The Shipping of the United States

A COMMITTEE of Congress has been busy at the great seaports of New England and New York in ascertaining the condition of this branch of industry, and has invoked the action of Congress.

When our late war begun, the South made many predictions, few of which have been fulfilled. Among other things they predicted that grass would grow in our ship-yards. Is this prediction to be verified ? Are we to withdraw from the ocean, so long the field of our enterprise and renown ? When the war commenced, our tonnage, then 5,539,813 tons, exceeded that of the British Empire. In 1868 it had declined to 4,318,309 tons, while the British tonnage had risen to 7,000,000, nearly a sixth of which was propelled by steam. Our ship-building, which in 1855 gave us 583,450 tons, of which more than half a million tons were built on the Atlantic coast, in 1868 had declined one halfIn the last year but 173,000 tons were built on the coasts for both coastwise and foreign commerce. In 1855 we built 373 ships, and in 1868 but 69.

Before the war, the carrying trade between nation and nation employed 8,000,000 tons of shipping. Of these, the British Empire furnished three eighths, the United Stales a third, while other nations supplied the residue. But in 1866 our proportion had fallen to a sixth, the British risen to a half, while the deficit was filled by the Continent of Europe.

Before the war, two thirds of the arrivals from foreign ports bore the stars and stripes ; but now two thirds of the vessels which reach our ports from abroad bear a foreign flag ; and although the war has ended, our vessels in the foreign trade still diminish. In the first nine months of the past fiscal year our tonnage in the foreign trade declined fourteen per cent, while the foreign tonnage gained twenty-eight per cent. At this rate, it will require but seven years to triple the arrivals of foreign ships, and to banish us from the carrying trade of the world. Unless something is done, we, with our primeval forests, virgin ore-beds, and enterprising youth, shall no more unfurl our flag in foreign ports, but must be confined to our lakes, rivers, and coastwise trade, in which all foreign competition is precluded. It is painful to contemplate such a result. Our marine has been one of the great elements of our strength. Without it, how could we have blockaded a coast of three thousand miles ? How opened the Mississippi ? How recovered our Southern seaports and fortresses. Again, what an income would we have realized by the 7,000,000 tons of shipping, to which we might have risen ! At thirty dollars only per ton, it would have exceeded two hundred millions. Its management, its repairs, and dependent trades would have sustained nearly a million of families and furnished a market for the surplus of as many engaged in agriculture, who must suffer from competition if consumers are converted into producers.

We cannot afford to part with our marine. We must devise a remedy for its decline. Let us trace its growth and consider what gave it vitality, what policy ministered to its growth, what measures have checked its progress and produced a premature decay, while other interests prosper.

Before the Revolution, Great Britain confined us as much as she could to the fisheries and coastwise commerce and to a few ships in the trade with England and her colonies. A few daring spirits sometimes ventured to join the fleet from Jamaica to England, or to trade with the Spanish Isles, but seizures and confiscations checked this spirit of adventure.

The Revolution swept away our ships, but put us on our mettle ; the Colonies had no navy ; their great seaports were occupied or ruined by the foe ; but our county of Essex constituted itself our Navy Department, discarded the puppet sterns and full bows, and built ships that made the run in eleven days from Salem to Ireland : and in the last year of the war, Salem and Beverly, with twenty gun-ships that outsailed and often outfought the best ships of England, held the control of the British Channel and raised the rate of insurance to ten per cent. Their success contributed materially to the termination of the conflict.

At the close of the war our cruisers were converted into merchantmen, and soon took an active part in commerce, outsailing the ships of all other nations, and opening the Baltic, the Mediterranean, India, Africa, China. Brazil, Chili, Peru, and our Northwest Coast to the trade of the Union.

When our new Constitution took effect, the first register of our shipping showed but 201,000 tons, or less than the tonnage on Lake Erie in 1860.

Under duties averaging but eleven per cent for the first epoch of twentyone years, our tonnage rose from 201,000 tons in 1789 to 1,424,748 tons in 1810, and then the effect of the embargo of 1808 checked its progress. Its increase was 700 per cent. During this period, although the country was weak, Adams founded the navy, laid the keels of four ships of the line, and Suffolk and Essex counties raised funds and built frigates for the nation.

But there was soon a change of dynasty. The Democracy came into power, abandoned the large ships, built a few gunboats, adopted the Chinese policy, and embargoes, culminating in war, succeeded.

