Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 October 1898 — FOR LACK OF VESSELS [ARTICLE]

FOR LACK OF VESSELS

FREIGHT FOR ASIA REFUSED ON THIS ACCOUNT. Why President Hill, of the Great Northern Railway, Was Obliged to Decline the Haul of Cotton and Steel for China and Japan. A correspondent of the American Economist, referring to a recent expression by James J. Hill, president of the Great Northern Railroad, in favor of a bounty of $2 per ton on all export tonnage as a means of reviving the American merchant marine, makes the following caustic comment: “It seems that J. J. Hill is merely a subsidy hunter and an advocate of free ships. Our steamship people are all that kind, pretty much. All they want Is support for their lines, and let the nation go to the dogs. They dant want too many lines iu competition with theirs, even if American. Now, what we want is the national Interest attended to first, private enterprise second. Subsidy Is monopolistic. Three great corporations comprise most of the German steam marine. That will never do in the United States.” There is much force In those terse observations. American sentiment In favor of a fair open Held for individual enterprise will not take kindly to the policy of subsidies, free ships and marine monopolies. That is not the kind of a merchant marine to suit the people of the United States. Subsidy carries on its face the fact of favoritism, and an export tonnage bounty Is only another name for subsidy. If American shipping wore as efficiently protected in the oversea traffic as It is in the lake and coastwise trlffic. President Hill would not now be refusing the transcontinental haul of

steel rails for Japan and raw cotton for China because of lack of ships to carry the freight across the Pacific ocean. He has already solved this problem as regards rail and lake carrying, and he would solve It as readily In the matter of rail and ocean traffic If the conditions were the same. The trouble is that while the lake carrying trade Is amply protected from alien competition, the ocean carrying trade is wholly without protection. Some years ago Mr. Hill undertook to reduce the cost of transporting a bushel of xvheat from the granaries of Minnesota and the Dakotas to the terminal elevators at Buffalo. He ordered a reduction In the Great Northern’s charge for hauling the grain from Interior points to Duluth, only to find that the hoped-for addition to the price realized by the wheat grower was promptly wipod out by an equivalent increase by the lake transportation companies In the charge for delivering the wheat from Duluth to Buffalo. President Hill thereupon took matters Into his own haikls. He caused to be built and put In service between the head of .Lake Superior and Die foot of Lake Erie a fleet of fast steel steamships, each with a freight capacity of over 3,000 tons. From that moment he was master of the situation, and the power of the Great Northern Railroad to make and maintain a rate was once for all established. Lake shipping was protected then as now by laws which made It Impossible for foreign vessels of cheaper construction and cheaper payrolls to compete Injuriously against the new Northern line. If oversea traffic In American bottoms were similarly protected today. President Hill would not now be refusing freight for lack of ships to take It across to Asia. Long before this the Great Northern Railroad would have had In operation its own line of steamships to handle Its traffic with China, Japan, Australia and the Philippines. With a system of discriminating duties In force these ships could be certain of return cargoes at. remunerative rates. Instead of having to take their chances with the underbidding tramp steamers manned by underpaid foreign crews. Discriminating duties made and maintained the American merchant marine from 17KP up t<> the time when that wise and sensible system was abandoned for the folly of “marine reciprocity.” Then the American flag gradually disappeared from the sea, until to-day It Is not displayed at the foretop of more than one-twelfth of the ffiips that carry American commerce. Bring back the policy that In times post made our shipping Industry foremost In the world's carrying trade and

you will bring back the marine supremacy that has been lost for nearly forty years. Then and not until then. Paaaing the Hat. The appointment of W. H. (Coin) Harvey as financial manager of the Democratic party will come as a shock to tire Bourbons and the silver RepublU cans. To the former It will seem like the appointment of a receiver and the beginning of the end In winding up the affairs of the old party. To the latter It will be loss of faith in the non-parti-sanship of the silver question. Two years ago Harvey would not train under the Democratic flag unless he was permitted to run his meetings in his own way. He did not make stump speeches; he delivered non-partisan lectures on free silver. The Republicans who believed then that he was more interested in silver than in the Democratic party will suspect now that he is more interested in the Democratic party than he 18 in silver. To the politicians of both parties the appointment will signify that the old stand-by contributors to the Democratic campaign fund have tightened the purse strings and that the managers have come to the pass-around-the-hat stage of raising campaign funds. As the moneyed men of the party will not open their purses if silver is to be made an issue in the next campaign, and as Altgeld and Bryan insist that silver be made an Issue, Harvey, as the friend of silver, will pass the hat. This means that the farmers of the West, who were carried off their feet by the silver craze, will be assessed to bear the expenses of an anti-war, anti-expan-sion, and un-American campaign.— Chicago Inter-Ocean. Make It an Open Fight. Iu the last presidential campaign, the Democratic party, seeing before It complete defeat on its tariff record, sought to avoid the inevitable by giving ,the place of prominence to the silver question. No device, however, could save the party -whose elevation to the control of the Government had brought de-

