Maritime commerce

“ For our people were then essentially a maritime people. Their greatest single manufacturing industry was ship-building. The fisheries—whale, herring, and cod—employed thousands of their men and supported more than one considerable town. The markets for their products lay beyond seas, and for their commerce an undisputed right to the peaceful passage of the Page 25ocean was necessary. Yet England and France, prosecuting their own quarrel, fairly ground American shipping as between two millstones. ”

“ Another instrumentality indispensable to the unhampered and natural development of American commerce is merchant marine. All maritime and commercial nations recognize the importance of this factor. The greatest commercial nations, our competitors, jealously foster their merchant marine. Perhaps nowhere is the need for rapid and direct mail, passenger and freight communication quite so urgent as between the United States and Latin America. ”

“ The full appreciation of the opportunities which our front on the Pacific Ocean gives to commerce with Japan, China, and the East Indies, with Australia and the island groups which lie along these routes of navigation, should inspire equal efforts to appropriate to our own shipping and to administer by our own capital a due proportion of this trade. Whatever modifications of our regulations of trade and navigation may be necessary or useful to meet and direct these impulses to the enlargement of our exchanges and of our carrying trade I am sure the wisdom of Congress will be ready to supply. ”

“ The ample material, and other facilities for building vessels, have also contributed to this end. As capable as any people on earth of running vessels and conducting mercantile enterprise, we have found foreign commerce a profitable field for the investment of labor, intelligence, and capital.
There is scarcely any field of trade in the world which we are not naturally better calculated to occupy than any other country. Most of the great commercial nations employ their ships as common carriers for other nations, and limit their exports to manufactures alone. ”

“ If only one-half of the business of carrying our enormous wealth of surplus products could be secured for American ships, our tonnage would be instantly doubled, and we would have a greater fleet engaged in a foreign trade, legitimately our own, than Great Britain has to-day. The United States makes to the ocean carrying trade its most valuable contribution, no other nation giving to commerce so many bulky tons of commodities to be transported those long voyages which in every age have been so eagerly coveted by marine peoples. ”

“ As we look forward to the challenges of the 21st century, we continue to rely on our Nation's maritime industry and the U.S. Merchant Marine to keep America competitive in an increasingly global economy. Ships and barges carry more than one billion tons of commercial cargo annually between ports within our Nation. ”

“ The growth of manufacturing, the lack of wide public domains open to the “homesteader,” the widespread American interests overseas, all point to a permanent merchant marine, not, perhaps, so great as is Great Britain’s, because America is not so vitally dependent on the sea as is Great Britain, but great because America is great, and growing because America is still developing.
In this development shipping lines are the vital factors. [Pg 276] Individual ships are merely pawns on a world-wide chessboard. A single ship can do nothing in the complex structure of modern commerce. ”

“ American vessels during the past three years have carried about 9 per cent of our exports and imports. Foreign ships should carry the least, not the greatest, part of American trade. The remarkable growth of our steel industries, the progress of shipbuilding for the domestic trade, and our steadily maintained expenditures for the Navy have created an opportunity to place the United States in the first rank of commercial maritime powers. ”

“ Unless conditions governing the American merchant marine materially change within the next two years—of which there seems today no likelihood—it will be England and Germany with their existing lines of ships that will chiefly benefit by the United States $400,000,000 gift to the commerce of the world. ”

“ In the three years after 1789 the merchant shipping registered for the foreign trade increased from 123,893 tons to 411,438 tons, presaging a growth without parallel in the history of the commercial world. Foreign ships were almost entirely driven out of American ports, and ninety-one per cent of imports and eighty-six per cent of exports were conveyed in vessels built and manned by Americans. Before Congress intervened, English merchantmen had controlled three-fourths of our commerce overseas. ”

“ Coal, lumber, cotton, and similar bulky commodities constitute the chief items entering into the coastwise trade. The tonnage of American vessels engaged in the foreign trade, on the other hand, has shown a steady decline ever since the outbreak of the Civil War. Foreign vessels today carry fully 90 per cent of the foreign commerce of the United States. The causes of this decline are economic rather than political, for American legislation has on the whole been very liberal to the shipping interests. ”

“ SHIPPING. Our present dependence upon foreign shipping for nine-tenths of our foreign-carrying trade is a great loss to the industry of this country. It is also a serious danger to our trade, for its sudden withdrawal in the event of European war would seriously cripple our expanding foreign commerce. The national defense and naval efficiency of this country, moreover, supply a compelling reason for legislation which will enable us to recover our former place among the trade carrying fleets of the world. ”

“ With no United States steamers on the principal ocean lines or in any foreign ports, our facilities for extending our commerce are greatly restricted, while the nations which build and sail the ships and carry the mails and passengers obtain thereby conspicuous advantages in increasing their trade. ”

“ The shipping interest, also, has suffered severely, still more severely, probably, than commerce. If any thing should strike us with astonishment, it is that the navigation of the United States should be able to sustain itself. Without any government protection whatever, it goes abroad to challenge competition with the whole world; and, in spite of all obstacles, it has yet been able to maintain eight hundred thousand tons in the employment of foreign trade. ”

