REPORT OF AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE COMMISSION. 31
OUR EARLIER LEGISLATION.

In 1845 and 1847, Congress passed acts offering a subvention for an
American ocean mail service from New York to Havre and Bremen.
A new line of Awerican-built steamships was immediately established.
A second subvention created the celebrated Collins Line from New
York to Liverpool, and other subventions created an American steam
service to the West Indies, to the Isthmus of Panama. and from the
[sthmus northward in the Pacific Ocean.
As a result of this enlightened statesmanship, the United States
from 1850 onward for several years built more ocean steamships than
Great Britain did, and better steamships, superior in size, speed,
power, and commercial value. There were some lamentable disasters
at sea in this period, to remind the world that even steam had not
conquered the perils of the ocean, but on the whole the advantage in
safety and efficiency as well as in mercantile success remained with the
ambitious and progressive builders and seamen of America.
This national policy, thus approved, would doubtless have continued
unbroken to the present day but for the fierce and deplorable sectional
 quarrel in Congress that immediately preceded the civil war,
This ended the rebuilding of our steam lines for the same reasons and
in the same way that it abruptly checked the upbuilding of the Navy.
In the white heat of this quarrel the mail subventions were withdrawn,
and the north Atlantic steamships, struggling hard with subsidized
British rivals, were abandoned.
It is sometimes said that this national effort to create a steam fleet
by mail subventions failed of its purpose. But it failed only because
the effort was given up in the very crisis of the contest. A few years
more would probably have made our steamships as securely masters
of the north Atlantic as our packet ships and clipper ships had been
before them. Even as it was, the ending of the subventions did not
break our grip upon the West Indies, the Isthmus, and the Pacific.
We had gained there a foothold which our steamships have retained to
the present time.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES THE SAME.

The general printiples of the ocean mail legislation of 1845-1858
were renewed in the ocean mail law of 1891, which for nearly fourteen
 years has stood unchallenged. It is worth recalling that the
performance of the most important contract ever concluded under this
act was begun during the second Administration of President Cleveland.
 The ocean mail sections of the proposed bill simply strengthen
the existing act on lines where it has happened to prove inadequate.
There is no departure from the method, and none from the purpose,
of American ocean mail legislation of sixty years. But there is a distinct
 increase in the amount of public service required from the shipowners,
 and the safeguards surrounding the contracts are greater than
ever before.
THE TONNAGE-TAX PROPOSITION.

There now remains to be considered the fourth and last feature of
the proposed bill. That is a plan, outlined in section 8, to Increase
the tonnage taxes on all vessels, American and foreign. now entering
our ports bv sea in the foreign trade.