“This is a most satisfactory showing,” said the commissioner of navigation, Eugene T. Chamberlain. “It proves that there was a considerable number of ships owned by Americans, but our laws were such as to prevent an American from hoisting his own flag on his ship if that ship happened to be built abroad. The great maritime powers—Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, and Norway—all had laws that permitted registry of foreign-built ships. They had been doing everything possible to build up their merchant marine, while we had hindered ours.
“I have great hopes now for the future of the American merchant marine. We have added 300,000 tons in three months and there is as much more existing American-owned tonnage that probably will take the flag. I look for a development of the shipping industry generally in the United States for many reasons.”
From Forge to Chair of Senate.
Edward Schoeneck, next lieutenant governor of New York, started life as a blacksmith, became a stenographer to get a legal education, and later became a lawyer. Though still on the sunny side of forty, he has served two years as ward supervisor, four as member of Assembly, and four as mayor of Syracuse.
His father, Henry Schoeneck, came to this country as a young man and opened a blacksmith shop. He quit it to serve as a soldier, and on his return found his business pretty well gone. There was a large family of boys, and as they became old enough each in turn went into the shop.
Edward was initiated at the forge at fourteen, and for ten years worked there, first as a helper of his father, and after his father’s death as the support with his older brothers of the family. While he worked at the forge he continued the study at home of the common branches.
Before he was eighteen he decided to become a lawyer. He first mastered stenography and got employment in a[Pg 64] mercantile house and then awaited his opportunity. He found it in the law office of White, Cheney & Shinaman. Later he went through Syracuse Law School, was admitted to the bar, and immediately began practice.
The year he entered the law school he was elected supervisor of his ward. At the close of his term as supervisor, he was elected to the Assembly. He was then only twenty-eight years old. When Wadsworth became speaker in 1906, Schoeneck was one of the little group that moved up from the back rows into the “seats of the mighty” and became one of the forces in the reorganization of the Assembly under Wadsworth’s general direction. When it was done, he announced that he proposed to stay home the next year and earn some money, but at the speaker’s solicitation he went back. He remained only one year, however.
Then he resumed his law practice with the intention of sticking to it. But in 1909 the Republican party in Syracuse was in a desperate situation. The Democrats were preparing to nominate George W. Driscoll, brother of the then Republican Congressman from this district, for mayor. The Republicans had had the mayoralty for eight years, and there were two independent movements breeding which threatened trouble.
There wasn’t a Republican candidate for the nomination. Driscoll, a popular man and a good spellbinder, was clearly to be the Democratic nominee. Each of the two independent organizations put up a candidate, both Republicans. He consented to become the candidate of the regulars and was elected. Two years later he was reëlected.