16 REPORT OF AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE COMMISSION.
Columbia, across the North Pacific to Japan and China—*a notable
llustration of the generosity and courage with which England pushes
her shipping interest,” wrote the late Ion. William C. Whitney in
his annual report as Secretary of the Navy. ‘Under such competition,”
Mr. Whitney added, "it is quite easy to conjecture what will
become of the American flag and our resources in the way of a naval
reserve in the North Pacific.”
A HOPELESS COMPETITION.
Close alongside these heavily subsidized British steamers, out of the
American ports of Tacoma and Seattle, a few miles southward, now
run two large and three smaller American steamships, competing with
the British line for freight and passenger traffic to and from the
Orient. These American steamers received lass year for carrying the
United States mails ‘the muniticent sum of $£935. Close alongside
the American steamers, right out of Puget Sound, runs a Japanese
line, the Nippon Yusen Kaisha, which receives an annual subsidy of
330,000 from the Japanese Government, and was given last year
$4,857 for carrying the United States mails.
Again to quote Mr. Whitney, “Under such competition it is quite
sasy to conjecture what will become of the American flag and our
resources in the way of a naval reserve in the North Pacific.” Mr.
Alfred Winsor, president of the Boston Steamship Company, operating
these American steamers, has given frank notice to a committee
of Congress that unless some national aid equivalent to that of his
foreion competitors is speedily bestowed he must haul down his flag:
and quit the route—and in that case the farmers and millers and lumbermen
of the Northwest will lose the service of the largest and most
efficient cargo carriers now running out of Puget Sound to the markets
of the Orient.
STATE AID EVERYWHERE.
There is not an important commercial route anywhere on which the
remnant of our American ocean fleet does not meet the keen edge of
subsidized and bountied foreign competition. The five Pacific Mail
steamers from San Francisco to Asia, which received $63,002 last year
for carrying a great amount of United States mail, run directly side
by side, to and from the Orient, with a Japanese line of three steamers
that receive 600,000 a year from the Japanese Government. Germany
pays $1,340,000 a year to the North German Lloyd for a steamship
service to the Kast Indies and Australia, and Great Britain pays
$1,660,000 to the Peninsular and Oriental.
Not only does this competition strike heavily at our unsubsidized
srans- Pacific lines, but it absolutely prevents the establishment of an
American East India service direct from the Atlantic coast via the
Suez Canal or the Cape of (Good Hope. Oriental goods brought by
the subsidized British or German liners from the East are transferred
in England or Germany to ships of the same flags or lines for transportation
over the Atlantic. Thus the foreign subsidies that fifty
years ago drove our clippers from the seas now stand a barrier across
the course of American steamers.