Adams

and if he could have put ten millions into ships of the line, or frigates, would have saved a third of the active capital of the country, sacrificed by embargoes, war, and duties ; but Jefferson and Madison succeeded. Quincy, Lloyd, and Webster struggled in vain, and commerce was prostrated.

During the second epoch of twentyone years, from 1810 to 1831, under duties averaging thirty per cent, tonnage, instead of gaining seven hundred per cent, actually fell twelve per cent, or from 1.424,748 tons in 1810 to 1,267,847 tons in 1831.

Butin 1831 our debt had diminished; the country would no longer see its commerce crushed; there was “an uprising of the people,” and under the auspices of Henry Clay a compromise was made, under which our duties fell, with a slight reaction in 1842, to an average of 16 per cent, which lasted thirty years, — from 1831 to 1S61. Our navigation at once revived, and exceeded the tonnage of England, gaining 420 per cent, — from 1,267,847 tons in 1831 to 5,539,813 tons in 1861.

The following table illustrates the progress and decline of our shipping: —

Tons.

Tonnage in ...... 1789

“ "...... 1810 1,424,748

“ " ...... 1831

“ " ...... 1841 2,130,744

“ " ...... 1852 4,407,010

“ " ...... 1861 5,539,813

“ " 1868 4,318,309

Registered steam tonnage in 1861

“ " " ” 1868 221,939

Enrolled steam tonnage in 1861 774,59&

“ " " " 1868 977,476

Ship-building, which in 1830 had fallen to 52,686 tons a year, rose under the compromise to 153,455 tons in 1833. The susceptibility of America to a change of duties was shown in 1844, when it fell, under the influence of a tariff of 27 per cent adopted in 1842, to 71,732 tons ; but rose again, with the 16 per cent tariff of 1846, to 262,581 tons in 1S48 ; and, under the same tariff, to 583,450 tons in 1855, — an increase of eightfold in a period of thirteen years.

The following table shows the tonnage built in the United States at different periods : —

Tons. Tons.

In 1820 47,696 In 1853 425,571

“ 1030 52,686 " 1855 505,152

“ 1833 153,455 " 1862 175,076 " ”

“ 1844 71,732 " 1S68 285,304

“ 1848 262,581

We come now to the present epoch, commencing in 1861, and with a tariff carried up from 15 per cent in 1860 to an average of 42 per cent in 1869, we find again the decline we might well expect from the history of the past, — a loss of 22 per cent in place of a gain of 430 per cent, — a fall from 5,539,813 tons in 1861 to 4,318,309 tons in 1869. And of this residue more than three millions of tons are on our lakes and rivers, or in coastwise trade, where we have a monopoly; while in July last twenty-seven millions of our imports were brought in foreign vessels, and but ten millions in American.

It may be urged by some who have not studied this question, that the decline in our shipping is due to the war, vet neither Secession nor English cruisers deprived us of one eighth of oar tonnage. It was not destroyed by the foe. Some may think the loss due to a change of measurement, but this was immaterial, as the loss in one class is compensated by a gain in others. Nor is it due to the fact that trade is unprofitable, for we have merchants whose ships, built before the war, have made fair returns for the past eight years.

Did we not know that many of our laws were made in the hurry of the war, when Congress had put out its arms to grasp every source of revenue, we might conceive that our legislators had been guided by a spirit hostile to navigation, for as the law stands to-day it provides : —

First. That we shall not build any ships for foreign trade.

Second. That we shall buy none.

Third. That we shall not recover those we have lost.

Fourth. That if we should get them, an interdict shall be laid on many of our chief imports and exports.

Fifth. That our great university for seamen shall be put down, while agricultural colleges are encouraged and endowed.

Sixth. That while we sustain stages and railways by mail money, and while foreign steamers are sustained by subsidies, which are refunded by postages, our postages are given to foreign steamers and subsidies are withheld from our own.

The first barrier we have raised against ship-building is a debased currency. Before the war the shipwright could build a good ship of oak and cedar for $ 55 per ton ; to-day it will cost $70 per ton. Half the difference is due to the currency, half to the duties on the raw materials. The shipowner who builds has two portentous evils before him. His investment of $ 70 per ton to-day may become $ 62 next spring by a return to gold, and he hesitates to take the risk ; and if he builds would rather build for English account and convert gold into currency. The other evil is the eight dollars per ton imposed in taxes on raw materials, admitted free by competing nations. These evils are not without remedy. Let us reduce our currency, or let our Secretary of the Treasury, instead of paying out his greenbacks for stocks at a premium, convert gold into greenbacks, and destroy the gold board and carry our paper to par, by merely rolling up a hundred millions in greenbacks.

