The Memoirs of Charles H. Cramp

by Augustus C. Buell

“In the relation of India to England there is something pitiable, because India is helpless.

“In the relation of the United States to England there is nothing that is not contemptible, because it is the willing servitude of a nation that could help herself if she would.

“England is wide awake to those conditions, and keenly appreciates their priceless value to her.

“The United States blinks at them, half dazed, half asleep, insensible of their tremendous damage to her.

“England, clearly seeing that in this age more than ever before ocean empire is world empire, strains every nerve to perpetuate her sea power and exhausts her resources to double-rivet the fetters which it fastens upon mankind.

“Though in 1885 England already had a navy superior to those of any two and equal to those of any three other powers, if not to all others, she has since that date built a new navy which, with what remains most available of the old one, overshadows the world, and makes the sea as much British territory as the County of Middlesex.”

While this contest was going on between American ship-owners and ship-builders on the one hand and the alien combinations who control our ocean commerce on the other, a vast amount of American capital was gradually invested in shipping under the British flag, and at least an equal amount awaited any reasonable encouragement to build ships in this country to sail under the American flag. Of course, it would have been folly for the men who controlled this capital to invest it in American ships with a clear handicap of at least 15 to 20 per cent. against them in operating expenses, ton for ton, in competition with the aided, fostered, and subsidized fleets of England, Germany, and France. For a long time this mass of capital was held in hope of the adoption of a policy by our government that would tend to lift the handicap and equalize as far as possible the burdens of operating American ships as compared with others. But when Congress adjourned March 4, 1901, leaving the shipping question where it had been ever since the Civil War, and offering, if possible, less hope than ever before, the mass of American capital that had been held back was let loose. Soon rumors that a great merger of British steamship lines with the International Navigation Company was in progress filled the air. It soon appeared that there was plenty of American capital to invest in ships under foreign flags, but none under the American flag so long as the existing situation might last. The ship-owners may have been patriotic, but their patriotism was not enthusiastic enough to make them willing to pay a penalty of 15 to 20 per cent. for the sake of it. This movement soon took shape in the organization of the International Mercantile Marine Company, in which was merged the control and management of the International, the White Star, the Leyland, and the Atlantic Transport Lines; the whole forming by far the greatest aggregation of vessels and tonnage ever grouped under one control. This control was American,[^[2]] but the ships were of British registry except six, built by the Cramps and several others,—the “St. Louis,” “St. Paul,” “Kroonland,” and “Finland,” American built, and the “New York” and “Philadelphia” (formerly the “Paris”), British built, but admitted to American registry by the special Act of 1892.

[2]. Since this was written, the whole ownership of the Line is British.

The Americans were determined to own and operate ships. They would have preferred to run them under the American flag, but Congress—or rather a fraction in the House of Representatives—compelled them to use the British ensign! The commercial and financial effect of this was that the American investors got the benefit of the lower wages and cheaper subsistence of foreign seafaring labor. The vessels were American as to ownership only. No American officer or seaman or engineer or fireman was employed in them. They added nothing to the sea power of the country; they did nothing toward forming a nursery of American sailors to be in readiness for an emergency. On the contrary, they were a constant school for the Naval Reserve of a power that might become as hostile politically as she has been industrially and commercially from the beginning of our existence as an independent nation. None of these great facts appealed to the narrow and demagogic faction in the House. They could see in it nothing but “a trust,” and their parrot-cry resounded from the banks of the Wabash to the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains.

Many men, hitherto hopeful, believe that any further effort to restore our foreign carrying trade under the American flag must be in vain. They argue that, if the Houses of Representatives elected in 1898 and 1900 would not pass a Shipping Bill, none can ever be chosen that will. If foreign influences and alien doctrines could prevent consideration in those two Houses of bills that had already passed the Senate in each Congress, those influences and those doctrines are likely to maintain their potency indefinitely. If this be true, the American flag in the foreign trade is doomed to utter extinction within a few years on the Atlantic Ocean, and its survival in the Pacific is a matter of extreme doubt.