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a3 OM A R I N E UPBUILDING OUR MERCHANT MARINE.* By Col. J. J. Sullivan. In this age of competitive strife, each one, if he would suc- ceed, must stick to his trade. My business is banking and J cannot be expected to have more than an incidental acquaint- anceship with shipping. It so happens, however, that in this city, where 80 per cent of the active tonnage of the great lakes is controlled, bankers have considerable to do with ship build- ing. The latter-day. members of the great fleet of vessels on the great lakes, which exceeds in ton- nage the merchant fleets. of.. any other nation except Great Britain and Germany, have been built large- ty upon bonds. In- deed it is a common practice for a ship to be bonded for half its value, the trust com- pany having a lien upon the entire ship and its insurance as a security "for. the money advanced to the. owners. These bonds pay 5 per cent and are to all practi- cal purposes as good as government bonds. Why are they. sor. Because the govern-. ment has guaranteed under the coastwise laws the integrity of the trade in which they ply. The: staple business of the great lakes, when this great fleet of freight car- riers is considered, is the transportation of iron ore. More than three-fourths of all the iron that is made in this country--and this country is the greatest iron making country in the world --is made from the ores of the Lake Su- perior region. Practically every pound of that ore is, and must always be, transported to the furnaces of Ohio and Pennsylvania by water. These deposits are wholly with- in American territory and, therefore, the trade is exclusive- ly geserved to the American. ship. It' is a trade, too, that must grow with the growth of the country, and while there may come an occasional year of depression, the scale must be normally an ascending one. . Shipping and ship build- ing on the great lakes, therefore, will continue to be a safe and wholesome business so long as the nation's laws concern- ing the coastwise trade remain unchanged. There is no ques- tion but that they will remain so, of course. The conclusion is perfectly natural that if protection has done this for the shipping of the great lakes why may it not do likewise for shipping on the high seas? I have no remedies to advance to you, gentlemen, for any condition that may exist in the over-sea carriage of our products--only a few thoughts. This question of shipping does not appeal to me as a party *Address delivered before Merchant Marine Commission in Cleveland, COL. J. J. SULLIVAN. R Ew I BE. W --_--------_--_ measure and I hope that politics will be eliminated from it altogether. Measures which have for their aim the upbuild- ing of the industries of the country appeal very widely to the great body of citizens, regardless of party affiliations, and are really supported by the citizens in general regardless of political ties. This is the temper in which I think the question of the revival of our shipping should be approached and I hope this commission will be favored with advices from men in all par- ties and all walks of life. The question is a national one and should be nationally viewed. This country has grown great in- dustrially because we have moved as a unit to,.make 1%. so. It might be said_ that every single industry within our national jurisdiction has. re- ceived the concerted aid of the whole na- tion--e very industry save shipping. How- ever small the indi- vidual industry may have: been, it has re- ceived the aid of 70,- 000,0c0 of people. Perhaps some of these industries have re- ceived more aid than they needed. [| am not prepared to say, but perhaps it is high time to take the swaddling clothes off some of them; but ] am qurtte sure from some figures in my 'posses~ sion, and _ doubtless the common. property OL you 'all, that it 1s high time to put the' swaddling clothes' on shipping. When a man is full grown he does not need these sort of garments, but when he is an infant he needs them more than he needs any- thing else. We are apt to point to the railroads as the great developing agencies of the United States, and so they have been; but have not the railroads been the recipient of enormous aids from the general government? Are not these enormous grants of land to the railroads in the nature of subsidies? Moreover, every business man knows what a blessing it is to have a fixed in- come which cannot be materially disturbed by the vicissitudes of business. Such an income have the railroads in the postal subsidies. During the past seven years the government of the United States has appropriated $238,776,000 for railway mail carriage--and that without subjecting the railroads to the necessity of expending a single penny for railway car equip- ment, for the government has built the mail cars during the past seven years at a cost of over $33,000,000. In contrast with these figures there is a rather pitiful sum of $998,000 earned by American steamers for American ocean mail carriage. Of course, the government spent more money than this for ocean carriage of the American mails, but there were not enough