The banks under national laws require 150,000,000 of legal tenders for a reserve, and the country can float the balance of them ; for with them our paper afloat would not exceed twelve dollars per head, or, with gold, seventeen dollars per head, of our people.

If we are to have a shower-bath, let us not stand shivering at the door.

As respects the duties, there is a simple remedy; reduce the duties on the raw material to the point at which they stood from 1832 to 1861, except for the brief period when they rose to 27 per cent, under the tariff of 1842. These remedies will be efficacious.

CAN WE SPARE THE DUTIES ?

We cannot only spare them, but many taxes also.

The Hon. D. A. Wells, habitually cautious, assures us that our surplus revenue is now at least $ 120,000,000 a year. This is $ 8,000,000 a month for ten months, and at least $ 20,000,000 a month in the months when our license and income taxes accrue. But the coming year, commencing June 30th, when new legislation will take effect, will, by reduced interest and the usual gain of 5 per cent yearly on revenue, exhibit a further surplus next year of $27,000,000; and it is easy to demonstrate that a reduction on cigars, spirits, spices, silks, tobacco, and woollens would transfer $20,000,000 more from the pockets ot the smuggler to the coffers of the state. These would give us for the coming year a surplus not far from $ 167,000,000. Is it safe to leave so large a sum in the bands of government? Will it not engender extravagance ? Will it not be best to keep it in the pockets of the people ? We can, without doubt, reduce our revenue $ 100,000,000, and still have sufficient for interest and sinking-fund.

NAVIGATION ACT.

Our second edict against navigation is that we shall not buy a ship abroad under any circumstances. While we would give every encouragement to the native builder, who has been for the last seven years a victim of our laws, and would allow him to supply the coastwise trade, it seems to us most impolitic to deny all foreign vessels a register. We have, with great benefit to our manufactures, admitted machinery either free or at fair duties. Foreign ships and steamers with improved mechanism may be had at moderate prices abroad, of classes which we require but cannot build, or at junctures when prompt action may enable us to secure important advantage. A duty of $ 8 per ton on wooden and $12 per ton on iron vessels would sufficiently protect builders, who in ordinary times have built for Europe.

The amount levied on the foreign builder may be returned to the American shipwright in an equal remission on each ton of shipping he constructs.

RETURN OF SHIPS TO THE FLAG.

Our third edict against navigation is that which forbids any vessel placed under a neutral flag to return to the register. In the early part of the war, most of the vessels employed on the Southern rivers studiously kept within the Rebel lines, and served under the Confederate flag, and some were used for warlike purposes ; but when the war was ended, they “run up” the American flag and were again nationalized ; but many ships which could get neither insurance nor freights, except at ruinous rates, were placed for safety and were saved under a neutral flag. It was the duty of the sailor to “save his ship,” and he saved it. It was for the interest of the country that he should save it. The step was sanctioned by commercial usage ; and the question now is, Shall we diminish the registry of England and increase our own by the recovery of these ships ? Nearly half of those transferred no longer exist, but there may still be half a million tons of shipping which might be sold at a loss in England, but which would answer for whalemen or coasters, and which may still be recovered.

Are not the men who oppose this action chiefly ship-owners, who cover their dread of competition by the mask of patriotism ?

If those who left the fold when the wolf was entering, and the dogs were absent, deserve chastisement, have they not already suffered enough ?

But if we are to be permitted to build, buy, or recover ships, we require something more; the ships must have something to do to warrant the investment of capital, and this brings us to

LEGISLATION DIRECTLY AGAINST IMPORTS AND INDIRECTLY AGAINST EXPORTS.

Why do we impose a duty of 200 or 300 per cent on spices, and 80 per cent on tea, unless it be to give our trade to the smuggler? and why do we check our trade with the Mediterranean, which should furnish an outlet for the product of our fisheries and our alcohol, by duties of 100 per cent on figs, prunes, currants, and other innocent fruits ? Does the nation do this to protect greenhouses ? Does it dread “ the pauper labor of the sun,” or has it any antipathy to that little “Jack Horner who sat in the corner eating his Christmas pie ” ? May not such duties be wisely abolished, with benefit to the trade and health of the country ?

