Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 January 1901 — The Ship Subsidy Bill. [ARTICLE]

The Ship Subsidy Bill.

“Are you in favor of the Ship Subsidy robbery,” I am asked, and I reply, yes; I am in favor of any so-called robbery necessary to the protection of our nation and the upbuilding of our trade and commerce. Foreign nations are paying large subsidies to their shipping, which enables them to give lower freight and passenger rates than our American ship owners can meet, and the result is that American shipping is being driven from the sea. In 1865 American ships carried 66 per cent of our exports. In 1899 they carried only 8 per cent. Today we have less than onethird the tonage of ocean shipping we had 30 years Bgo, although our foreign commerce ie four times as great as it was then. We protect our lake and coastwise shipping by forbidding foreign vessels to trade from one American port to another, but this rule oannot be adopted for foreign shipping and we must either pay the subsidies or suffer the shame apd danger of an almost utter lack of an American merchant marine. The advantages of a subsidised merohant marine are these: 1. Every subsidised ship must be constructed suitably for armament, and must be subject to government requisition in case of war, to be used either as a cruiser or transport. 2. Every subsidised ship must carry the mails when requested to do so, and must provide approved facilities for hapdling the same. 3. Every subsidised ship must be built in an Amerioan ship yard, and of American materials. 4. Every subsidised ship must carry a certain number of apprentices, the number being dependent on the tonnage of the ship, so as to become in faot a training school for men for our navy. These provisions are in the proposed bill, bui it follows as a logical conclusion that the more American steamship lines we have the more aotive agents will there be for the selling of American products in foreigh countries The more we sell abroad the will get to carry and they will offer every possible facility to our shippers, and bend every energy to the building up of a foreign trade. In addition to this help to our trade we will be keeping at home the vast sums paid out to foreign vessel owners, and it will be used here for taxation and the upbuilding of Amerioan industry.— A. B. Sibert, in Rochester Republican.