Maritime trade

“ 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. ”

“ For the moment English mercantile effort took a direction that did not bring it into conflict with larger interests, but when the natural expansion of trade and shipping brought the country into collision with other powers the struggles of centuries, which had shaped and hardened a skilful and dauntless maritime population, bore their natural fruit in a school of seamen able to use and direct the instruments which the increasing wealth and ambition of the nation placed in their hands. ”

“ Since 1906 the situation has greatly improved because appointments and promotions have been made upon a basis of merit alone.
375The Merchant Marine.—In order that a country may build up a profitable foreign trade it should have vessels of its own in which to carry exports and imports. Trade that depends entirely upon the use of foreign vessels is insecure, because the outbreak of war between two or more foreign countries may keep these ships at home. So the development of American maritime commerce has seemed to make desirable the maintenance of a merchant fleet under the American flag. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, what is the meaning of our carrying trade departing from us? Our mercantile marine consists of 37,000 vessels, representing an aggregate of between 6,000,000 and 7,000,000 tons. These vessels would necessarily be laid up in dock, or sold to neutrals if the war lasted long enough; and the carrying trade having left us in war, it by no means follows that it would return to us in peace. It is very difficult to coax trade back from channels to which it has become accustomed. ”

“ And though the profits of shipping of all sorts have received a vast addition, from the enormous importations consequent upon Sir R. Peel's free-trade measures, yet the returns of these years prove that the greater part of this [Pg 3] increase has accrued to foreign states and powers, which may at any time turn the maritime resources thus acquired against ourselves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Against this we have opposed, in the western world alone, nearly £60,000,000 of agricultural produce, exportable and exported yearly, requiring a trade in returns equal to £56,000,000, and a proportionate number of ships’ tonnage and seamen. In the trade with Cuba and Port Rico alone, the United States have 1600 vessels employed yearly, (230,000 tons of shipping,) making numerous and speedy voyages, and from which trade only, these states, in case of emergency, could man and maintain from twenty to thirty sail of the line. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here other nations will profit equally with ours unless our merchants show a greater energy in the pursuit of foreign trade than they have of late years. Time was that the old shipping merchants of Boston, Philadelphia and New York asked odds of no man nor of any nation, but had their own ships plying in the waters of all the world, with captains who were at once navigators and traders—equally alert to avoid a typhoon and to secure a profitable cargo or charter. ”

“ Without attempting to determine precisely the relative importance of internal and external commerce, which varies with each country, and admitting that the length of transportation entails a distinct element of increased cost upon the articles transported, it is nevertheless safe to say that, to nations having free access to the sea, the export and import trade is a very large factor in national prosperity and comfort. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is evident, from this summary, that the decline of British and growth of foreign shipping will be so rapid, under the system of Free Trade in Shipping, that the time is not far distant when the foreign tonnage employed in conducting our trade will be superior in amount to the British. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These obstacles should in some way be overcome, and for our rapid communication with foreign lands we should not continue to depend wholly upon vessels built in the yards of other countries and sailing under foreign flags. 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. ”

“ Building ships and navigating them utilizes vast capital at home; it employs thousands of workmen in their construction and manning; it creates a home market for the products of the farm and the shop; it diminishes the balance of trade against us precisely to the extent of freights and passage money paid to American vessels, and gives us a supremacy upon the seas of inestimable value in case of foreign war.
Our Navy at the commencement of the late war consisted of less than 100 vessels, of about 150,000 tons and a force of about 8,000 men. ”

“ Every one knows that for fish, beef, pork, and lumber, they are dependent on us, inasmuch as they cannot get them elsewhere. How is the trade carried on? Great Britain has adopted a curious commercial principle, bottomed on the principle of her navigation act; which in time of peace almost amounts to a prohibition to introduce into her islands any articles of ours; and which in time of war opens the ports of a few of her islands for the introduction of particular articles for three or six months. Mr. C. said he wished to see this trade permanently open to the citizens of the United States. ”

“ But that the great ships will decay, doth not necessarily follow; for the main trade of all the white cloth, and much of other kind, is shipped from the Port of London, and will be still, it being the fittest Port of the kingdom for Germanie and the Low Countries, where the Merchant Adventurers' trade only lieth; who shall have little cause to alter their shipping. Then the Levent Sea, Muscovy, and East Indies, whither we trade with great ships, the employing of them will be still requisite in the merchants' discretion ”

“ The first thing to be observed is that the British monopoly of shipping and of oversea trade has disappeared. Great Britain still has by far the largest mercantile marine and by far the greatest share in the world's sea traffic, but she no longer stands alone. Germany, the United States, France, Norway, Italy, and Japan all have great fleets of merchant ships and do an enormous, some of them a rapidly increasing, seaborne trade. A large number of the principal States import the raw material of manufacture and carry on import and export on a large scale. ”

“ A second general cause accounting for the world’s progress in commerce is political—the commercial policy followed by the leading nations of the world. Up to the nineteenth century, practically every country strove to promote its trade, navigation interests, and its power as a nation by means of the mercantile system,—a system of strict and detailed regulation of foreign trade by means of tariffs and navigation laws. Each country strove to determine the nature of its international trade, and endeavored to carry on its commerce in its own ships. ”

“ When the American people have before them any proposition for the revival of the American merchant marine, they should keep in mind that ships designed for the purpose and at least in sufficient numbers, are afloat in every trade of the world; that the freight rates are maintained at a point where the profits are as low as any afforded by any branch of the world's work ”