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24 SECRETARY STKAUS ON OUR MERCHANT MARINE. Secretary Straus, of the Department of Commerce and Labor, makes some. pertinent observations in his annual re- port concerning the condition of our merchant marine as follows: "On June 30, 1907, the total document- ed merchant shipping of the United States comprised 24,911 vessels, of 6,938,- 794 gross tons, the largest tonnage in our history. In volume, merchant ship- ping under the American flag is sur- passed only by merchant shipping under the British flag. In its types and uses, however, our shipping differs radically -from the shipping of other maritime na- tions. It is almost wholly devoted to do- mestic transportation, and relatively is far below our strength as a naval power. Over one-third of our tonnage is oper- ated on the great lakes, where it is cut off from the effective foreign competi- tion, while the trade of our many rivers and canal systems employs another con- siderable portion, mainly of light draught vessels. "By comparison with our rank in any other of the great divisions of industrial and commercial endeavor, the 'position of the United States as an ocean carry- ing power is insignificant. It is hum- ble by comparison with the commercial sea power of other leading nations, with which in nearly every other respect we -are classed. Even in the discharge of ordinary functions of government we have put ourselves under the protection of foreign flags. Not many months ago it became necessary to dispatch a small force of American troops to Cuba; they were sent under the British flag. More recently it was decided to transfer a powerful fleet of warships from the At- lantic to the -Pacific,.and the: coal for this fleet is under the shelter of for- eign flags, a situation which could not be afforded in actual warfare. Our mails to the republics of South Amer- ica are carried almost. entirely in for- eign steamers, and to Australia and New Zealand they are now entirely so carried. I have alluded to the fact that in the per- formance of its plain duties the federal government had to resort to the for-| eign agencies and foreign protection. There is not today another first class power in a similar position. There is not another, I believe, which if it found itself in that position would allow such conditions to continue longer than until by sufficient expenditure they could be corrected in the shortest possible time. Such expenditures would be as clearly for public purposes as appropriations for the army, the navy, the Panama canal, _ or the postal system. "From the messages of their presi- dents and the reports of their heads of them at least in the foreign trade. The Marine REVIEW departments for many years past the American people have become familiar with the trifling share of American ves- sels in our own foreign carrying trade and with the fact that an American steamship is almost never seen in the world's seaports outside the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. Last year, for example, only 10.6 per cent of our com- bined exports and imports were carried in American ships; our vessels registered for foreign trade aggregated only 871,- 146 gross tons, a fleet equaled in ton- nage and greatly exceeded in efficiency by the fleet of one great foreign ship~ ping corporation, while any one of sev- eral foreign corporations owns more ocean-going foreign steam tonnage than the entire amount of such tonnage regis- tered under the. American flag. "The situation is not satisfactory, and for some years past it has been the sub- ject of discussion, which unfortunately has not ended in action. For many years it was entirely in its internal de- velopment that there was no-surplus to devote to expansion of national trade and influence outside our coast lines. It is equally true that such is no longer the fact. The acquisition of insular ter- ritory, the construction of a powerful navy, and the investment of American capital abroad are all tokens of a tend- ency in national growth which will com- pel our country to become again a sea power, as it was when the republic was only a fringe of states along the Atlantic seaboard. : "Our laws relating to the merchant marine differ in two important respects from the laws of other nations. Practi- cally without.exception the laws of other nations permit their subjects or citizens to buy ships in any market, put them under the national ensign, and employ Our law restricts American registry and the American -flag to vessels built in the United States. That this law is now use- less as a measure of protection to Amer- ican ship builders, so far as vessels for the foreign trade are concerned, it is am- ply demonstrated by the fact that for years we have built practically no such vessels under that law. Millions of American capital have been invested in steamships under foreign flags engaged in trade with the United States. "Every maritime nation of consequence gives direct support in some form from the national treasury to merchant ship- ping. Even Norway has just voted a subsidy for a Norwegian line to Mex- ico, and Great Britain has advanced $13,- 000,000 from her treasury to one cor- poration in order to reassert British primacy on the North Atlantic. They form an amount of support varying among nations, and from time to time with the 1891. same nation, but the principle is as fixed as is the principle by which navies are maintained. The United States adopted the principle in the ocean mail act off Where federal support was ade- quate that act has been successful, and where its sagacious advocates declared at the time the support to be inadequate the act has failed. Three years ago, on recommendation of the president, a spe- cial commission of congress made an ex- haustive examination of the whole sub- ject of the upbuilding of the merchant marine. I do not believe that any fur+ ther investigation is needed. That com- mission decided on a project of support from the federal treasury, based in its essentials on the methods of other mari- time nations. The bill was approved by a majority of both branches of congress, and had the cordial support of the presi- dent and of every department connected with shipping. It failed to become a law through reasons too recent to need re- view. ~ The bill was in substance an ex- tension of the ocean mail act of 1891. Its aim was to provide fleets of su- perior mail steamships available for pub- lic purposes. The expenditures proposed were moderate by any reasonable standard of comparison which may be selécted, and they were guarded by more than the average legislative restrictions on ap- propriations. "I am prepared at this time to rec- ommend a measure that shall insure us superior mail communications with the republics of South America, with Aus- tralia by way of our insular territorieg in the mid-Pacific, and with the Philip- pines by. way of Japan and China. These special political and commercial reasons for the establishment of such! lines of American steamships are so familiar to congress that a statement of them here would be superfluous. Such a measure involves no new principles and no departure from a system already justified 'by our own experience and that of other nations. The compensation pro- vided by the ocean mail act of 1891 is in- adequate to establish American steam- ship lines to the great republics of South America and to the Philippines, Austra- lia and Asia. An amendment to that act increasing the compensation for such services to a rate which would be ef- fective is at the present time the most feasible means of promoting our mer- | chant marine. In my judgment the rate of $4 a statute mile outward bound now provided for 20-knot steamers should also be provided for steamships of 16 knots or over on the routes which I have indicated. "The need of better transportation fa- cilities for passengers between Hawaii and the Pacific coast was impressed upon me during a recent inspection trip to the