In twenty-one years the number of our transatlantic steamships has decreased from seven to four, while those under foreign flags have increased two hundred and fifty.
Maintaining then, as now, that the screw must supersede the side-wheel for all purposes, excepting perhaps those of mail carriage, and that iron screw steamers are, in all commercial respects, preferable to wood steamers, the argument was adduced that England, being able to construct this class of vessels more economically than we can, must of necessity have the monopoly of building them. Her monopoly, in this respect, we cannot prevent; but it depends upon ourselves and our government whether she shall share with us the monopoly of owning and sailing them.
I have taken a bold, and it may be, apparently, an unpatriotic stand, in assuming that the only way in which we can participate in ocean steam navigation is by adopting a system of reciprocity with England in so changing our laws that we may buy her steamers as she now buys our sailing ships, because she finds it for her interest to do so."
These views, entertained twenty-one years ago, were applicable then. They have been applicable ever since—they are applicable now. They have been the staple of all that
I have ever written on the subject before the war, during the war, and since its termination.
Iron steamship building was in its infancy in 1857. Its great development was merely coincident with our civil war. That war was a horrid nightmare. We found that our navigation interests, with many other things we could ill afford to lose, the lives of hundreds of thousands of our young men, vast sums of our money, and not a little of our morality, were gone. Those lives can never be restored, while our money may be regained, and it is to be hoped our morality may be improved, but as to our ships, we simply refuse to replace them with those that are better.
One argument in opposition to free ships is founded upon the injustice that would be done to our shipbuilders. Were this true, it might be said that ship-owners and the general public have some rights that shipbuilders are bound to respect. The interests of our whole people are paramount to theirs as were those of the English people in 1849, when the proportion of their shipbuilders was greatly beyond that of ours at this day.
In point of fact, however, the suffering of our shipbuilders by the repeal of the navigation laws, would, from the first, be scarcely appreciable, and, in the end, would be more than compensated by increased business.
It would matter very little either to the builders of wooden vessels or to the public if that provision of the statute which touches that department, and which really was intended for that alone, should be repealed or not. Our mechanics build mainly for the coasting trade, and they build wooden vessels so