Then there are the duties on spirits and brandy of 206 to 546 per cent, entirely delusive and self-defeating, which destroy the revenue, for these duties enrich the smuggler and counterfeiter. They warrant the answer of the chemist to the questions of the revenue commission, that more than 95 per cent of the spirits sold as Holland gin and Cognac and Rochelle brandy in New York are spurious, so that the duties imposed on them not only fail to reach the treasury, but enrich the smuggler and counterfeiter, and injure both sick and well who imbibe such deleterious beverages.

Then there are cigars, on which the duties range from 100 to 264 per cent, not a tenth of which can be collected. Is it surprising that under such absurd charges the importation of cigars through the custom-house has declined more than 90 per cent, while cigarshops have multiplied ? There can be no doubt that a reduction of 70 per cent on the duties on spices, spirits, brandy, tobacco, and cigars would add nearly $ 20,000,000 to the revenue, and give freights to our shipping. There are also the duties of $ 9 per ton, or 55 per cent, on pig iron, the very basis of our manufactures, and 90 per cent on coal, so essential to our steamers.

ARE SUCH DUTIES POLITIC OK NECESSARY ?

The cost of pig-iron from the Clyde, laid down at New York or Boston before payment of the duty, is $ 27 per ton in currency. To transport this iron to Lake Superior, Missouri, Tennessee, and Western Pennsylvania,— the great centres of our iron production,— will carry the cost of the iron, when delivered near these centres, to $ 36 per ton ; and American iron can be produced there for $ 27 per ton, which would give a profit of 30 per cent to the producer in the great markets of the interior.

Were the foreign pig admitted free, it would not compete with the home article, except within three hundred miles of the coast; and if the producer made 30 per cent in the interior, he could afford to sell low upon the coast, and here is the spot where we meet the competition of Europe.

France admits the pig metal of England at four dollars per ton ; were we to do the same, it would benefit our workshops and factories and give freights to our shipping ; for 5,000,000 of tons are produced yearly, on the coasts of Great Britain, where iron, stone, coal, and lime are contiguous.

Our ships which take out wheat to England require return freight of iron, salt, soda-ash ; and unless return cargoes are admitted, the wheat must be charged with freights both outward and inward.

If we should admit the pig iron and iron-ore and coal at duties of 20 per cent or less, we could roll our bar iron on the coast and blend with advantage the pig iron of both countries, without any serious detriment to our own manufactures. As respects steel, the Cleveland pig metal of England may be easily converted into steel.

As respects salt, — an article of freight highly important to our shipping and most essential to our country, — we impose a duty of 18 to 22 cents per hundred pounds, equal to $4 Per ton. Salt is made by solar heat from the waters of the sea, in Spain, Sicily, and the West Indies, and found in large deposits in England. It is often sold for $ 2 or $ 3 per ton at the place of shipment. It furnishes an admirable return cargo for vessels which take out fish, flour, lumber, and breadstuffs, and which without it return in ballast. But it is not merely as return freight upon the sea that salt is important. If drawn by our shipping from abroad, it win furnish valuable freight for the flour cars that now return empty to the interior, and thus reduce the cost of transporting wheat and flour by lake, canal, and railway.

How is it with wool, — another great staple which we once imported from Australia, Africa, and from Buenos Ayres, where 75,000,000 sheep browse on the perennial pastures of La Plata? By the census of 1860 we had 22,000,000 of sheep, but during the war we imposed high duties on cloth and required clothing for the army. Cotton rose to $ 2 a pound, woollens took the place of cottons. Woollen machinery was set in motion sufficient to absorb the fleeces of 50,000,000 of sheep. We could not raise cotton at the North, but we could raise wool, and as cattle and horses were drawn away by the army, sheep took their places, and our sheep increased by 1866 to 35,000,000, or to the level of the flocks of France and Great Britain. Their wool alone, however, would not meet our wants, and trade with Buenos Ayres, Australia, and Africa was expanded until our imports of wool rose to 87,000,000 of pounds and our manufacture approached that of England. While our woollen - mills were thus occupied, the war suddenly collapsed. The demand for the army ceased, and the government, with arsenals and warehouses overflowing, wound up its contracts and soon brought a part of its surplus stock into market. When cotton cost $ 2 per pound and wool 60 cents, the frugal housewife replaced cottons with woollens, and stuffed her coverlids with wool; but when cotton fell 90 per cent, — when it fell below wool, — the girls were recalled from their homes and the cotton-spindles set in motion. Wool, of course, declined, and the farmer and the farmer’s wife, whose favorite is the merino, — as sheep do not require either milk-pail, churn, or cheese-press, — looked to Washington for relief. The farmers ascribed the decline to foreign wool, and Congress, yielding to their importunities, raised the duty. Then the manufacturer took the field and urged a rise on cloth, arguing that he would be ruined by a rise in wool without a corresponding rise on cloth ; and thus by a combination of the two interests, after war had ended, duties of 70 per cent or more were imposed on wool and woollens.

