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Show The foolishness of the Nation's suggestion has been a thousand times exposed, because if the editor of the Nation today received a free gift of five as fine ships as sail the seas, there is no trade in which he could put these ships and have them pay running expenses. And when the Nation speaks of the ships that run on the Great Lakes it would be well for it to explain how leng these ships would continue in that trade if Canada had the 'right to trade between our ports, and could put subsidized lines in competition with the American lines.- The last suggestion of the Nation, that there will never be any subsidy, simply means that our flag in the future will be as it has been in the past, a stranger to the ocean, because the means suggested suggest-ed through which to build up the merchant marine are altogether impotent to accomplish the purpose. This Nation is not going to give up its tariff. No nation that ever did failed to go down close to bankruptcy, except Great Britain, and Great Britain succeeded simply because it had originally its mines and factories close to its ports, more ships than all the other nations on the earth, more machinery than any other country, and more money with which to operate. She built all that up under a shameless protective tariff. Then she had colonies all around the earth. Then she declared that absolute free trade was the only scientific way for the nations to deal with each other, with the result that the stranded strand-ed all her colonies, that she, on two or three occasions, occa-sions, paralyzed the United States and broke all the countries of southern Europe. ' In the meantime she, with her subsidies, drove our first steam lines from the sea, she kept her ships running at a loss to South America for years, supplemented sup-plemented them with cables, assured her merchants that if they would open branch houses that the ships should come to them steadily, and outside nations have had no more chance to compete with her than a man would have to compete with a railroad by running four-horse coaches in opposition. &B0UT SHIP SUBSIDIES. The ship subsidy bill was killed or withdrawn in the last Congress. The New York Nation discusses the subject from an English standpoint. We say "English" because be-cause the Nation has always insisted that the means through which England has built up her tremendous merchant marine is something which this Nation has no business to try. The Nation wants free trade, which would involve in-volve the reduction of wages in this country to the British level, which would involve much more it. would close down thousands of industrial concerns con-cerns and open all our ports to the receipt of foreign for-eign goods, taanufactured by men who receive only ' from one-third to one-half what is paid American workingmen. , And then in its jeering way it declares that the United States cannot build ships comparable with English ships, and finally it discusses the matter in these words : "One distinction we must get clearly into our minds. Do we want merely to build ships, or to own and sail them! Is it a bolstered shipbuilding . Industry that we desire, making a lot of work but turning out an unserviceable product, or is it the possession of fleets of vessels able to engage in foreign for-eign trade profitably t If the latter is the object and it is surely the only reasonable one we might approach it by repealing our navigation laws and allowing American ship masters to purchase vessels built in foreign yards, as do the German lines. This, at the same time, would put our domestic industry on its mettle; and there can be no doubt that if it got rid of its tariff handicap, and went on to stand- ' ardize shipbuilding, like the concerns on the great lakes, competition need not be dreaded. In any case it is time we gav,e up lying helplessly on our backs and crying to Washington to give us a ship subsidy. We shan't get it; and if we really desire American merchant marine, the thing to do is to set American skill to work to build, or buy, and sail it." In reply to that it is only necessary to say that we do want to build ships and to own and to sail them. We want a great many tens of thousands of people working in otir shipyards, and we do not want them to turn out "an unserviceable product," because, this country has always built ships quite the equal of any other when on a basis equal to tht given by other countries. , Great Britain not only pays subsidies, the amount of which for the last forty years would buy an empire, but it remits port charges and taxes its great lines merely on their net products. More than that within the last year it has supplied one company com-pany that is sixty years old with the money necessary neces-sary to build two ships, simply that it might be said that Great Britain had the largest and fastest steam ships in the world. . The Nation repeats that old gag about repealing repeal-ing the navigation laws and allowing American shipmasters to purchase ships built in foreign yards, as do the German lines. The German lines do not purchase any more ships. They used to purchase them prior to 1880, but when Germany got her indemnity from France she went to building her own ships and she subsidized subsi-dized her foreign ships and backed those foreign Shin "with Jwr niexchantatrading in foreign lands, . |