“ Most of these are engaged in coastwise trade. The fleet of the Hamburg-American line alone, among our many foreign rivals, aggregates 515,628 gross tons.
However, we must bear in mind that this seemingly insignificant place held by the United States merchant marine represents only the part it holds in the international carrying trade of the world. Such a country as Germany must expend all its maritime energies on international trade. It has little or no river and coastwise traffic. But the United States is a little world in itself; not so very small, and of late years growing greater. ”

“ He would cherish the foreign, and neglect the internal trade. I would foster both. What is navigation without ships, or ships without cargoes? By penetrating the bosoms of our mountains, and extracting from them their precious treasures; by cultivating the earth, and securing a home market for its rich and abundant products; by employing the water power with which we are blessed; by stimulating and protecting our native industry, in all its forms; we shall but nourish and promote the prosperity of commerce, foreign and domestic. ”

“ There can be no doubt that easy, speedy, cheap, and general inter-communication to internal trade,--whether by means of roads and canals, as in England, or by means of rivers as in America, is advantageous to foreign commerce, both directly and indirectly. It is advantageous directly, in so far as it enables the manufacturer with great facility, and at little expence, to transmit his goods to the places of exportation ”

“ To affirm the importance of distant markets, and the relation to them of our own immense powers of production, implies logically the recognition of the link that joins the products and the markets,—that is, the carrying trade; the three together constituting that chain of maritime power to which Great Britain owes her wealth and greatness. ”

“ Large profits have been derived by those who have constructed as well as by those who have navigated them. Should the ratio of increase in the number of our merchant vessels be progressive, and be as great for the future as during the past year, the time is not distant when our tonnage and commercial marine will be larger than that of any other nation in the world.
Whilst the interests of agriculture, of commerce, and of navigation have been enlarged and invigorated, it is highly gratifying to observe that our manufactures are also in a prosperous condition. ”

“ When I had the honor of conversing with your Excellency, I mentioned, that the admission of our cruisers into his Majesty’s ports to supply themselves with necessaries, careen, and sell their prizes in a secret manner, would be attended with great advantages. It is the only method of establishing a commerce, at present, from America hither, in the commodities and vessels of the States; for the privateers take in a light cargo from America, which they bring to the ports where they are permitted ”

“ This liberal provision, which dates from 1866, is made to include boats obtained at sea, from a passing foreign vessel, in order to assure the safety of our own seamen. ... All other nations have the power of buying ships for foreign trade in the cheapest market, and the effort to protect our shipbuilders by the denial of this right forbids the return of commercial prosperity." J. D. J. Kelley, The Question of Ships, chapters 4-5. COMMERCE: MODERN: The recent revolution in Commerce. ”

“ I need hardly reiterate the conviction that there should speedily be built up an American merchant marine. This is necessary to assure favorable transportation facilities to our great ocean-borne commerce as well as to supplement the Navy with an adequate reserve of ships and men It would have the economic advantage of keeping at home part of the vast sums now paid foreign shipping for carrying American goods. ”

“ With the opening of ocean routes and the discovery of America, a rivalry in world trade and colonial expansion set in which has continued increasingly down to the present time, forming a dominant element in the foreign policies of maritime nations and a primary motive for the possession and use of navies. The development of overseas trade, involving the factors of merchant shipping, navies, and control of the seas, is thus an integral part of the history of sea power. ”

“ Our produce will be augmented to an incalculable amount in articles of the greatest value for domestic use and foreign commerce. Our navigation will in like degree be increased, and as the shipping of the Atlantic States will be employed in the transportation of the vast produce of the Western country, even those parts of the United States which are most remote from each other will be further bound together by the strongest ties which mutual interest can create. ”

“ These U.S. ships deliver a billion tons of imports and exports each year in our foreign trade and another billion tons of waterborne domestic trade. Many merchant seafarers are trained at outstanding institutions such as the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York, the six State maritime academies, and several union and industry training facilities. ”

“ Partly because of dangers suggested above, partly because of the natural perils of the sea under the conditions of navigation at the time, partly because of the very novelty of the trade, distant commerce was very hazardous. If five men sent out a ship they might make a great fortune, but they might lose everything. If they associated themselves with ninety-five others and together sent out twenty ships they were pretty sure to lose some of these, but they were pretty sure to make from the other ships enough to return large profits. ”

“ The ports of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean no longer enjoy a monopoly of commerce as they did for thousands of years, but the number of ships to be met with in that inland sea is, nevertheless, proportionately far greater than what we meet with on the open oceans. The commercial marine of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean numbers thirty-seven thousand vessels, of a capacity of two million seven hundred and ninety-six thousand tons, without counting fishing-boats. ”

“ So rapid indeed was their progress, that out of the million tons of sea-going vessels owned in the United States at the commencement of this century, no less than seven hundred and twenty thousand were employed in their trade with foreign nations. ”

“ Today, the men and women who crew ships remain essential to our Nation's prosperity and security. Those in the maritime industry, including merchant mariners, promote our economic growth, facilitating the export of more than $475 billion in goods just last year and sustaining our critical defense industrial base. Merchant mariners also actively protect our homeland, serving as our eyes and ears on the seas. ”

“ If the Legislature should decide that it was no longer necessary to keep up the Navigation Laws as a means of national security, no doubt the consumers of foreign articles could purchase at a cheaper rate, since this would be the natural consequence of admitting imports in the ships of foreign nations. ”