An important current issue is the increase of the Navy and the improvement of the Merchant Marine, and to these questions the National Administration has latterly given attention. The New York Herald has given much editorial ability and research to the advocacy of an immediate change for the better in these respects, and in its issue of March 10th, 1882, gave the proceedings of an important meeting of the members of the United States Naval Institute held at Annapolis the day before, on which occasion a prize essay on the subject—“Our Merchant Marine; the Cause of its Decline and the Means to be Taken for its Revival,” was read. The subject was chosen nearly a year ago, because it was the belief of the members of the institute that a navy cannot exist without a merchant marine. The naval institute was organized in 1873 for the advancement of professional and scientific knowledge in the navy. It has on its roll 500 members, principally naval officers, and its proceedings are published quarterly. Rear Admiral C. R. P. Rodgers is president; Captain J. M. Ramsay, vice president; Lieutenant Commander C. M. Thomas, secretary; Lieutenant Murdock, corresponding secretary, and Paymaster R. W. Allen, treasurer. There were eleven competitors for the prize, which is of $100, and a gold medal valued at $50. The judges were Messrs. Hamilton Fish, A. A. Low and J. D. Jones. They awarded the prize to Lieutenant J. D. J. Kelley, U. S. N., whose motto was “Nil Clarius Æquore,” and designated Master C. T. Calkins, U. S. N., whose motto was “Mais il faut cultiver notre jardin” as next in the order of merit, and further mentioned the essays of Lieutenant R. Wainwright, United States Navy, whose motto was “Causa latet, vis est notissima,” and Lieutenant Commander J. E. Chadwick, United States Navy, whose motto was “Spes Meliora,” as worthy of honorable mention, without being entirely agreed as to their comparative merits.
STRIKING PASSAGES FROM THE PRIZE ESSAY.
From Lieut. Kelley’s prize essay many valuable facts can be gathered, and such of these as contain information of permanent value we quote:
“So far as commerce influences this country has a vital interest in the carrying trade, let theorists befog the cool air as they may. Every dollar paid for freight imported or exported in American vessels accrues to American labor and capital, and the enterprise is as much a productive industry as the raising of wheat, the spinning of fibre or the smelting of ore. Had the acquired, the ‘full’ trade of 1860 been maintained without increase $80,000,000 would have been added last year to the national wealth, and the loss from diverted shipbuilding would have swelled the sum to a total of $100,000,000.
“Our surplus products must find foreign markets, and to retain them ships controlled by and employed in exclusively American interests are essential instrumentalities. Whatever tends to stimulate competition and to prevent combination benefits the producer, and as the prices abroad establish values here, the barter we obtain for the despised one tenth of exports—$665,000,000 in 1880—determines the profit or loss of the remainder in the home market. During the last fiscal year 11,500,000 gross tons of grain, oil, cotton, tobacco, precious metals, &c., were exported from the United States, and this exportation increases at the rate of 1,500,000 tons annually; 3,800,000 tons of goods are imported, or in all about 15,000,000 tons constitute the existing commerce of this country.
“If only one-half of the business of carrying our enormous wealth of surplus products could be secured for American ships, our tonnage would be instantly doubled, and we would have a greater fleet engaged in a foreign trade, legitimately our own, than Great Britain has to-day. The United States makes to the ocean carrying trade its most valuable contribution, no other nation giving to commerce so many bulky tons of commodities to be transported those long voyages which in every age have been so eagerly coveted by marine peoples. Of the 17,000 ships which enter and clear at American ports every year, 4,600 seek a cargo empty and but 2,000 sail without obtaining it.
“Ships are profitable abroad and can be made profitable here, and in truth during the last thirty years no other branch of industry has made such progress as the carrying trade. To establish this there are four points of comparison—commerce, railways, shipping tonnage and carrying power of the world, limited to the years between 1850 and 1880:—
| 1850. | 1880. | Increase Per Cent. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commerce of all nations | $4,280,000,000 | $14,405,000,000 | 240 |
| Railways (miles open) | 44,400 | 222,600 | 398 |
| Shipping tonnage | 6,905,000 | 18,720,000 | 171 |
| Carrying tonnage | 8,464,000 | 34,280,060 | 304 |
“In 1850, therefore, for every $5,000,000 of international commerce there were fifty-four miles of railway and a maritime carrying power of 9,900 tons; and in 1880 the respective ratios had risen to seventy-seven miles and 12,000 tons; this has saved one-fourth freight and brought producer and consumers into such contact that we no longer hear “of the earth’s products being wasted, of wheat rotting in La Mancha, wool being used to mend wads and sheep being burned for fuel in the Argentine Republic.” England has mainly profited by this enormous development, the shipping of the United Kingdom earning $300,000,000 yearly, and employing 200,000 seamen, whose industry is therefore equivalent to £300 per man, as compared with £190 for each of the factory operatives. The freight earned by all flags for sea-borne merchandise is $500,000,000, or about 8 per cent. of the value transported. Hence the toll which all nations pay to England for the carrying trade is equal to 4 per cent. (nearly) of the exported values of the earth’s products and manufactures; and pessimists who declare that ship owners are losing money or making small profits must be wrong, for the merchant marine is expanding every year.
“The maximum tonnage of this country at any time registered in the foreign trade was in 1861, and then amounted to 5,539,813 tons; Great Britain in the same year owning 5,895,369 tons, and all the other nations 5,800,767 tons. Between 1855 and 1860 over 1,300,000 American tons in excess of the country’s needs were employed by foreigners in trades with which we had no legitimate connection save as carriers. In 1851 our registered steamships had grown from the 16,000 tons of 1848 to 63,920 tons—almost equal to the 65,920 tons of England, and in 1855 this had increased to 115,000 tons and reached a maximum, for in 1862 we had 1,000 tons less. In 1855 we built 388 vessels, in 1856 306 vessels and in 1880 26 vessels—all for the foreign trade. The total tonnage which entered our ports in 1856 from abroad amounted to 4,464,038, of which American built ships constituted 3,194,375 tons, and all others but 1,259,762 tons. In 1880 there entered from abroad 15,240,534 tons, of which 3,128,374 tons were American and 12,112,000 were foreign—that is, in a ratio of seventy-five to twenty-five, or actually 65,901 tons less than when we were twenty-four years younger as a nation. The grain fleet sailing last year from the port of New York numbered 2,897 vessels, of which 1,822 were sailing vessels carrying 59,822,033 bushels, and 1,075 were steamers laden with 42,426,533 bushels, and among all these there were but seventy-four American sailing vessels and not one American steamer.