Let us trace the results. First, the trade in foreign wool has been reduced 75 per cent. The import of wool fell from 87,000,000 to 24,000.000 of pounds in 1868 and 1869, and navigation was checked and injured. But this was not the only loss to the country. On the great plains of Buenos Ayres, Australia, and Africa the sheep require no shelter, but live through the year in verdant pastures, and the shepherds can afford to sell their fine Mestiza wool at 12 cents a pound, while our Western farmers, who buy their lands for $ 1.25 an acre, or receive them as gifts from the government, insist that it costs them 60 cents per pound to produce their merino wool, which can be raised for 20 cents or less on the ranches of California. Before the new duty was imposed, we sent out flour, lard, furniture, fish, domestics, oil, and other products to buy our wool, and stocked our vessels with bread and beef for the sailors, but under the duty we lost the exports as well as imports. We lost, also, the shipping, while the wool which we had previously brought home, and which we required to mix with our own, went at still lower prices to England and France, where land is dear but foreign wool is free, and came out in cheap cloth to the British Provinces or New York.

Nor was this the end. The smuggler along our whole frontier contracts for 25 per cent to evade the duty. The foreign cloth comes in sometimes in the bale, sometimes in the shape of clothing, and visitors to the Provinces find it politic to renew there the wardrobe of their families. The mills pay no dividends. Many have been changed, first from cotton to wool, and then from wool to cotton. The Reports of the Department of Agriculture for March and April, 1869, announce that during the previous year there has been a diminution in our flocks of 20 per cent” (7,000,000 of sheep), and this decline has been chiefly in the Northern States, having cold winters, and in fine wool sheep, which have been sold for the value of their pelts and tallow. " Wool,” says the Report, “ has been low, and the inevitable result has followed of rough treatment, neglect, poor food, short commons, weakness, and disease.”

The experiment, like the two-dollar tax on alcohol, has been a failure, injurious to all parties but the illicit trader. The reduction of this two-dollar tax to half a dollar has added nearly 40,000,000 to our surplus revenue.

To relieve the woollen manufacture and the country, shall we not be obliged to resort to a similar remedy in the case of wool ? Agriculture on this great continent, where land is freely given to the settler, requires no protection, whatever may be the case with manufactures. It wants no governmental forcing-house. In the Report on Agriculture which we have cited, we find conclusive proof of this, in an account of the results of a cheese factory in Lewis County, New York. Here the cheese averages seventeen cents a pound, and after payment of the expenses and of $ 300 to the committee, each cow returns to the farmer $65 a year. Ten merino sheep consume as much food and require as much care as a cow, and to he equally profitable should yield annually seven dollars per head, but lor rS6S they have not yielded in wool or lambs one half that amount. Cheese is wanted, both at home and abroad, and our Northern farmers, if they desire fine wool, can buy it with their cheese abroad for one third the sum it costs them at home. The sheep we have parted with are no loss to the country. We must look to New Mexico, Texas, California, Montana, and to the pastures of Africa, South America, and Australia for our fine wool, while we raise sheep for mutton north of the Ohio.

France, for the first quarter of this century, imposed duties on wool, but afterwards raised the price of her own wool and revived her manufactures by the abandonment of the duties.

France, England, and Belgium, with land worth from $ 300 to $ 500 per acre, impose no duties on wool. May we not be guided by their experience ?

CARPETS.

How is it with carpets ?

Carpets, protected by a high tariff, while the coarse wool they require escapes the heavy duty, return large profits. The Brussels carpet, for which twelve years since the writer paid $ 1.37½ a yard, now sells for twice that sum. The manufacturer is contented, but the success of the carpet, which is too heavy for the smuggler, shows the importance of low duties on raw material, and at this moment Buenos Ayres gives a significant hint to our farmers. The sheep-owners there, feeling the pressure of the American tariff, have decided to reduce their docks. They find it does not pay to give the pelt for boiling down the sheep for tallow, and, learning that the Americans are shipping cheese from New York and wheat from California, they are led by the weight of our tariff to rival us in these profitable branches of industry, and our government has been notified of a great fair, at which they wish us to exhibit our ploughs and reapers, and all our implements for the dairy. They wish to beat us with our own weapons.

