"While we are learning [to build steamships] England is using her advantages. Their merchants, captains, engineers, and sailors are carrying on our trade, and taking the bread from our mouths."
Congressman Nelson Dingley, Jr., of Maine, a prominent advocate of the subsidy system, in an article in the North American Review, dated April, 1884, said:—
"At the time Great Britain accepted our invitation to participate, on equal terms in the business of" transportation (it was in 1849), "experiments in iron ship building and steam propulsion were going on in that country, which, as early as 1855, began to work a revolution in marine architecture.... This revolution from wood to iron and sails to steam at once began to deprive the American merchant marine of" the advantages it had enjoyed.
The total number of British steamers receiving mail pay, or subsidy, in 1857, was 121, including the vessels plying to Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Orkneys, and other near-by points; among which was one line sending two steamers a day over its route. (See Nautical Magazine, September, 1857.) The total number of steamers under the British flag, in 1857, was 2132 (Rep. Com. of Nav. for 1901, p. 472). It is manifest that the mail pay aided the 121 steamers thus favored; it is equally manifest that the 2011 unsubsidized steamers were not only obliged to depend on their intrinsic merit for profit, but they were obliged to compete on unfair terms in all the trades (like that from Liverpool to New York) where the subsidized steamers were employed.
The progress made by the British iron screw steamer thereafter was pointed out by John Roach, in the course of his testimony, quoted above, when he said (p. 177) he "had found out by personal examination that there were 119 iron steamships plying between the ports of America and Great Britain. Of that number 110 were running to the port of New York."
A brief space must be given to a commonly accepted statement to the effect that the members of Congress from the South, in the decade before the Civil War, were opposed to the payment of subsidies to American steamers because of prejudice against the North. Marvin, in the American Merchant Marine, names Jefferson Davis and three of the men who were afterwards associated with him in his cabinet as president of the Confederacy, as leaders in this assault upon a Northern industry. The reader who is interested in making a candid study of the facts can find many speeches made by Congressmen from all parts of the country, in the Globe for the period in question. Part III, for 1857-1858, will be found most interesting in connection with this charge against Mr. Davis. On page 2832, third column, are the following words uttered by him (he was then a senator), on the method of paying subsidies:—
"Having established the mail line the question is, how shall the compensation be stated. In one of these amendments it seems it is to be the postal receipts. I think that altogether an objectionable method, and I shall vote against that amendment for the reason that this is to be a fluctuating amount.... The company cannot bear the fluctuation. The depression of commerce, the existence of war, or some other cause, may limit the correspondence, and cut off passenger and light freight, and then a line relying on postage receipts might not be able to run; whilst if the government allowed from year to year a fixed sum ... it might keep up the line."
Later Mr. Davis voted as he had talked. It is but fair to say that he, together with other senators and members of Congress, believed that the payment of subsidies, as a national policy, was objectionable, but so, too, did Ben Wade of Ohio, and other pronounced opponents of the "slave oligarchy." Senator Rusk, of Texas, was as firm in his support of the utterly reckless Collins Line as was Seward of New York.
The assertion, so often made at the North, that Congressmen from the Southern States, during the years immediately preceding the Civil War, were united in a conspiracy to injure Northern industries in order thereby to weaken the North and make the work of secession easier, is absolutely without foundation in fact. It is as absurd as the similar statement to the effect that the Secretary of the Navy (Toucey, a Connecticut man) had scattered the ships of the navy all over the world to weaken the fighting power of the general government. The truth is the ships were not as badly scattered in 1860 as they had been in several of the preceding years. Thus there were twelve ships upon the home station in 1860, but only five in 1851. Further than that, Toucey had for two years urged upon Congress the building of seven sloops of war of a draught of only fourteen feet, and Congress, on February 21, 1861, appropriated the money for that purpose. These shoal-draught vessels were admirably adapted for use in the waters along the Southern States, and that fact was pointed out during the discussion in the House. Nevertheless several members from the Southern States voted for the bill.
The subsidy policy was never treated as a sectional issue in Congress. Hamlin, of Maine, Vice-president under Lincoln, voted with the opponents of the subsidy men. (Globe, June 9, 1858, p. 2837.)