“While this poison of decay has been eating into our vitals the possibilities of the country in nearly every other industry have reached a plane of development beyond the dreams of the most enthusiastic theorizers. We have spread out in every direction and the promise of the future beggars imaginations attuned even to the key of our present and past development. We have a timber area of 560,000,000 acres, and across our Canadian border there are 900,000,000 more acres; in coal and iron production we are approaching the Old World.
| 1842. | 1879. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Coal— | Tons. | Tons. | |
| Great Britain | 35,000,000 | 135,000,000 | |
| United States | 2,000,000 | 60,000,000 | |
| Iron— | |||
| Great Britain | 2,250,000 | 6,300,000 | |
| United States | 564,000 | 2,742,000 | |
During these thirty-seven years the relative increase has been in coal 300 to 2,900 per cent., in iron 200 to 400 per cent., and all in our favor. But this is not enough, for England, with a coal area less than either Pennsylvania or Kentucky, has coaling stations in every part of the world and our steamers cannot reach our California ports without the consent of the English producers. Even if electricity takes the place of steam it must be many years before the coal demand will cease, and to-day, of the 36,000,000 tons of coal required by the steamers of the world, three-fourths of it is obtained from Great Britain.
“It is unnecessary to wire-draw statistics, but it may, as a last word, be interesting to show, with all our development, the nationality and increase of tonnage entering our ports since 1856:—
| Country. | Increase. | Decrease. |
|---|---|---|
| England | 6,977,163 | |
| Germany | 922,903 | |
| Norway and Sweden | 1,214,008 | |
| Italy | 596,907 | |
| France | 208,412 | |
| Spain | 164,683 | |
| Austria | 226,277 | |
| Belgium | 204,872 | |
| Russia | 104,009 | |
| United States | 65,901 |
“This,” writes Lindsay, “is surely not decadence, but defeat in a far nobler conflict than the wars for maritime supremacy between Rome and Carthage, consisting as it did in the struggle between the skill and industry of the people of two great nations.”
We have thus quoted the facts gathered from a source which has been endorsed by the higher naval authorities. Some reader will probably ask, “What relation have these facts to American politics?” We answer that the remedies proposed constitute political questions on which the great parties are very apt to divide. They have thus divided in the past, and parties have turned “about face” on similar questions. Just now the Democratic party inclines to “free ships” and hostility to subsidies—while the Republican party as a rule favors subsidies. Lieutenant Kelley summarized his proposed remedies in the two words: “free ships.”
Mr. Blaine would solve the problem by bounties, for this purpose enacting a general law that should ignore individuals and enforce a policy. His scheme provides that any man or company of men who will build in an American yard, with American material, by American mechanics, a steamship of 3,000 tons and sail her from any port of the United States to any foreign port, he or they shall receive for a monthly line a mail allowance of $25 per mile per annum for the sailing distance between the two ports; for a semi-monthly line $45 per mile, and for a weekly line $75 per mile. Should the steamer exceed three thousand tons, a small advance on these rates might be allowed; if less, a corresponding reduction, keeping three thousand as the average and standard. Other reformers propose a bounty to be given by the Government to the shipbuilder, so as to make the price of an American vessel the same as that of a foreign bought, equal, but presumably cheaper, ship.
Mr. Blaine represents the growing Republican view, but the actual party views can only be ascertained when bills covering the subject come up for consideration.