REPORT OF AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE COMMISSION. 75

Treasury the appropriations provided for without any reference whataver
 to the relative amounts taken out and put in—without any limitation
 of the subsidy to the amount of the tonnage taxes—without any
sort of limitation of the total to be paid out of the Treasury now or
hereafter for the benefit of the merchant marine.
Tt will be remembered that the ship-subsidy bills first proposed
during the last decade carried unlimited appropriations for the benefit
of the shipping industry. The public sentiment against such bills
was so strong that a limitation to nine millions a year was made.
The bills were so drawn that a few companies would have gotten the
greater part of the benefit, and, because of public sentiment against
the principle of subsidies and the unfairness of the distribution proposed,
 these bills were abandoned. We had thought, that by legislative
 concessions both to public sentiment and wise economics we were
through with subsidy bills and were to make an effort to devise other
means to build up the merchant marine. But we have come back very
nearly to the point from which we started, with the only difference
consisting in subterfuges and disguises. We can not but see in the
proposed hill the ¢ trail of the serpent ” that has been over all other
bills on this subject.
We mean no reflection of duplicity against our colleagues on the
Commission; but the situation seems to be such that they can not get
away from the idea of direct governmental aid. In this connection it
is pertinent to note that our friends of the majority have refused to
consider the theory of discriminating duties; have refused, with impatience,
 any consideration of the theory of free ships; have refused to
make concessions of any sort through the protective-tariff system,
that has helped to stifle shipping along with many lines of individual
industry, and have come back to the most obnoxious plan of all—the
taxation of all the people for the benefit of the one industry which
they desire to help. Every argument that has been made against the
subsidy bills of former Congresses applies against the direct subsidy
features of this bill.
Section 2 ingeniously introduces the subject by the “sugar coated”
expression *‘in the interest of the national defense and for the performance
 of public services.” Will the Congress of the United States
and the American people suffer themselves to be deceived by this
transparent disguise? + Public sentiment and the sober judgment of
the people’s representatives have united to condemn every previous
sffort to enact such legislation, and surely this effort must meet the
fate of its predecessors despite the canting phrase, in the interest of
the national defense and for the performance of public services” and
the substitution of the more euphonious title *¢ subvention” for
“subsidy.”
Whatever objections to previous subsidy bills have been valid are of
equal weight to-day against this section. It was urged against the
previous bills that the cargo steamers received no consideration. A
comparison or two will show how little this section differs in that respect
from the previous bill. The Mineola, a steamship engaged in foreign
trade on {he Pacific coast, with a gross tonnage of 2,438, would receive,
ander this section, $12,190; under $. 727, H. R. 64, Fifty-sixth Congress,
 first session, and S. 5590, Fifty-fifth Congress, third session,
$11 885. The Takoma. 2.811 tons. under this bill would receive $14.055;