REPORT OF AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE COMMISSION. 3
A FAIR CHANCE FOR ALL.

In all of these cities, except Washington, the invitations were
extended and the arrangements for the hearings were made by representative
 commercial organizations, for whose alertness, patriotic
zeal, and cordial hospitality the Commission desires to return sincere
acknowledgments. Without the frank cooperation of these energetic
men of business in the chief commercial cities of the country, the
inquiry of the Commission could not have been cartied so far between
the adjournment and the reassembling of Congress.
It was everywhere distinctly stated that the Commission did not,
come on any political errand; that it was not committed in advance to
any specific measure; that its members, one and all, were open minded
as to the best policy of relief for our vanishing ships and seamen; and
that any intelligent suggestion offered in good faith toward the
apbuilding of our merchant fleet would be frankly welcomed and
honestly considered. Indeed, the open-door rule that governed all
the hearings was so very liberal that in one or two instances alien
agents of foreign steamships appeared with the familiar sophistical
plea that foreign shipowners had the field; that their service way
“‘cheap,” and that therefore they ought to be allowed indefinitely to
monopolize our ocean carryin regardless of the ultimate effect upon
our power to extend our oan in peace or defend our coasts in war.

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UNITED DEMAND FOR AMERICAN SHIPS,

Coincidently, this bland appeal of the foreign steamship agents has
found expression in a few newspapers, but so far as is known it has
not been advanced anywhere by so much as one witness qualified to
speak us a disinterested American citizen. Public sentiment, as the
Commission has sounded it throughout the United States, is practically
Unanimous not in merely desiring, but in demanding an American ocean
fleet, built, owned, officered, and so far as may be, manned by our own
people. This sentiment, as the printed pages of the testimony prove,
ls just as earnest on the Great Lakes as it Is on either ocean. ~ Men of
business showed themselves conspicuously alert and well informed on
this vital question ‘in the lake cities, and the interest and knowledge of
shipbuilding Philadelphia were fairly matched at the great southern
port of New Orleans. Differences of opinion there are, of course, as
to methods and policies, though these are by no means irreconcilable.
But nowhere is there any difference as to the main principle of national
recognition and encouragement of our hard-pressed ocean carrying
trade

DISINTERESTED WITNESSES.

A very large proportion—perhaps a majority—of the hundreds of
Witnesses who have appeared before the Commission are men who
have not a dollar’s worth of actual interest in ships or shipbuilding.
Practically all of the present ocean shipowners and shipbuilders of
America have been heard, but all together these men are by no meang
lumerous., A great part of the testimony, and that not the least
authoritative and impressive, has come from merchants in general
trade, manufacturers of goods for export, editors, lawyers and like
Professional men, and others whose interest in this question is, at the

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