The Merchant Marine.—In order that a country may build up a profitable foreign trade it should have vessels of its own in which to carry exports and imports. Trade that depends entirely upon the use of foreign vessels is insecure, because the outbreak of war between two or more foreign countries may keep these ships at home. So the development of American maritime commerce has seemed to make desirable the maintenance of a merchant fleet under the American flag. |Early American shipping.| Since the Revolution there has always been such a fleet; sometimes it has been large, but more often it has been small.[[168]] After 1915, when the German submarine campaign resulted in the wholesale sinking of British and French merchant vessels, the demand for ships became acute. |The building of ships during the war.| American shipyards once more grew busy and expanded rapidly. In 1916, moreover, Congress passed a Shipping Act, designed to foster the growth of the merchant marine, and when the United States entered the war in 1917 an Emergency Fleet Corporation was created to build a great flotilla of vessels at the public cost and a Shipping Board to operate them. The work was not completed when the war came to an end, nevertheless several hundred vessels were added to the list of America’s ocean carriers. As a result of these efforts the merchant marine of the United States is once more the second largest in the world; but the problem now is to keep these ships busy. Foreign trade began to fall off after the American forces had been brought back from Europe and hundreds of the new ships have remained tied up in American harbors. Some have been sold to private companies; others have been operated by private companies under lease; still others are being operated directly by the Shipping Board.[[169]]
The Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce.—The progress of foreign commerce depends not only upon ships and ports but upon the possession of accurate knowledge concerning the course of markets and prices abroad. Data on such matters are gathered, as has been pointed out, by the American consular service. |Statistics of trade—their value.| This is supplemented, however, by statistics collected for the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce at Washington, an office which is maintained to provide American business men with accurate and up-to-date information concerning every branch of foreign commerce. The bureau collects and translates the tariff laws of foreign countries, makes investigations into the cost of producing goods both in America and abroad, and studies all possible methods of making American foreign trade more profitable. It affords a good illustration of the way in which the government, without itself engaging in trade, may assist the private enterprises of the people.
Future of Foreign Commerce.—Ocean transportation has made enormous strides forward during the past twenty years. |What new inventions may do for trade.| Wireless communication now enables ships to keep in touch with each other and with the shore, thus making navigation safer. It has been demonstrated by naval experiments that great ships can be steered and their machinery controlled by radio apparatus in the hands of men several hundred miles away. Then there is the airship and the airplane, in both of which it has been shown to be possible to cross the Atlantic far above the surface without a stop. It seems to be beyond doubt that air carriers will, even within our own generation, be used to carry mail overseas as they are now being used on land, and probably passengers as well. The day may come when goods, also, will be ferried through the air from continent to continent in less than a single day. The march of invention in this as in other fields is so rapid that no one can tell today what the morrow may bring forth.[[170]] But of one thing we may be hopeful: that even as the era of rail transportation served to bring all parts of the country into more intimate relation, so may it come to pass that the world of the future will find all its distant parts brought into more friendly contact by the development of these twentieth-century miracles of rapid transit.
Commerce and Peace.—Commerce between countries helps to promote international good-feeling and friendship. It is true that commercial rivalries have sometimes inspired international jealousy and have even paved the way to war; but legitimate trade, honestly carried on between nations, is far more likely to prove a means of drawing them together. From their commercial intercourse nations derive mutual profit. By trading with one another they learn to understand each other. Isolation makes for suspicion and war. World commerce makes for peace.
General References
H. G. Selfridge, The Romance of Commerce, pp. 230-239; 318-349;
C. F. Carter, When Railroads Were New, pp. 33-74;
E. R. Johnson and F. W. Van Metre, Principles of Railroad Transportation, pp. 492-534;
Clive Day, A History of Commerce, pp. 485-517; 564-579;
E. R. Johnson, American Railway Transportation, 2d ed., pp. 52-68; 367-385;