Nor must it be forgotten that our commercial prosperity largely depends on the ready and comfortable transit of passengers. The passenger traffic has increased with astonishing rapidity during the last eighteen years. Our smaller merchants can go abroad when mail steamers are plenty, and make their own purchases and sales, without paying heavy commissions and high prices to middlemen; do their business on less capital; and thus benefit themselves and reduce the prices to our consumers. Compared with sailing vessels, these few mail steamers become the forerunners of trade and commerce, and create an immense service for the sail. They enable us to save large sums of interest or advances on merchandise consigned, and give to us quick returns from the products which we ship abroad. This has long been evident to Great Britain, and she has acted liberally on the suggestion. So desirable is the service for the general prosperity of her people, that she expends annually for her foreign steam mails nearly six millions of dollars, while they do not return to the treasury much above three. She regards the expenditure as she does that for the navy and the army, a necessity for the public preservation and prosperity.
As regards the lines that we now have, they are among the noblest in the world. For aggregate comfort, convenience, safety, speed, and cheapness, they are not equalled by the most famous British lines. More luxurious tables, more neatness, cleanliness, and roominess, more general comforts than have always been characteristic of our Havre, Liverpool, and California lines, can not be found in the world. The only objection to them is, that the service is not sufficient; that the trips are not frequent enough; and that the companies are not enabled to sustain a larger steam marine which would proportionally cheapen the service, and accommodate more persons and a much larger class of interests. Our experiences of the benefits of existing lines, limited as those lines are, present an unanswerable argument for the desirableness and necessity of a liberal steam postal system, and a large and judicious extension of the present service. (See views of Senate Committee, 1852, [Paper E].)
SECTION III.
THE CAPABILITIES OF OCEAN STEAM.
THE COMMERCIAL CAPABILITIES OF OCEAN STEAM: STEAM MAILS ARRIVE AND DEPART AT ABSOLUTELY FIXED PERIODS: UNCERTAINTY IS HAZARDOUS AND COSTLY: SUBSIDIZED STEAMERS GIVE A NECESSARILY HIGH SPEED TO THE MAILS: MONEY CAN NOT AFFORD TO LIE UPON THE OCEAN FOR WEEKS: COMPARED WITH SAIL: STEAMERS TRANSPORT CERTAIN CLASSES OF FREIGHT: THE HAVRE AND THE CUNARD LINES: THE CUNARD PROPELLERS: STEAMERS CAN AFFORD TO TRANSPORT EXPRESS PACKAGES AND GOODS: GOODS TAKEN ONLY TO FILL UP: WHY PROPELLERS ARE CHEAPER IN SOME CASES: STEAM IN SOME CASES CHEAPER THAN THE WIND: AN ESTIMATE: THE PROPELLER FOR COASTING: STEAM ON ITS OWN RECEIPTS HAS NOT SUCCEEDED ON THE OCEAN: MARINE AND FLUVIAL NAVIGATION COMPARED: MOST FREIGHTS NOT TRANSPORTABLE BY STEAM ON ANY CONDITIONS: AUXILIARY FREIGHTING AND EMIGRANT PROPELLERS: LAWS OF TRANSPORT: RAPID MAILS AND LEISURE TRANSPORT OF FREIGHT THE LAW OF NATURE: THE PRICE OF COALS RAPIDLY INCREASING: ANTICIPATED IMPROVEMENTS AND CHEAPENING IN MARINE PROPULSION NOT REALIZED.
Believing that no further arguments or facts are necessary to show that a rapid steam mail marine is desirable and essential to the successful government of the country, to our foreign commerce, and to the growth of individual interests and a general prosperity of the people, I shall now make some few inquiries concerning the Commercial Capabilities of steam, as the most effective agent for the rapid transit of the ocean, and the most expensive agent for the transport of goods. After this, it will be necessary to examine into the Cost of Steam, as a subject closely allied to its general capabilities.
Whatever may be said of the wind as a cheap agent of locomotion, this much may be safely predicated of steam vessels for the mails; that their time of departure and arrival has an absolute fixity which is attainable by no other means, and which is highly conducive to the best interests of all those for whom commerce is conducted. No reasoning is necessary to show to the man of business, or even to the pleasure-seeker, the importance of approximate certainty as to the time when the mail leaves and when he can receive an answer to his dispatches. He may not be able to give clearly philosophic reasons for it; yet he feels the necessity in his business; and it certainly relieves him of many painful doubts, if nothing more. Uncertainty in commercial operations is always hazardous and costly to the great mass of the people, who as a general thing pay more for whatever they get, on the principle that we seldom take a venture in an uncertain thing unless it holds out inducements of large profit, or unless we get a high price for guarantying it. So in commercial correspondence, which constitutes the great bulk of the ocean mails. Let uncertainty prevail for but three or four days beyond the time when we should have news from abroad, and every body is in doubt, every body speculates, and in the end every body is injured.
Nor is this certainty in the time of arrival and departure of the mails more desirable than their speed. The common sense of the world has settled down upon the necessity of rapid mails; and all of the ingenuity of the age is now taxed to its very highest to secure more speed in the transmission of intelligence. Many interests demand it. Money, which represents labor, is continually lent and borrowed in bills of exchange, acceptances, deposits, and in actual cash sent across the seas. The length of time for passing the bills and correspondence, or the specie itself, thus becomes an exceedingly important item to those who are to use them, and consequently to the ultimate consumer for whom they are conducting the commercial transaction. What community would to-day tolerate the idea of sending three millions of dollars per week, and five millions of credits between England and the United States on a sailing ship of whatever quality, with the probability of keeping it lying unproductive on the ocean for thirty days? Extend this to weekly shipments of the same amounts, and have at one time on the waters between the two countries twelve million dollars in specie and twenty in credits, tossing about the ocean, unproductive and unsafe, and entailing all of the evils incident to the uncertainty as to the time when it will arrive. But if this is not sufficient, extend the inquiry to South-America, and China, and India, and see how enormous and useless a waste of money and interest is incurred in the many millions which by sailing vessels and slow steamers is fruitlessly gilding the ocean for months. Money is too valuable and interest too high to keep so many millions of it locked up from the world. At two and three per cent a month, the nation, or, what is the same thing, its commercial and mercantile classes, as representing the producing, would soon become bankrupt.
The only avoidance of these evident evils is in a rapid transmission of the mails, specie, and passengers. And herein consists the chief value of the rapid ocean steamer. It is an important case which the Telegraph, with all of its benefits, can never reach. It can never transmit specie; neither the evidences of debt nor of property. The voluminous mails, with all of their tedious details, upon which such transactions depend, must go and come on steamers, and on steamers only. They have the certainty, which will satisfy men and prevent speculation, gambling, and imposition; they have the speed, which shortens credit, keeps specie alway in active use, and enables commercial men to know, meet, and supply the wants of the world before they become costly or crushing; and they give a rapid and comfortable transit to passengers, who can thus look after their business, and save much to themselves and to the producer and consumer. Compared with sailing vessels their efficiency is really wondrous. Foreign correspondence was formerly very limited, and the interchange of interests, feelings, and opinions was slow and tedious. Each nation depended solely on itself; and instead of the brotherhood now prevailing, communicated through the costly channels of war, by messages of the cannon, and in powerful, hostile fleets. But the foreign correspondence of the world is really enormous, and rapidly increasing, since the introduction of ocean steamers; and no one will say that they have had a small share in producing that fraternal international spirit which is now so widely manifested in Peace Congresses, Congresses of the Five Powers, explanations, concessions, and amicable adjustments of difficulties. The peaceful influences and the civilization of the times are but another comment on the capabilities of steam.