Maritime industry

“ During my Administration I have sought to ensure that the U.S. maritime industry will not have to function at an unfair competitive disadvantage in the international market. As I indicated in my maritime policy statement to the Congress in July, 1979, the American merchant marine is vital to our Nation's welfare, and Federal actions should promote rather than harm it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our present domestic marine of 4,000,000 tons is at least twice as effective as was the domestic shipping of 3,000,000 by which we were served a generation ago.
VII. AMERICAN SHIPBUILDING.
One great aid to the achievement of maritime greatness is a strong shipbuilding industry, and every nation with commercial aspirations endeavors to establish the business upon a sure foundation. For some countries, as in the case of the United Kingdom, that is much easier than for others; and that is one reason why Great Britain has so easily succeeded in maintaining her place as mistress of the seas. ”

“ It diminished or streamlined outdated regulations that governed the ocean liner industry, and it has helped rekindle the spirit of American maritime enterprise. American-flag liner companies are now in the forefront of developments that are providing shippers with more efficient, extensive, and innovative intermodal services. ”

“ Because the shipping industry is vitally important both to our national commerce and national defense, the Federal Government has maintained a special interest in trying to promote its growth and stability. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Last September, the Secretary of Transportation presented to the Congress a blueprint for modernizing our Marine Transportation System—the waterways, ports, railways, and roads that move people and goods to, from, and on the water. We must build more and better ships, modernize our shipyards, create deeper ports for today's ever larger containerships and ocean liners, and maintain a skilled maritime workforce. ”

“ Her great length of sea coast, the productive fisheries east and, west, the facility for ship-building given by her forests, have stimulated her maritime activity to such an extent that in tonnage of shipping she now ranks fourth among the nations of the world, counting the United Kingdom as one. Her sailing ships are found in every quarter of the world, taking part in the carrying trade. ”

“ The answer to this question must be found by ascertaining the cause of the decline of our merchant marine. Why is it that Americans have substantially retired from the foreign transport service? We are a nation of maritime traditions and facility; we are a nation of constructive capacity, competent to build ships; [Pg 260] we are eminent, if not preëminent, in the construction of machinery; we have abundant capital seeking investment; we have courage and enterprise shrinking from no competition in any field which we choose to enter. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We must ensure our maritime system can meet the challenges of the 21st century. As cargo volume is expected to double within the next 20 years, a viable maritime network will help our country compete in our global economy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Last October, we announced a five-step plan to strengthen the American shipbuilding industry and to make it more competitive in the international market. Our plan promotes innovative, standardized ship designs that will reduce costs through state-of-the-art technology and series production methods. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They fully recognized the importance of the home ship-building industry, and did everything possible to encourage it, but they also perceived that ship-owning is of vastly more importance to a nation than shipbuilding, and that fleets of ships are not commerce but only the instruments with which commerce performs its work; likewise, that the nation owning the best and cheapest ships, no matter where or by whom built, must and will, other things being equal, do not only most of its own carrying trade, but also a considerable portion of that of other nations. ”

“ Unfortunately for our national pride, the story of the development of the ocean steamship industry from this small beginning to its present prodigious proportions, is one in which we of the United States fill but a little space. We have, it is true, furnished the rich cargoes of grain, of cotton, and of cattle, that have made the ocean passage in one direction profitable for shipowners. We found homes for the millions of immigrants who crowded the "'tween decks" of steamers of every flag and impelled the companies to build bigger and bigger craft to carry the ever increasing throngs. ”

“ After the revolution our trade had to form new channels, and the employment of our own navigation was to give new activity to all the springs of industry and wealth. We find therefore that the enterprise of the people arose to the emergency, and in a few years our ships were floating on every ocean, becoming the carriers of southern as well as northern produce, and bringing back the money and commodities of other countries. ”

“ Meanwhile, the ensign of the United States no longer contributes in any marked degree to the gayety of foreign seaports; whereas, Great Britain, with inferior coal and iron ore, compelled to import the food and clothing material for her shipwrights from distant lands, and with certainly no keener intelligence nor greater energy among her ship-owners and builders, but guided by the enlightened policy of Free Trade, sends her endless procession of merchant ships, both sail and steam, to every seaport upon the globe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During times of peace, the U.S. Merchant Marine helps ensure our economic security by keeping the oceans open to trade. Ships operated by merchant mariners transport goods across our Nation's waterways and on the high seas around the world to connect American businesses and consumers with valuable foreign markets and commodities. ”

“ If the ocean paths used by our merchant ships—the trade routes or sea communications of the United Kingdom with friendly or neutral markets and areas of production—could be kept open by our navy, that is, made so secure that our trade could traverse them with so little risk of molestation that it could continue to be carried on, it resulted as a matter of course that no sustained attack could be made on our outlying territory. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have considered the position of shipping as the paramount industry of the country—its great services in the conduct of the war, and what it is suffering in consequence of the diffusion of fairy tales of the excessive profits made by shipowners. We can now turn our attention to the extraordinary difficulties which stand in the way of the restoration of the shipping industry, which are fraught with considerable peril to the future of our Empire. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Government aid to shipping and an enthusiastic demand on the part of the people for increased tonnage resulted in the building up of a merchant marine that for size and speed, for energy and enterprise became, shortly, second to none but Britain, and in some aspects exceeded even that great sea power. ”

“ While able men guided the affairs of State, the merchants, shipbuilders, and seamen turned their attention toward developing commerce, and creating a mercantile marine, the cheerful ring of the top-maul and the caulking-iron soon enlivening the seaports along the Atlantic coast; each in turn became famous for her ships and seamen. And although shipbuilding had been carried on, to some extent, in colonial times, yet with the birth of the new Nation, men wrought with new energy and with new purpose. ”

“ Throughout the history of the United States, trade and shipping have made a vital contribution to the Nation's growth and economic vitality. Today, the American Merchant Marine continues to aid the development of American enterprise and to foster the well-being of all American citizens by linking U.S. industries, farms and markets with our overseas trading partners. ”

“ Presently also will come the petroleum-propelled ship, the electrically-engined ship, as the carriage of coal becomes more and more of a burden, while its price steadily rises. Meanwhile, the inventive genius of America will surely find some way of re-creating for herself a splendid Mercantile Marine. I cannot think that she will always be content to see all her vast carrying trade over-sea practically in the hands of Britain and foreigners. ”