struction to American industries and suffering to American homes; no devices could save the party which had saddled on the country the Infamous Wllson-Gorman bljl. The people knew it for the same old free trade party whose success at elections had always been followed by disaster to the American people; and it was burled out of sight by the avalanche of votes cast for McKinley and protection. In view of the attempt of the Democratic party in 1806 to blind the people to the fact that the question of protection or free trade w r as at issue between the parties, It is Interesting to note that Hon. L. F. McKinney, the contestant in the First Maine district for Speaker Reed’s seat In Congress, made the tariff the sole Issue of his recent campaign. If this Is any Indication of the policy to be pursued by other Democratic candidates for Congress, In other States, the friends of protection have no need to worry. It Is always easier to fight lu the open, and with the Issue drawn squarely between protection and free trade, or between protection and that elusive, chameleonlike "tariff reform," there Is no doubt of the outcome. The country wants no more free trade and no more “tariff reform" of the Cleveland-Wllson-Gorman type. Cnuae of Humiliation. It Is humiliating that the United States, which can furnish a navy to mntch the world’s best, as compared man for man, should possess no merchant marine worth speaking of. It Is doubly humiliating when we consider that the fault Is wholly our own; that

the only cause of our lack of a merchant marine is the failure on the past of our legislators to apply the same doctrine to our commerce which they have applied to manufacturing industries that it is due to their failure to give protection to American shipping as they have given protection to American industries. By protecting American products we have put the United States at the head of nations industrially. Let us put the United States at the head of nations on the sea. Proper protection to American shipping w r ill do it. A Protection Victory. The proprietor and manager of ths largest tin plate plant In the world, William Williams, has sold his Welsh Interest and will locate in Pittsburg. The Worcester and Upper Forrest Works, at Morristow’n, Wales, were sold In August at a public sale for £BB*000. The plant was equipped with furnace and steel mills, but had been idle for some time. Two sons of Mr. Williams spent some time in the United States last spring, and, It is understood, leased land in the vicinity of Pittsburg for a tin plate plant. The loss of the great American market, the heaviest consumer of tin plate in the world, has necessitated this mi-*» gration from Wales to the United States. It all comes of protecting the manufacture of tin plate in the United States4oK Now we are making the greater part of the tin plate used here, and the cost to the consumer steadily fallen to the lowest point ever known. To have forced the largest manufacturer in the world to close up his Welsih plant and invest lids millions in an American plant, where the American rate of wages must be paid, is another of those Protection victories that have been coming thick and fast in die past year. Declining Woolen Imports. The enormous decline in the imports of woolen goods during the past year Is a clear demonstration of the beneficent effect of the Republican tariff of 1897. During the last year of the Wilson tariff measure, the imports of woolen goods reached the enormous sum of $49,100,000, which drove woolen manufacturers In this country to despair. The fiscal year just closed hns wrought a great change, the total imports being; less than $15,000,000. This means that during the last fiscal year the American people consumed nearly $35,000,000 worth of American woolen goods in excess of the last year of the Wilson hllL In other words, American woolen mills and American labor was benefited to that extent. This is an Industrial Improvement that cannot be denied.—Kalamazoo Telegraph. Pointing with Pride. We point with pride to our fulfillment of the promise of tariff reform. With a return to protection there has come a change in the balance of trade. Under Cleveland we were shipping millions of gold to Europe in exchange for goods bought from foreigners. Under McKinley Europe is shipping millions of gold to us In exchange for our products and manufactures. We point with pride to the revival of trade, the Increased demand for labor, the advance of wages, the improved condition of the agricultural class that we predicted as a result of return to Republican policies. The coming winter will make no call for free soup houses for the hundreds of thousands of unemployed.— Chicago Inter Ocean. Let It Go On. It has been the free trade contention that other countries will not buy from us, or at least will buy less, if our protective tariff reduces the amount wo buy from them. Free traders claimed that the Dlngley tariff is that kind of a measure and must have that kind of an effect. But we are selling more to foreign countries to-day than we are purchasing from them—Just what theRepublicans promised in 189(5. Let the good work go on, keep the Republicans lu power and enlarge our foreign trade, and ldt the nation grow rich by reason, of the prosperity that comes to us through sound economic policies.— Burlington Ilawkeye. , Let Ua Have n Merchant Marine. All in all, just 1,792 ships passed through the Suez canal last year, of which 1,19(5 were British. How many, do you supiKKse, were American? Only four, and no more—only four! It la time for the American merchant marina to get into the water and begin to do* business.—New York Mail and Express. Curious Kind of Ruin. The record of failures for the months of August in this country Is the best la five years. And the financial, currency and tariff conditions have been identical with the conditions t'lwit Kryanltea have claimed were plunging this country Into hopeless ruin.—Keokuk “Gata> CJlty.”