By courtesy of the Cunard Steamship Company
One more argument in favor of subsidy is yet to be considered. With the Panama Canal and the Monroe Doctrine to defend, it is necessary to provide sufficient transports and colliers for the exigencies of war. The spectacle of our splendid war fleet steaming around the world with its fuel carried in ships under foreign flags, was humiliating to the nation. Congress should build auxiliaries more rapidly by direct appropriation, or it should give ample subsidies, however great the sums needed, to maintain auxiliary ships in the merchant service. Many Americans would gladly pay their share of the tax for the pleasure of seeing the American flag above a ship's taffrail, now and then on salt water, in spite of the humiliation of the fact that it was the tax and not efficiency that kept the flag in place. A merchant fleet so provided would be a kind of insurance against the exigencies of war, and even against war itself. With a thousand American merchant ships afloat on deep water there would be less danger of an aggressive nation of Europe invading Rio Grande do Sul or menacing the Panama Canal.
Whether to provide the auxiliaries by direct appropriation or by subsidy is, or should be, a question of relative expense and efficiency. Such a question, one would think, might be solved by the rules of arithmetic; at any rate it is not necessary in the discussion to misrepresent the attitude of senators from Southern States, nor to say that the former American supremacy was due to "protection" instead of the ability of the sailor of the sail.
There are excellent and perhaps imperative diplomatic and military reasons for maintaining at least one line of swift steamers from the Pacific coast to the coast of Asia and the Philippine Islands. The ships of this line, if established, should be fitted, as battleships are, for a cruising speed of say sixteen knots, with a reserve of power for an emergency, when they should be able to develop real scout speed—should be able to run away from the modern twenty-one knot battleships. The value of a fleet of ships of this kind, in a military point of view, and especially upon the Pacific, is obvious. A dozen ships of the kind would not be too many. A fleet of smaller ships, fit for use as naval colliers, might well be maintained to gather and distribute cargo along the Asiatic coast and among the islands. We have undertaken the work of developing civilization in the Far East, and we need to do everything possible to prevent an attack upon our position there. After squadrons of war-ships nothing will create a higher respect for our flag among the people of that region than a fleet of superior merchantmen avowedly maintained for diplomatic and military reasons. In fact a fleet so maintained would impress other peoples than those of the Far East.
The same argument may be made for the maintenance of swift lines to both coasts of South America, where we have the Monroe Doctrine and the Panama Canal to defend. If we establish these lines, a war of subsidies is to be expected, and the well-established and powerful companies already in the trades will be wholly unscrupulous in their opposition, not because their present profits are high, but because they are low; a division of the traffic will still further reduce the profits which are already too narrow for comfort. We may be sure, too, that extravagance and inefficiency of the Collins kind will be found in the management of some of our companies; but as a diplomatic and military measure the experiment seems to be worth making. We have a very good precedent in the action of Germany in establishing a line to its Pacific possessions by a subsidy of a million a year, which is given for the precise reasons urged herein. It will cost the United States many times as much as it does Germany, but one who looks at the matter broadly may well suppose that such an increase of expenses, avowedly made as a measure for increased military efficiency, might be worth while, in the end, as a peace measure. For we shall be obliged in any event, to go on increasing our naval budget to keep even with the growth of European navies, until the war burden becomes intolerable in Europe as well as in the United States; and then we shall have measures for preserving peace more rational than those now in vogue. The sooner the burden is made intolerable the better.
But while we can provide an ample fleet of naval auxiliaries by means of subsidies, if we are willing to pay the price, let no one suppose that such a measure will give the country any share of the world's traffic worth consideration, not to more than mention supremacy upon deep water.
One method by which the Merchant Marine Commission thought to increase American sea power is memorable. A heavy tonnage tax was to be laid upon all ships coming from foreign countries to American ports, and the money so raised was to be paid to American ships in the foreign trade in return for carrying a certain proportion of American citizens enrolled as members of a corps of naval volunteers. The measure looked toward an increase in the number of American seamen, but it did not become a law.
The communities that have supported nautical schools (New York and Boston, for example) have had the end in view for which the measure of the commission was designed. Graduates of these schools are among the best officers in our merchant marine, and this, too, in spite of the fact that antiquated ships of the sail formerly served as school rooms, and the boys were taught to handle the obsolete marline-spike instead of the throttle. But, at best, these efforts to turn ambitious young Americans from the opportunities they find on land are inadequate. Congress might have turned the naval academy into a splendid nautical university for the education of all Americans who wish to learn the ways of the sea. We appropriate millions a year for the farmers, not as bounties on their products, but to teach them, through experiment stations, how to do their work. No one seems to have thought it worth while, however, to make a national appropriation for the education of merchant seamen.