REPORT OF AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE COMMISSION. 17
EVEN ‘““ TRAMPS” INCLUDED.
[t may be said that British ¢ tramps” and German “tramps”
receive no subsidy, and that they are numerous. That is true, but
indirectly even the “tramps” are and have been sharers in the general
policy of national encouragement. The first British “tramps” years
ago were built in yards and engined by machine shops that had been
created and developed by the Parliamentary grant of subsidies to the
Cunard Line, the Peninsular and Oriental, and the Royal Mail.
These subsidies had an immediate and widespread effect upon the
entire art of steamship construction in Great Britain, and gave that
country at a critical stage an overwhelming advantage as against
America. ’
The same process is now under way in Germany. Yards which
build the subsidized liners and have their materials delivered at nominal
rates by Government railways are thereby powerfully encouraged
to build “tramps” or cargo boats in the intervals when no liners are
required. Moreover, the great foreign subsidized mail companies
own, besides the ships that earn their subsidy, a very large amount of
ordinary commercial tonnage which indirectly shares the benefit of
the subventions. Thus, when the $1,100,000 subvention was recently
awarded to the Cunard Line, that company was encouraged to construct
not only the two great 24-knot ships, but several auxiliary vessels of
moderate speed and heavy tonnage.
IN SHEER SELF-PROTECTION.
As to the French, the Italian, the Austrian, the Spanish, and the
Japanese vessels competing with our American ships, they are virtually
all aided directly by their Governments, i Canada, with a
sharp eye to American trade, has lately subsidized steam lines of her
own to France, Africa, the West Indies, and, on both the Atlantic and
Pacific, to Mexico. Even were there no wage difference against us,
this now universal practice of State aid to shipping, in some form or
another, on the part of our competitors, would eventually drive the
American flag from the great trade routes of the ocean. To a very
large part of the foreign merchant navies the eloquent words of Senator
James Ashton Bayard, of Delaware, uttered in 1852, apply as truly
ow as they then did to the subsidized liners of England:
I am willing to trust American skill and industry in competition with any people
on the globe when they stand nation to nation without Government interference.
But if the treasury of a foreign nation is poured. into the lap of individuals for the
purpose of destroying the interests of my country, or for building up a commercial
marine at the expense of the commerce and prosperity of the United States, I, for
ine, will count no cost in counteracting such Government action on the part of Great
Britain or anv foreign power.
3. Rep. 2949, 58-3——.9
