of foodstuffs and raw materials, nitrate, ores of copper, silver, and gold, grain, sugar, cotton, cocoa, coffee, wool, hides, rubber, and woods. ”

“ Combined with the manufactured productions of the country, and the yield of the mines, they require a large amount of shipping, which, extending to nearly all nations, opens a diversified and rich field of trade. The exchanges of production between our own and other countries, are, consequently, very large and general, and must continue to increase to an indefinite extent, as the States and Territories of the Union fill up, and as the various new and opening branches of domestic industry develop and mature. ”

“ States could find the best markets for some of their most important exports, afforded the promise of a highly lucrative trade; while the voyage to the East Indies from any American port could be performed in as short a time as from England or Holland or France. In the South, there were great staples already largely demanded by the consumption of Europe. In the North, there were fisheries of singular importance, capable of furnishing enormous additions to the wealth of the country. ”