Transatlantic shipping

“ The United States is far in advance of all other nations in the magnitude of its domestic shipping, but in its foreign shipping, when the vastness of its foreign trade is considered, it holds a very low rank. Indeed, American foreign shipping presents a most marked contrast to all other groups of industry in the United States. Whereas, as has been seen above, other industries have had a most remarkable development since the middle of the nineteenth century, American foreign shipping has since that time suffered an extraordinary decadence. ”

“ The United States is the greatest trading nation in the world, and this landmark legislation will provide for more flexible and responsive ocean transportation services, including intermodal service, that will benefit both our exporters and importers. United States flag-ocean carriers will benefit by being assured evenhanded regulatory treatment with foreign competitors. The Shipping Act of 1984 represents but one part of my Administration's commitment to foster and maintain the United States-flag merchant marine required by this great Nation for our national security and economic benefit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How is it, that the United States, formerly a maritime power of the first class, has now no ships or steamers that can profitably compete for the carrying of even its own exports; not merely with the ships of our great commercial rival, England, but also with those of Italy, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Holland, Austria, and Portugal? ... The facts already presented fully demonstrate that the war was not the cause, and did not mark the commencement, of the decadence of American shipping ”

“ At present American shipping is under certain great disadvantages when put in competition with the shipping of foreign countries. Many of the fast foreign steamships, at a speed of fourteen knots or above, are subsidized; and all our ships, sailing vessels and steamers alike, cargo carriers of slow speed and mail carriers of high speed, have to meet the fact that the original cost of building American ships is greater than is the case abroad ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ships work for their own countries just as railroads work for their terminal points. Shipping lines, if established to the principal countries with which we have dealings, would be of political as well as commercial benefit. From every standpoint it is unwise for the United States to continue to rely upon the ships of competing nations for the distribution of our goods. It should be made advantageous to carry American goods in American-built ships. ”

“ All kinds of British sea-power did magnificent work in the war, whether building ships, sailing them with passengers and cargoes, or fighting them. The Navy and Mercantile Marine gained eleven million tons during the war, exactly half each. But as the Mercantile Marine lost nine millions sunk, it ended three-and-a-half to the bad, a terrible handicap in the race with the shipping of countries which, like the United States have made stupendous fortunes by the war, besides gaining enormously in shipping and oversea trade. ”

“ Whatever differences of opinion may rightly exist as regards specific measures for the restoration of the American marine to the high seas, all parties should agree as touching the justice and necessity of treating our maritime interests as generously as Great Britain deals with the owners of her mighty marine.
Our domestic marine, being free from foreign competition, has had a prosperity as great as the adversity of our foreign marine. The present tonnage of domestic shipping is nearly 4,000,000 tons, our growth during the period since the Civil War having been nearly a million tons. ”

“ There are no less than thirty steamships now running between New York and different ports in Europe. These are regular steamers carrying passengers and merchandise, beside which there are a number of transient ones that carry cargo only. But ten of them are American vessels, while the Boston, Portland, and Philadelphia lines are entirely European. The Atlantic trade is departing from us, and unless our shipping merchants exhibit more practical wisdom and enterprise they will ultimately be vanished in this contest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are apt to make light of the great increase in American shipping since the late war, and think that the competition of America will not last and will not be serious. We should, however, not forget how large a proportion of the world’s carrying trade by sea was done by America prior to her civil war in 1863, and the excellence of her ships. ”

“ It will shift to America an increasing share of international exchange. It will make America what, by reason of its size and natural resources it should be, the clearing-house as well as the financial reservoir of the world.
This is an opportune time for the development of the free port, even though only one or two experiments are made. A large part of the shipping of the world has been driven from the seas. English, German and Belgian bottoms are in danger of capture. Old trade routes and commercial connections have been destroyed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Spain, Russia, England, Canada, and the new-born United States were the contestants in the arena. What has reached its climax in the sluicing of two oceans together at Panama began in the pursuit of sea-otter and seal after the voyages of Bering and of Cook.
The United States had an added motive. On the principle of protecting native shipping, American ports discriminated against British ships, and British ports discriminated against American ships. It was absolutely necessary to their existence as a nation that the United States should build up a merchant fleet. ”

“ Though the Americans still retain the whole of their river, lake, and coasting trade, including even the distant voyage between New York and California, for the immediate benefit of their own shipping, the vessels of both nations conduct on equal terms the intercourse between the mother-countries, and have done so for more than half a century. But when, towards the close of the War of Independence, the struggle for supremacy commenced, the shipping of both England and America were, in all branches of their maritime commerce, under the leading-strings of their respective legislators. ”

“ To quote the most recent example, about the middle of last century the United States of America fought a well-contested struggle with us for the carrying trade of the world. Shortly after the abolition of the navigation laws, the competition was very severe, and United States ships had obtained almost exclusive possession of the China trade, and of the trade between Europe and North America, and in the year3 1850 the total tonnage of the shipping of the States was 3,535,434, against 4,232,960 tons owned by Great Britain. ”

“ Almost every commercial nation reserves to its own subjects a monopoly of its coasting trade, and a countervailing privilege in favour of American shipping is contemplated in the whole legislation of the United States on this subject. It is not to give the vessel an American character that the license is granted ”

“ 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. ”

“ And if consulted about it the American people would be very likely to declare that if such laws are really necessary to the continuance of the trade in question, it would be a mercy to let the trade die in order to be rid of the laws.... To create a healthy popular interest in the whole subject of American shipping it is necessary to alter the laws affecting American seamen, thus, by inducing Americans to accept service at sea, creating an interest in the vital element of the subject, and also by reflex action, in the physical considerations involved. ”

“ This commerce was then relatively much more important to the United States than in later times; and it was chiefly by American shipping that American commerce was carried on with foreign countries. The absurd and odious restrictions upon intercourse so highly natural and advantageous to the people of our seaboard and of the British West Indian islands had led to smuggling on a large scale, and were fruitful of international irritations. ”

“ Since the inception of our great Nation the American merchant marine has contributed to its security and economic growth.
It is a vital lifeline linking the United States with its trading partners. In times of war it serves as our "fourth arm of defense" providing logistic support to our Armed Forces.
For too long, our shipping industry has been in a state of decline, and its ability to meet the Nation's economic and defense needs has eroded. My Administration is firmly committed to the rejuvenation of the American merchant marine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Non-Intercourse Act had brought some measure of relief to New England shipping. Trade with parts of the European continent could now be carried [Pg 199] on by those who wished to incur the hazard. A greater volume of trade was probably carried on illicitly with England. Amelia Island, just across the Florida line, and Halifax, in Nova Scotia, became intermediate ports to which American goods went for reshipment to Europe and to which British merchandise was shipped for distribution in the United States. ”

“ This is done by laying a tariff upon imports. But the American shipping is now and always has been protected that far—absolutely protected, in fact, by prohibition. The importation of ships has been forbidden, and the use of foreign ships in the "home market" has been reserved to home-built ships for nearly 100 years. If "protection" could enable any industry to expand from the "home market" to the foreign, then the coasting trade industry should have expanded long since over all the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The fact that foreign countries grant heavy subsidies to aid the maintenance of shipping, while the United States has not maintained such a policy, has made the competition an uneven one, and, since the recent development of public interest concerning the serious condition of our foreign shipping, the idea of establishing some form of subsidy by the United States as a solution of the shipping problem has won great popularity. American capital has meanwhile begun to participate largely in the foreign trade, through investments in ships which continue to sail under foreign flags. ”