Who manages it?
How much does it cost us taxpayers?
Do we get any return for our money? and the like, are questions which every one, in his capacity of an American citizen, has a right to ask, and which should be answered in such a way that every school boy could understand.
It is easily understood by those of our countrymen living even in those parts of our land most remote from either ocean washing our shores, that a navy is necessary in time of war with a foreign country, and that then it would protect our coasts and prevent an invasion of our soil, and keep the enemy’s war ships from destroying our cities, or from blockading our ports, and thus give the grain and beef—“the production of which is the very life and soul of the West”—an opportunity to get out of the country, and to their markets; for it requires no great reasoning powers to understand that with the enemy hovering around our ports with his ships of war, no shipment of grain and beef could take place.
But the navy protects those same interests in time of peace, and in this way:
Suppose no nation had a navy, and that no armed force existed on the sea, what would be the result?
We would want to export our surplus grain and beef, and hundreds of other articles which we raise in excess of our needs in this country and exchange them for tea and coffee and other articles which we can not raise. We can not send them by rail across the ocean, we have to employ ships. We can not get along without ships.
Even in this age of steam and telegraph, can any one doubt that with no armed force to protect the ships with their valuable cargoes and small crews of two dozen or more men, that the pirate would not again infest the seas and prey upon commerce? Steam and the telegraph would aid him just as much as they would the merchant. But, it might be argued, arm the crews of the merchant ship, put guns and gunners on board. If you do that you have a navy, and a much more expensive and inefficient one than by the present methods.
The navies of the world drove the pirate from the seas. He became a universal enemy, and was hunted down by the war ships of all civilized nations, and there was no dissenting voice among them upon this one question of piracy. To prevent his return the existence of a naval force was necessary and the display of such a force is all that prevents his return now.
Of those who believe there would be no piracy did no navies exist in this age of enlightenment and of rapid communication, it might be asked if they thought property would at all be safe in any of our cities if the police were withdrawn from its protection. What is it that prevents many a thief from robbing property when he finds it apparently unprotected, sees no policemen as he looks up and down the street? It is his knowledge that the city has a police force, and that a policeman may be in the near vicinity, though not in sight.