20 REPORT OF AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE COMMISSION.

it would require considerable time to enroll and instruct them. Dut
the Navy has asked for a reserve of 20,000 in the bills which it has
presented to Congress. It is therefore manifest that shipowners
must not only be encouraged to employ these naval volunteers, but
encouraged to build more ships to develop an increased naval reserve,
as well as to advance the interests of commerce.
Thus section 2 of the bill authorizes the payment of an annual subvention
 of $5 per gross registered ton for every vessel, steam or sail,
engaged for twelve months in the foreign trade or deep-sea fisheries,
$4 for nine months, and $2.50 for six months, provided that the vessel
carries among her crew a certain proportion of naval volunteers, and
provided further, that the vessel is held at the disposal of the Government
 in war, carries the United States mails, if so required, free of
charge, maintains an efficient rating. and makes all ordinary repairs
in the United States.
AN EXACT PRECEDENT.

An exact and authoritative precedent for the principle of this proposed
 legislation is to be found in the example of the fathers of the
Republic. More than a century ago, on February 16, 1792, the Congress
 of the United States, acting on information contained in a report
of Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, granted bounties from the
Treasury to the men employed in the deep-sea fisheries and to the vessels
themselves. (Jefferson's exhaustive memorandum will be found in
Volume VII of “The writings of Thomas Jefferson,” edited by H. A.
Washington.) These bounties at first took the place of an allowance
that had been made upon the exportation of dried fish, and were
nominally at first in lien of a drawback of the import duties paid on
salt, but as a matter of fact were very much more than an equivalent.
The original bounties offered were at the rate of $1.60 a ton to
vessels below 20 tons, $2.40 a ton to vessels of 20 and not more than 30
tons, and $4 a ton to vessels of above 30 tons—the manifest purpose
heing to encourage longer trips and the use of larger and superior
seagoing vessels. These payments were divided in a fixed ratio
between the vessel and her crew. Only three or four months of actual
sea service were required each year. This policy was interrupted
during the period of the embargo, but it was resumed at the end of
the second war with England, and, with some modifications and
increases, it remained in force under all changes of parties and administrations
 until 1866. During a part of this period a separate bounty
was allowed on the exportation of dried fish, but this was withdrawn
in 1848 in favor of a drawback of the duty on the salt used in curing
fish for exportation.

A POLICY OF THE FATHERS.

Under this policy of the fathers more than $10,000,000 were expended
between 1793 and 1851, and the tonnage of the cod and mackerel fisheries
 increased from 80,959 in 1793 to a maximum of 204,197 in 1862.
Men of the fishing crews under this historic system received on the
average a retainer of about $2 a month for three or four months’ service,
 or alinost an equivalent to the $25 per year offered to seamen by
the terms of the present bill.