A strange feature of this contest in its later stages was the fact that the confederated trades-unions of the country arranged themselves unanimously against the American and in favor of the alien policy. Trades-unionism is founded upon a doctrine or dogma of protection more sweeping and more drastic than any other ever known. They cheerfully maintain and sometimes exultantly proclaim that, when nothing else will serve to accomplish their ends, violence and crime become logical and legitimate instrumentalities for enforcement of their protective doctrine. They take no account of the fact that the enactment of a favorable shipping law would open new and wide avenues of remunerative employment for American mechanics that are now closed. Their motive in opposing such legislation seems to be a sort of blind, groping revenge against a few ship-builders and ship-owners who have resisted their unreasonable and ruinous demands. It is a remarkable fact that the leaders and managers of the confederated trades-unions are all foreigners.
Naturally, such organizations, so led, fall easy dupes to the wiles of the alien ship-owners, who have never left any stone unturned or any expedient untried to defeat or smother in our own Congress legislation calculated to promote and extend our merchant marine.
Whatever the distant future may bring forth, there seems to be at this time and for the near future as little prospect of the development of a new and purely American merchant marine in the foreign trade as there has been at any time since the old one was destroyed.
Whatever may be the fate of the American merchant marine, it cannot be said that during the campaign for its resurrection, lasting almost continuously for over thirty years, Mr. Cramp has ever withheld from its advocacy any part of his knowledge, study, observation, and experience; and if, partly through the feebleness of our own patriotism in legislation and administration, and partly through the superior and more aggressive patriotism of foreign ship-owners and ship-builders, the American merchant marine should become extinct, it will not be his fault.
CHAPTER IV
Condition of Navy after Civil War—Admiral Case’s Fleet—“Virginius’s” Scare—“Huron,” “Alert,” and “Ranger”—Secretary Hunt—First Advisory Board—Secretary Chandler—“Puritan” Class—Finished—Steel—Hon. J. B. McCreary and Appropriation Bill for New Navy—Members of Second Naval Advisory Board—Standard for Steel for New Ships, “Chicago,” “Boston,” “Atlanta,” and “Dolphin”—Secretary Whitney—Beginning of New Navy, by Charles H. Cramp—“Baltimore,” “Charleston,” and “Yorktown”—Purchase of Drawings by Navy Department—Commodore Walker—Premium System—Mr. Whitney’s Views—Premiums Paid—Attack on System—Secretary Tracy—War College Paper—Classifying Bids.
After the Civil War the navy was neglected, being, so far as its cruising vessels were concerned, a wooden navy of not only obsolete types, but decayed or decaying vessels, which gradually became a reproach to the country and a laughing-stock for other maritime powers.
At the time of the “Virginius’s” difficulty with Spain, which occurred about five years after the close of the Civil War, a “grand fleet” was assembled at Key West under the command of Rear-Admiral Case. This fleet consisted of a large number of wooden cruising steamers of various types and classes, all obsolete, many of them unseaworthy, and all incapable of meeting an up-to-date ship of that period (1874-75) with any chance of success whatever. To these wooden hulks were added the double-turreted monitors “Terror,” “Amphitrite,” and “Monadnock,” which were built at the navy-yards of wood, and a batch of old worn-out single-turreted monitors. The bottoms of the wooden monitors were so weakened structurally that, whenever an effort was made to wedge up the spindles so that the turrets could revolve, the bottom went down instead of the turret going up, the latter necessarily remaining immovable. Unquestionably any one, or at most any two, of our first-class modern battleships at this writing, 1903, could have annihilated and sunk the entire fleet in two or three hours, although it consisted, all types and classes taken together, of over forty vessels. This was an object lesson, and it to some extent aroused the sensibilities of the country; but the then existing administration of the Navy Department was under the absolute control of the navy-yard rings, and all naval work of every description was done in navy-yards. The “Spanish Scare,” as it was called, did, however, have the effect of spurring Congress to provide for the construction of eight (8) new vessels, the first provided for since the Civil War. Of these, three were given out to be built by contract; two, the “Huron” and “Alert,” small iron sloops-of-war or gun-vessels, were given to John Roach and built at his works at Chester; and another of the same class, the “Ranger,” was given to Harlan & Hollingsworth, of Wilmington, and built there. The other five were built in navy-yards, and were completed at different periods between 1875 and 1879.
