24. REPORT OF AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE COMMISSION.

outright or mere commercial subsidies, such as many of our competitors
 give, but are distinctly based on important public services rendered
 and to be rendered by the ships and shipowners that receive
them. As to the constitutionality and expediency of such guarded subventions
 as these there can be no question whatever, in the light of the
example of the fishery subventions given to both vessels and men for
prospective naval service by the fathers of the Republic. and continued
by their immediate successors.
It was not expected that these fishing craft themselves would fight;
they never did so. But their gallant men did fight in every ocean war
we ever had, and the Government from 1792 onward frankly recogpized
 that in order to secure this indispensable naval reserve it must
help to make and keep the entire industry prosperous. Those of our
deep-sea fishermen who still remain possess the same peculiar value to
the nation. No community of like size in the country contributed
one-tenth so many first-class recruits to the Regular Navy of the United
States in the war with Spain as did the famous town of Gloucester.
Though the call did not come until the fishing fleets had sailed,
Gloucester mustered several hundred fine, able-bodied seamen, and it is
especially significant that 764 per cent of the men offéred at Gloucester
were acceptable in intelligence and physique, while of the general
applicants at Boston only 144 per cent and of those at New York only
8 per cent were found qualified for the severe requirements of the
naval service.
POLICY OF OTHER NATIONS.

France and Japan both pay what is in effect a naval bounty to their
deep-sea fishermen. Canada gives to her vessels and men annually
$160,000 American money, the proceeds of the Halifax award. Great
Britain includes the hardy fishermen of Newfoundland in her naval
reserve, paying vetainers and furnishing instruction. The British
reserve altogether, merchant seamen and fishermen, consists, exclusive
of officers, of upwards of 30,000 men, who each receive annual retainers
 of from $15 to $50. The method adopted in the proposed bill is
therefore not only in harmony with Anerican traditions, and indeed
founded on authoritative precedent, but is in accord with the practice
of the chief maritime powers of the world.
THE VIEWS OF THFFRERYON.

Mr. Jefferson had both merchant marine and fisheries in mind when
in December, 1793, he wrote these memorable words to the House of
Representatives:

Our navigation involves still higher considerations. As a branch of industry it is
valuable, but as a resouce of defense essential.
Its value, as a branch of industry, is enhanced by the dependence of so many other
branches on it. In times of general peace it multiplies competitors for employment
in transportation, and so keeps that at its proper level; andr in times of war—that is
to say, when those nations, who may be our principal carriers, shall be at war with
each other, if we have not within ourselves the means of transportation, our produce
must be exported in belligerent vessels, at the increased expense of war freight and
insurance, and the articles which will not bear that must perish on our hands.
But it is as a resource of defense that our navigation will admit neither neglect nor
forbearance. The position and circumstances of the United States leave them nothing
to fear on their land board, and nothing to desire beyond their present rights. But
on their seaboard thev are open to injurv. and thev have there, too, a commerce