32 REPORT OF AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE COMMISSION.

Tonnage taxes are practically the only Federal charges levied on
shipping in American ports, for entry and clearance fees, ete., are too
small to be considered. The present rates of tonnage taxes in the
United States are lower than those of the principal maritime nations,
and very much lower than the rates of some of those nations. Such
charges are sometimes called *‘light dues,” and their original purpose
here as abroad was to provide from shipping a fund for lighting the
coast for the benefit of shipping. Thus, during the year 1903, the
light dues collected in the United Kingdom amounted to £548,196,
while the expenses of the British light-house establishment were
£499.404. From light dues, accordingly, the British Government
met all cost of lighting the coasts of the United Kingdom, and had a
surplus of nearly $250,000 a year to add to an accumulated surplus for
other years of nearly $2,000,000.
The Commission believes that, with entire propriety, a similar general
 principle may he adopted in the United States. Our receipts
from tonnage taxes in 1903 were $885,841, while the expenses of our
light-house establishment were $538,105. The Commission does not
propose to raise from tonnage taxes an amount sufficient to meet the
entire cost of the light-house establishment for several reasons:
First. A relatively small part of our light-house establishment
expenditures is for the rivers and the Great Lakes. Shipping is here
in competition with the railroads, and a Federal charge ought not to
be imposed on vessels from which railroad traffic is necessarily exempt.
Second. To an extent the same ts true of the coasting trade. We
have reserved our coasting trade to vessels of the United States, and
for more than twenty years it has been the policy of the Government
to pay out of the public funds many of the charges to which American
vessels are subject. Accordingly for many years our coasting trade
has been exempt from tonnage taxes. The coasting trade of Great
Britain, on the other hand, and of some other foreign nations, is not
a reserved trade, being open freely or conditionally to the vessels of
all nations. Such countries accordingly with propriety levy tonnage
or light dues on vessels in the coasting trade.
NOT AN UNFAIR CONTRIBUTION.

The Commission believes that the sum of $3,000,000 is not an unreasonable
 contribution on the part of vessels in the foreign trade toward
the maintenance of our national light-house, buoy, and beacon system,
which this year will doubtless cost about $5,000,000, and the rates
proposed in section 8 of the bill have been adinsted so as to produce
as nearly as may be that sum.
To raise this amount of revenue the maximum charge proposed on
any entry is 16 cents, an amount lower than the corresponding rates
charged by France or Italy, though nominally double the rates charged
by trate and Bremen. At these two principal seaports of the
German Empire, however, the rate of practically 8 cents is imposed
at every entry (with a slight diminution at Hamburg), while this bill
provides that the tonnage taxes shall be imposed on only ten entries
during a year.
The bill preserves the distinction in the present law by which vessels
entering from ports belonging geographically to the North American
system pay one-half the rates of vessels entering from the more