Are we prepared to resign the granary and the dairy for a precarious hold on the sheep-walk ?

In Great Britain ships and steamers bound on foreign voyages are wisely permitted to take their coal and stores out of bond. Let us give our vessels the same advantage in their competition on the open sea.

Again, if we desire to have ships and seamen, we must reduce the cost of vessels, shelter, and food, by reducing the duties on wood, potatoes, and herrings. Wood enters into the construction of both ships and houses, and the duties on lumber enhance the cost of both. The mariner must have a home for his family, as well as a vessel. The adjacent Provinces, with a moist climate, are better suited than our own country for forests and the culture of oats and potatoes ; but under the duty on oats and the preposterous duty of twenty-five cents in gold, or 120 per cent, on potatoes, the oats are sent to England to compete with ours, and the silvery potato is used to fatten pork, as a substitute for our pork ; and we pay a dollar a bushel for an inferior vegetable from the sterile soil ot New England.

Around the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence the sea swarms with herring in such abundance that their spawn is often rolled up by the waves in winrows ; but few of these fish are taken, on account of our duties.

On the western coast, both on Puget Sound and along the shores of Alaska, the sea is alive with herring, candle-fish, and large halibut ; the rivers abound also in salmon. These fish are sold for less than a cent per pound at Victoria ; but duties and the high cost of vessels deter the people of that region from becoming fishermen.

While it may not be wise to discourage the people of the Provinces, now on the verge of independence, from joining their destinies with ours, is it not our policy to sustain the lines connecting us by reducing those duties which are nearly prohibitory ? Shall we erect a Chinese wall between ourselves and them, and resign our trade with them to the smuggler ? Already we have steam packets running to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward’s Isle. Next year we shall connect the Grand Trunk with Boston, and open the European and North American line to St. John and Halifax, and possibly to Sydney, whence we can reach the Cove of Cork in six days from Boston. Shall we confine this line to mails and passengers ?

SUBSIDIES TO STEAMERS.

If no other nation gave subsidies to steamers, it might be wise for us to withhold them ; but have we not seen the Cunard line, under a subsidy of S 800,000 a year, grow from five thousand to sixty thousand tons, and launch magnificent steamers like the Scotia and Persia, and furnish some of them as frigates during the Trent affair, and prepare to use them against us ? Have we not seen England build up her Peninsular and Oriental line, until it has put afloat a hundred sail of vessels, and extended its lines to China, Japan, and Australia; and have we not seen her increase her subsidy to two and a half millions, when France entered the field and reduced profits? Have we not seen England establish other subsidized lines to Canada, New Granada, St. Thomas, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, and Chili, and thus put afloat half a million tons of steam frigates, ready to pounce upon the commerce of any nation with which she may be at war ?

Have we not seen France follow this example, and pay to her ships $ 10,000 a trip between the ports of France and New York? And in view of all this, are we to content ourselves with a monthly line to China and Brazil, and none to Europe, while England and France have twenty lines to America ?

Our government has found it wise to grant subsidies to coaches for the carriage of the mail and who can run against them ? But how can we, with all the burdens on our navigation, run successfully against the subsidized steamers of France and England ?

In the late race on the Thames our boat was over-weighted, our oarsmen were weakened and deterred by some absurd theory from taking the advantages that were taken by their adversaries. In the great race upon the ocean we shall lose a race more important, unless we put our men who can win it on an equal footing with their opponents.

If Collins undertook too much, and sacrificed frugality to display, does it follow that others may not begin where Scotland has left off, and excel the prototype ? Screw steamers of iron have been built on the Clyde, admirably adapted for the Pacific, to run under steam or sail, and thus avail themselves of the trade-winds, — steamers able to convey in twenty days 2,000 tons of goods 5,000 miles, with 400 tons of coal; and rich veins of coal have been opened at Sangalien, at the northern end of Japan. With such steamers and such coal-beds, we might at once triple our trade with China and Japan, if we were willing to remit unnecessary duties, and give necessary subsidies, to be returned eventually by postages.

At present we have but 1,199,000 tons propelled by steam, as shown by the following official tables : —

American Steam Tonnage.

