[1]. These managers of foreign lines proceeded systematically. Whatever may have been the activity of their competition for the carrying trade of the United States, they were unanimous in their determination to prevent the growth of an American merchant marine. Acting under the guise of a pretended business combine, which, for convenience, they termed “The North Atlantic Traffic Association,” they raised funds, hired lobbyists,—among whom appeared ex-officials of positions as high as the Cabinet,—and by every possible means known to modern ingenuity thwarted every effort of those favoring American interests, both in and out of Congress. This combination has no reason for existence except that of organized and systematic lobbying against American interests in the corridors and committee rooms of the American Congress.
A similar measure was brought forward again in the Congress elected with President McKinley in 1896, and the bill passed the Senate, again to meet the same fate as its predecessor in a Republican House of Representatives with a thorough working majority, notwithstanding that the policy of aid to American shipping had been a cardinal plank in the platform of that year, upon which that House had been elected. The defection was almost wholly among Western Republicans.
BATTLESHIP NEW IRONSIDES
During the contest over the bill in the Congress under consideration, the tactics of the foreign steamship owners and managers, personally as well as through their hired agents, were a disgrace to the good name of American legislation. They threw off all disguise and openly lobbied on the floors and in the corridors and committee rooms of the House to prevent consideration of the bill. In that Congress there was every prospect that if the Senate Bill could be brought up for consideration it would pass with some trifling amendments, which could easily be adjusted in conference committee. The whole strategy of the alien shipping interests was to prevent consideration, which they ultimately succeeded in doing by working upon the susceptibility or the apprehensions of certain Republicans from the far Western States.
In 1898, the tonnage bounty bill in a modified form was brought forward again; this time with a limitation of the amount to be expended under its provisions in any one fiscal year to nine millions of dollars, but it met the same kind of opposition that had beaten its two predecessors, and it shared their fate, passing the Senate and being denied consideration in the House.
Finally, in the Congress elected in 1900 and assembling in 1901, a tonnage bill still further modified was brought forward and passed the Senate. For a time it was believed that the alien ship-owners and managers would not be able to beat this bill as they had its predecessors, and strong hopes were indulged by its friends that it would receive consideration in the House. Even up to the last few weeks of the closing session of the Fifty-seventh Congress which expired March 3, 1903, the Chairman of the Committee on Merchant Marine and other advocates and friends of the bill believed that they would be able to get a rule for its consideration even at the last moment. But that hope, like all the others, passed away.
To go back a little, it may be worth while to remark here that the national misfortune did not even end with the failure of these bills, and the consequent continued depression or paralysis of the American foreign carrying trade. There was from time to time sufficient prospect, or at least possibility, of the passage of a practical and effective law for the aid and encouragement of American shipping to induce the investment of a large amount of capital by sanguine persons in new ship-building plants of considerable magnitude, whereby the trade as it stood was not only greatly overdone, but the skilled ship-building labor of the country was overdrawn. There seemed to be a theory that plenty of money to invest in plant or to sink in unprofitable enterprises could be depended on to make up for the lack of experience in the management of shipyards and want of skill in ship-building labor. The result was disastrous not only to the investors in the stock and bonds of the new shipyards, but also to the entire ship-building industry, as it had been developed on a practical and legitimate basis.
With the final failure of all legislation to promote American commerce in the foreign carrying trade, there was no resource left for either the new shipyards or the old except such work as the coastwise trade might provide and the construction of naval vessels. As for the coastwise trade, it was already well provided with new and highly serviceable steamships likely to fill the demands of the traffic for several years to come, so that little or no new work could be expected from that quarter.