6 REPORT OF AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE COMMISSION.

of American material, except coal, or yield so much as a dime to American
 labor, beyond the stevedores. The managers of these foreign
steamship companies are, as a rule, aliens sent over to the United
States. The very clerks in their offices are, as far as can be, brought
from Europe. These foreign steamship agencies are virtually little
European colonies on American soil; their fixed determination seems
to be to exclude Americans by birth from all share or knowledge of
the ocean shipping business.
Tt has been testified before the Commission that not only do foreign
ships, sent over here to engage exclusively in American commerce,
bring officers and crews under long contract from home, and return
home for all important repairs, but that many actually refuse to purchase
 food and other supplies here in the best and cheapest market.
These vessels arrive loaded with home provisions and other material that
are placed in bonded stores here and withdrawn from time to time as
they are needed, so that so faras possible not one penny of money earned
by these foreign ships in American trade shall return to'the channels
of American commerce.
PARALYSIS OF OCEAN SHIPBUILDING.

This policy of rigid, aggressive favoritism, practiced by foreign
shipowners without resistance from the United States, has now wrought
its desired and logical result. It has absolutely killed the ocean shipbuilding
 of America. The Commissioner of Navigation notes in his
present annual report that last year for the first time in our history
no square-rigged vessel for the deep-sea trade was launched on either
the Atlantic or Pacific coastline, and that only one steamer for the
foreign trade remained under construction in any American shipyard.
Our shipyards, by the way, have not received an order for a steamship
exclusively for foreign commerce since June, 1201.
The condition of the remnant of the ocean fleet of the United States
is, therefore, absolutely desperate. With no new ships whatever
being built, and with existing vessels succumbing to age or casualties
of the sea, a swift and appalling shrinkage in our skeleton fleet is
inevitable next year and the years beyond unless some vigorous measure
 of relief is immediately adopted. The disappearance of our ships
is reflected at once in the depression and disaster that crowd upon our
shipyards. But for naval work and coastwise tonnage, always inadequate
 to fill the yards, there is not a steel shipyard in the United States
that would now be earning enough money to pay its office force, and
it has been testified before the Commission that nearly one-half of the
skilled American shipyard workmen are now idle or engaged in the
rouchest and cheapest of manual labor.

OTR NATIONAL HUMILIATION.

Here is a condition on which no American worthy of the name can
look without a smarting sense of humiliation. We have deepened our
harbors at an expense of millions upon millions of dollars, almost
exclusively for the use of foreign steamships. We are building
the Panama Canal through which very few American steamships will
pass unless our merchant marine is rehabilitated. We have built a
strong navy, in large part to protect our commerce. which is vanishing