On Atlantic and Gulf Coast 655,730 Tons.

“ Pacific Coast 49,895 ”

“ Lakes 144,117 ”

“ Western Rivers 351,671 ”

1,199,413 ”

Less than half of this is adapted to sea navigation. We require tri - weekly lines from Boston and New York to England, the Continent, and the Mediterranean, and new lines from San Francisco to Japan, China, and Australia.

THE FISHERIES.

But if we have ships and steamers, we must have mariners. Down to a recent period the masters, mates, and mariners of the United Stales have excelled those of other nations. Where did they gain their superiority ? It was in the schools of the North, and in the colleges and universities for mariners, which were founded by our fathers. Those colleges and those universities are the great fisheries, which our ancestors classed among “ the great and inalienable rights of the United States,” for which they fought and suffered, and not in vain, — the fisheries for whales, cod, and mackerel. In these were reared the men who fought the sea-fights of the Revolution, who ferried Washington on that stormy night across the Delaware, who manned the Constitution and the Essex, who blockaded the Southern coast. We should cherish these fisheries and all school-ships and other nurseries for seamen. Have we done so ?

We give bounties to agricultural colleges ; we have, doubtless, converted some cabin-boys, who would have made mates and masters, into farmers ; but what have we done for our seamen ? We have taken away their bounties, which Congress accorded, nearly a century since, to develop seamanship, and place our people on a footing with those of France and England. While we repeal bounties and merely remit the duty on salt, England liberates everything to her fishermen. Canada grants $ 4 per ton bounty to hers, and France $ 2 per quintal for every pound of codfish she exports to the United States ; while our hardy fishermen are overweighted with duties, and find no weight in the currency. But we can do something for them by the remission of worse than useless duties, and it is time this remedy was administered.

Our shipping in the fisheries has dwindled from 332.000 tons in 1860 to 135,000 tons in 1867. The decline is principally in the whale and cod fishery, and with this decline has come a diminution in the number and quality of our mates and mariners, while England is improving her ships and her navigators.

Is it not a fact, that little has been done for seamen with the hospital money we have for the last eighty years deducted from their wages, and that we have left it to the benevolence of private citizens, like Robert B. Forbes and George M. Barnard, to provide them with houses of refuge and school-ships ?

The decay of our shipping cannot be ascribed to the exhaustion of our timber. It is still abundant in the Provinces, in Virginia, Puget Sound, Alaska, and our Northern States, and would be easily accessible under improved legislation. We have, too, iron of superior quality. It is well understood that such is the strength and tenacity of our iron, that we could reduce the weight of our iron ships 15 per cent below the English standard, and produce stronger and more buoyant vessels, which should be rated as high as are those of England ; and Congress should appoint a commission to fix a standard for insurance.

Nor are we deficient in artistic skill. If our shipwrights command high wages, they bring to their work great intelligence and energy, and use implements so much superior to those of Europe, that they accomplish more for a given amount of money than foreign artisans.

We have inducements to build in the petroleum, which adds 300,000 tons to our exports, in our increasing crops of cotton, and in the 600,000 tons of grain which youthful California and Oregon now offer us for shipment. They tender us cargoes for voyages that must occupy a year before the ship can return to the Pacific, and in which she may often earn half the cost of construction.

We are opening a new trade with China and Japan. These populous regions call with a voice that echoes across the continent for the cheap flour, fruit, and quicksilver of California, for the silver bars of Nevada, and the timber, fish, and turs of Alaska, and they offer return cargoes of tea, sugar, and spice. We require their low-priced labor for our mines and cotton-fields, and their skilled gardeners for the gardens and vineyards of California. These sons of Asia may not become permanent residents, nor can they be naturalized under our laws, but they will add to our stores of the precious metals by their patient industry. They employ both sailing-vessels and propellers, and the country will secure a valuable accession in a supply of fullgrown and frugal laborers whom it has cost nothing to educate or produce.

We shall have taken a most important step towards the recovery of our shipping, it we induce our legislators to go back to the duties on metals, manufactures, cigars, and spirits which preceded the war. They may then strike from the statute-book half our taxes and revive our drooping navigation by removing the incubus under which it is wasting.

England encourages navigation, and protects her ships by exempting them from all taxes local or general ; why may not we do the same, and thus revive navigation as well as lighten freights? It we did so, we should still have our tonnage duty, and not exempt one per cent of our whole property from other taxes.

E. H. Derby.