The Memoirs of Charles H. Cramp

by Augustus C. Buell

“I have gone into detail to this extent because it seemed necessary to do so in order to show that, loud as has been the outcry of ‘subsidy’ raised against the act recently passed, it is still, as a matter of fact, less liberal than existing provisions of the British government for their own ships already in the trade to be competed for.

“Thus far I have dealt with facts only; and I have been careful to avoid any matter susceptible of controversy. In conclusion, I will venture a few deductions of my own, based upon the foregoing statements of simple facts. I will assume at the start that our internal development of farms, workshops, mines, railways, coastwise, lake, and river commerce, etc., has reached a point at which capital has reached its zenith of profitable investment in them, and must look for some new field, not only for further original investment, but also for the protection or betterment of investments already made. In my judgment, our energy and enterprise during the last twenty-five years have exhausted all the large chances of fortune within the boundaries of the United States. Our existing industries of every description represent an enormous volume of local ‘plant’ and productive organizations quite up to our local requirements for some time; hence it is necessary to seek outlets for an inevitable surplus of product, and, in default of such outlet, there must be a plethora of production which is bound to result in stagnation, or, in other words, national apoplexy. For this there can be but one preventive, ‘an ounce’ of which is said on traditional authority to be ‘worth a pound of cure,’ and that is in the development and retention of external market outlets. It is my opinion that we can never secure these until we can ourselves command the avenues to them. Commerce has its ‘strategy’ no less than war. In war, strategy depends on lines of operation and communication. At this time we possess neither for either commerce or war. Our great rival controls both in every sense of the word. To-day we could not even defend our own coasts against her obsolete iron-clads in war, and we cannot control our own foreign commerce as against the poorest and least seaworthy of her myriad of ‘ocean tramps.’ If, for any reason, she were to withdraw from our trade the vessels which, by virtue of our acquiescence, do all our trans-Atlantic fetching and carrying for us, our peerless nation would be laid helpless under an embargo compared to which that of Jefferson’s administration would be but a mere trifle of annoyance. It has seemed strange to me that so little attention is paid to this fact. What would our political independence be worth, if circumstances, likely to occur at any moment, should visit upon us the consequences of our commercial servitude to England? and in a less, though still important, degree to Germany?

“This is a plain statement of fact that I do not think any reasonable person will have the temerity to dispute. For the present I have only to add, that we have done nothing as yet to lift this yoke from our necks. It cannot be done except by restoring our merchant marine and our naval power to their former status upon the high seas. The attempts thus far made in that direction are but feeble. I am not sanguine that they will be strong in our time, but I hope so. It may be that this result will not come until we have received a sterner lesson of our weakness and helplessness than any one now anticipates.

“This pitiable condition on the ocean is emphasized by the contrast of our unrivalled power, resource, and enterprise within our own borders. It seems, indeed, the strangest anomaly of modern civilization, that the most enlightened, most ambitious, most energetic, most productive, and internally most powerful nation on the globe should be externally among the weakest, most helpless, and least respected.

“The sole remedy for this situation is ships with seamen to handle them, whether for peace or for war; whether to carry our enormous exports, and bring our immense imports, and receive therefor the tremendous tolls which now flow into foreign coffers, or to vindicate the majesty and power of our flag abroad in the world to a degree befitting our status in the community of nations.

“There is no lack of raw material, no lack of skill to fashion it into the instruments of commerce. We have the iron and the steel; we have the men to work them into the finished forms of stately ships; we have the money to promote the most colossal of enterprises by sea. All we need is assurance of a steady national policy of liberal and enlightened encouragement, based upon a patriotic common consent, and elevated above the turmoils of politics or the squabbles of parties. One decade of such a policy would make us second only to Great Britain on the high seas, either for commerce or for defence; and two decades of it would bring us fairly into the twentieth century as the master maritime power of the globe.”

These observations, though written and printed in 1891, are as true and pertinent now as they were then; and they will remain true and pertinent indefinitely because they embody the practical logic of a situation; they point out the consequences it entails, and they suggest the only remedy that has been approved by the cumulative experience of other nations. The lines of fact are broad, plain, and unmistakable. No one disputes them.

As before remarked, a quite brief experience demonstrated that the Ocean Mail Pay Act of March 3, 1891, was both inadequate in its scope of operation and insufficient in its volume of aid to produce any marked betterment of the condition of our foreign trade. The restricted nature of its application and the comparatively small amounts paid were not sufficient to encourage the establishment of new lines, the opening of new sea routes, or the construction of new and up-to-date vessels under the American flag. One result of this development was the formation of a committee, composed of the most prominent ship-builders and ship-owners in the country, known as the Committee on the Merchant Marine. Of this committee Mr. Cramp was one of the originators, and always among the most prominent and active members. Its object was to concentrate the power of individuals in a concerted body for the purpose of furnishing facts and disseminating knowledge with regard to the condition of the merchant marine and its needs not only in Congress, but also among the people throughout the country. Hitherto the efforts of individuals had been exerted singly and often divergently; but it was hoped and believed that, by the organization of this committee and through the concerted action which would result from its deliberations and researches, a harmonious and uniform scheme might be brought forward which would ultimately command the public support of all men animated by a patriotic desire to see the American flag restored to its former proud rank on the high sea.

The first result of this policy was the formulation of a bill based upon tonnage and distance travelled. It was to some extent analogous to the system then prevailing in France commonly known as the tonnage bounty system.

When this bill was first brought forward, being introduced by Mr. Frye, of Maine, in the Senate, and by Mr. Dingley, in the House of Representatives, the foreign steamship owners or their agents in this country at once became greatly alarmed. They had not offered a very vigorous resistance to the passage of the Ocean Mail Pay Act of 1891, because their knowledge of the business and their keen sense of the situation taught them that there was not much danger to their interests in that bill. They made a show of opposing it, of course, but they spent very little money or time and made no really determined effort to beat it. In fact, the foreign steamship owners and the managers of the foreign lines which were doing the ocean-carrying trade of the United States realized before that bill became a law what it took our people two or three years to find out. But when the tonnage bounty bill was brought forward, with the general applicability of its provisions to all kinds of vessels engaged in the foreign carrying trade, and proposing, as it did, a rate of bounty which would have gone far toward equalizing the difference in cost of seafaring labor and subsistence as between American and foreign ships, the owners and managers of the steamship lines[^[1]] and tramps that were carrying the commerce of the United States determined that it must be beaten at all hazards and at any cost. This struggle began in 1894. The original tonnage bill passed the Senate, but was smothered in the House. The owners and managers of the foreign steamship lines could not control the Senate, but they appeared able to affect the action of the House of Representatives negatively, at least, if not positively.