In his last message to Congress, President Roosevelt said:
To the spread of our trade in peace and the defense of our flag in war a great and prosperous merchant marine is indispensable. We should have ships of our own and seamen of our own to convey our goods to neutral markets, and in case of need to reënforce our battle line. It cannot but be a source of regret and uneasiness to us that the lines of communication with our sister republics of South America should be chiefly under foreign control. It is not a good thing that American merchants and manufacturers should have to send their goods and letters to South America via Europe if they wish security and dispatch. Even on the Pacific, where our ships have held their own better than on the Atlantic, our merchant flag is now threatened through the liberal aid bestowed by other governments on their own steam lines. I ask your earnest consideration of the report with which the Merchant Marine Commission has followed its long and careful inquiry.
The bill now pending in the House is a bill framed upon the report of that Merchant Marine Commission. The question whether it shall become a law depends upon your Representatives in the House. You have the judgment of the Postmaster-General, you have the judgment of the Senate, you have the judgment of the President; if you agree with these judgments and wish the bill which embodies them to become a law, say so to your Representatives. Say it to them individually and directly, for it is your right to advise them and it will be their pleasure to hear from you what legislation the interests of their constituents demand.
The great body of Congressmen are always sincerely desirous to meet the just wishes of their constituents and to do what is for the public interest; but in this great country they are continually assailed by innumerable expressions of private opinion and by innumerable demands for the expenditure of public money; they come to discriminate very clearly between private opinion and public opinion, and between real public opinion and the manufactured appearance of public opinion; they know that when there is a real demand for any kind of legislation it will make itself known to them through a multitude of individual voices. Resolutions of commercial bodies frequently indicate nothing except that the proposer of the resolution has a positive opinion and that no one else has interest enough in the subject to oppose it. Such resolutions by themselves, therefore, have comparatively little effect; they are effective only when the support of individual expressions shows that they really represent a genuine and general opinion.
It is for you and the business men all over the country whom you represent to show to the Representatives in Congress that the producing and commercial interests of the country really desire a practical measure to enlarge the markets and increase the foreign trade of the United States, by enabling American shipping to overcome the disadvantages imposed upon it by foreign governments for the benefit of their trade, and by our government for the benefit of our home industry.
FOOTNOTE:
[12] There would be some modification of these figures if the cost of getting the mails to and from the exchange offices were charged against the account; but this is not separable from the general domestic cost and would not materially change the result.