BUT THE P Y By Agnes C. Laut UT in a nutshell, why should the high seas, and that these are Atlantic and Pacific liners and do not go through the Canal! Granted, as Luther Conant, the Commissioner of Navigation, avers, that all the United States steamers of the coastal trade are barred SHIPS waii, which is really only a coastal trade; and this line may come under the railroad clause. Suppose Uncle Sam hasn't a single ship to go through Panama! What of it? Why not let the foreign carriers take the traffic? This is one of the big features, you will remember, promised to you last month for July Technical World. Though we have no ships to carry our commerce through Panama Canal, there is a way to get them. Miss Laut here tells how. And this way is not by the old, stupid course of ship subsidy. It is a much fairer, and equally simple, way. Why didn't we think of that before?" you will say when you have finished reading this vitally important and interesting article.-Editor's Note. from using Panama Canal. 66 Put in a nutshell here is the why: First: Since the foreign carriers succeeded in driving the American flag from the seas, they have raised the freight on American traf fic from two hundred per cent to three hundred per cent. Cotton that was formerly twelve cents, is now forty-five cents; and a similar advance tariff has been levied on everything that Uncle Sam imports or exports. Second: Foreign carriers last IT IS BETTER FOR OUR SAILOR LADS TO STICK TO FISHING THAN TO SEEK SERVICE ON THE HIGH SEAS year paid dividends of from seven per cent to twenty-five per cent from the carrying of Uncle Sam's traffic. American railroads cannot pay such dividends. A United States Marine would pay its own cost in four years, and keep those dividends at home. Third: Uncle Sam's traffic now amounts to the enormous total of four billions a year. The ocean freight on this comes to almost half a billion yearly, and must be paid to Europe in gold. This, annually, drains gold from the United States and causes tight money. Fourth: Foreigners build and operate their ships forty per cent cheaper than Uncle Sam. In England, the great shipbuilding country, there are one hundred and forty thousand skilled shipyard workers and two hundred thousand sailors of the high seas. These men draw wages These men draw wages forty per cent cheaper than Uncle Sam's wages. To permit foreigners to monopolize the handling of all United States foreign trade is to subsidize cheap foreign. labor against high priced American labor. Fifth: Foreigners carrying Uncle Sam's trade convey their cargoes of grain, cotton, and apples, as well as various manufactured articles, to their own foreign markets, where the profits of re-selling are won by the foreign market. This profit belongs to Uncle Sam; but he can secure it only by having his own delivery cart to his own customers. And only by having his own delivery cart "IN THREE YEARS CANADA WILL BE EXPORTING MORE GRAIN AND FLOUR TO EUROPE THAN THE UNITED STATES DOES" can he extend his foreign trade. Today, South American trade is practically monopolized by foreigners. Why? Because Uncle Sam has no ships of his own for direct trade. The same is true of Asia, of Africa, of the Baltic, of the Mediterranean, and of the Atlantic. Foreigners have, on all these waters, "closed pools"-that is, ship conferences from which an independent American outsider is excluded by "rebates", by "fighting lines" run at a loss, and by every other unscrupulous method used in cut-throat trade. Anyone wanting details of this cutthroat competition for Uncle Sam's traffic LUMBER CARRIERS TACOMA'S Oddly enough, they are GRAIN VESSELS LOADING AT lows instead of the big generality of little fellows, and so would not increase the merchant fleet by more than a few ships. Some of the highest authorities hold that subsidies would be unconstitutional under the American Government. What, then, do the shipbuilders want? What do they think would build up an American Merchant Marine? Just what Canada did to increase trade with the Mother Country. Just what the United States did in the early days of the Republic, when she built up the greatest clipper trade in the world-when she was actually selling ships by the thousands to Europe, so that the British Board of Trade, in 1854, had a Commission to consider the decline of British Yards. Shipbuilders and navigators want just one thing to re-establish an American Merchant Marine; they want a preferential tariff-a reduction, say, of ten per cent-on all goods coming to the United States in American ships. This is not subsidy. It is not a new form of "pork barrel" graft. It is not increased tariff. It is not a burden on anyone. It is a decreased tariff to build up an American industry for American workers. And that it would have such results, there can be little doubt. "WHAT IF INDIA AND EGYPT PRODUCE AS MUCH COT TON AS THE SOUTH?" EUROPEAN COTTON STEAMER LOADING AT A From the time of preferential tariffs in the early days of the country, the American Marine doubled, trebled, quadrupled -till American ships were carrying not nine per cent minus of United States commerce, but ninety-one per cent plus. But right there, you involve yourself in one of the hundred snarls that entangle Uncle Sam's clumsy feet in seaweed every time he blunders into the subject of a Merchant Marine. Granted that a tariff reduction on goods coming into the United States would build up an American Marine. (There is seldom any difficulty getting a cargo outbound. The entire trouble is to get a cargo inboundEuropean goods. away from those rival and cheaper European ships, destined for United States ports.) Granted that a lower tariff on goods sent in United States ships would turn the trick. That is the way Cromwell first built up England's Marine in the sixteen-hundreds, and stole commercial supremacy from the Dutch and the Spanish. Granted. that this lower tariff on goods in United States ships would turn the trickhaven't we twentytwo different Navigation Treaties for reciprocal treatment from twenty-two different seagoing nations? "Yes," say the lower tariff advocates, of whom Lewis Nixon and Governor Sulzer are chief, "we have, but in each of those Treaties is a clause permitting abrogation on due notice. Out of fortytwo Marine Treaties, we have already abrogated twenty without smashing international relations. Abrogate! The term of two or three of those Treaties expires this very year." "But, if you abrogate, won't they strike back? Won't they grant preference to goods coming to them from America in their own foreign ships?" As a matter of fact, they do grant preference to their own ships in various subterranean ways-naval reserve fees, mail subsidies, admiralty subventions -that circumvent reciprocal Navigation Treaties. "Won't they hit back?" A "WINDJAMMER" IN DOCK A foreign vessel loading cargo at a Tacoma wheat warehouse. These warehouses extend for one solid mile along the Tacoma water-front. To this, the lower tariff advocates answer-"How can they hit back? We feed Europe. We feed England." Right there-note the point! Conditions are not the same today as a century ago, when the Republic built up her Marine by preference tariffs. Then, Europe needed our food. Does she today? In three years, Canada will be exporting more grain and flour to Europe than the United States does. As to As to meat, the United States is today importing meat. England must depend upon Australia and Argentina. As to cotton, we think that she could not do without our cotton. The dearth today would close up Manchester: but how about tomor |