REPORT OF AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE COMMISSION. 23

of the United States, testified recently before this Commission in
Washington: “I am a strong advocate for keeping up, if possible, the
sailing vessel as distinct from the steamer. * * * It is desirable,
from the naval point of view, that this species of industry should be
encouraged by our navigation laws, for it is unquestionably true that
it is that class of vessel that we must look to for sailors.” Steamers
produce seamen, it is true—men who acquire the sea habit—hut not
sailors in the strict sense of the word, men who do not only have the
sea habit’ but the well-known characteristics of the sailor, his skill in
meeting all the vicissitudes of life at sea, his contempt for danger, his
self-reliance under difficulties, his adaptability to all sorts and conditions
 of circumstances. Men seasoned in that school soon adapt
themselves to man-of-war life
NOT ENOUGH FOR FAST, HIGH-COST VESSELS.

This proposed rate of $5 per gross ton is unquestionably sufficient
to equalize conditions for American sail vessels ag against foreign sail
vessels, save in the case of the excessively subsidized fleet of France.
This same rate, as has also been said, is sufficient to equalize conditions
for American cargo steamers, save in exceptional instances. The
Commission is prepared to anticipate the criticism that this naval sub.
vention will not of itself encourage the building of swift and expensive
steamships. Indeed, we are ready to adit this without controversy.
We are frank to say, moreover, that it is our deliberate judgment
that in the restoration of the American merchant marine it is the useful,
 hardworking cargo ship of steam and sail which should have the
first and friendliest consideration. For the American people, though
they are now sending many compact manufactured goods abroad, are
still in the main producers of bulky commodities, so far as concerns
their export commerce. Grain, provisions, cotton, lumber, cattle—
things like these still make up the greater part of the value, as they
do of the volume. of American shipments to foreign countries.

CARGO SHIPS THE NATION'S FIRST NEED.

The Commission believes that it interprets rightly the desire of the
American people, as everywhere expressed at the hearings throughout
the United States, when it provides first and foremost for the encouragement
 of the kind of ships best adapted to convey American export
merchandise. We are glad to make this explanation promptly and
fully at this time, hut we do not feel that anything like an apology is
Decessary for so shaping the proposed bill that it will especially aid,
and insure the construction of, commercial vessels that can most easily
be built, owned, and managed by men of moderate means—vossels
adapted to the present requirements of American ocean commerce.
Indeed, if we mistake not, this feature, frankly embodied in the
bill, will he recognized as a distinet and important merit of the proposition,
 not only on the seaboard, but in the States of the South and
West. whose fields supply the chief part of our outward cargoes.

NO MERE COMMERCIAL SUBSIDIES.

It can not be too plpsagly emphasized that the naval subventions
offered in sections 2. 3. and 4 of the proposed bill are not bounties