The beneficiaries of protection are the few: its victims are the many.
Thus the favored few get all the benefits of protection and escape all its evils; while the unprivileged many bear all of its evils and reap none of its benefits.
We are told that Great Britain and Germany subsidize their merchant marine and that therefore our government must do it. The argument would be contemptible even if the facts supported it, but that is not the case. Great Britain does not subsidize her merchant marine nor does Germany do so. Great Britain pays certain lines for specific mail service and colonial service; nothing more. Germany does likewise. Neither country hires merchants to go to sea about their own business.
There is no more statesmanship in hiring a mariner to engage in private business between New York and Liverpool than there would be in hiring John Wanamaker to establish another branch of his mercantile business in San Francisco or Terra Del Fuego. Such legislation as that is Privilege run mad.
When Napoleon encouraged the beet sugar industry in France by bounties he may have done a wise thing. France was under his despotic control; commerce with the world was cut off; internal development became the law of self-preservation.
But no imperial sceptre rules the ocean. There can be no monopoly of the use of her myriad highways. Amid her vast areas, natural law mocks the puny contrivances of men. Competition is free. The ocean race is to the swift; the battle is to the strong. Whoever can do the work, do it quickest, cheapest, surest, best, will do it—American bounties to the contrary notwithstanding.
Take off the rusty fetters which bind the limbs of the American seaman and he will need no bounty. Give him a fair start, an open course, and he will outrun the world. Keep the chains on him—and he will never win!
Suppose you give bounties to the shipper, then what? To the extent of the bounty he will do business—no further. And you will soon find that you have attracted mercenary corporations who do business for the bounty, the whole bounty, and nothing but the bounty.
We tried this ship subsidy business once before—from 1867 to 1877. What was the result? Scandals and failure. Congress took more than six and a half million dollars of the people’s money, gave it to greedy corporations and got nothing in return save a fit of disappointment and disgust which lasted the country till the advent of Hanna.
We earnestly hope that President Roosevelt will look into the record of the former subsidy experiment before he ever signs a bill of like character.