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Show The greatest and uia.it powerful steamship steam-ship lines vie with each other for our trade. The largest, the swiftest, the safest and the most luxurious ships that are built are for the carrying of the trade In merchandise, passengers, specie and mails from and to the United States. But 8 per cent of our foreign trade is carried in American ships. Foreign For-eign ships carry 92 per cent. This carrying is worth fully $200,000,000 each year. All but 8 per cent of it goes out of the pockets of American producers and consumers for paying foreigners for doing our foreign carrying. carry-ing. Not only does it go out of our people's pockets, but it goes out of the country. It goes abroad and is there used to pay for the building and running run-ning of foreign ships. It gives the employment em-ployment in fnroie, H,t u ing of our foriegn commerce creates. People ask, Why is this? The answer an-swer is simple. Foreign ships are built .more cheaply than American ships. This, however, is a disadvantage disadvan-tage that could in time be overcome if the shipbuilding industry were put on a basis of permanency. If a steady and large , demand were created for our ships very soon the cost of their construction con-struction would be reduced to the level of foreign prices. It is the unsteadiness, unsteadi-ness, the irregularity, and the uncertainty uncer-tainty of employment in American shipyards that keeps the cost of American Amer-ican ships from 20 to 25 per cent higher high-er than the cost of foreign built ships. Better food and more of it is given on American than on foreign ships. This also creates a disadvantage which the American ship cannot easily overcome. Then again wages on shipboard are much higher under the American than under foreign flags. In the cases of officers the wage3 on American ships are on the average twice as high as they are on foreign ships. Worse than all this, however, foreign for-eign governments pay their mcrAant ships great subsidies and bounties. Great Britain spends about $6,000,660 a year in this-way; France spends over - $7,000,000 a year. Germany, Italy. Spain, Russia, Austria and Japan all give large subsidies to their ships. In all the subsidies and bounties paid by foreign governments to their ships amount to more than $26,000,000 each year. Unaided American ships, it must be clear, cannot profitably compete with foreign ships under the conditions above described. That is why it Is that foreign ships have driven American Amer-ican ships from off the seas. The Republican Re-publican party, recognizing the unequal un-equal conditions which confront American ships in the foreign trade, Is committed to a policy of subsidizing American ships in that trade. The amount of the subsidy proposed is barely enough to enable American ships to compete on terms of equality with foreign ships. This bill Democrats have singled out for denunciation in their national platform. They "oppose the accumulation accumu-lation of a surplus to be squandered in such bare-faced frauds upon the taxpayers tax-payers as the Shipping Subsidy bill, which under the false pretense of pros-oering pros-oering American ship-building, would put unearned millions into the pockets of favorite contributors to the Republican Repub-lican campaign fund." The alternative of the shipping subsidy bill is to keep on paying nearly $200,000,000 a year to .foreign ship owners whose governments govern-ments in paying them subsidies enable en-able them to prevent American ships from competing. Rather than have our government pay a subsidy to American ships the Democrats wou d prefer to have our people send nearly $200 000 000 out of the country each year to build and sustain foreign ships. In their platform the Democrats especially es-pecially condemn the ill-concealed Republican alliance with England." When we remember that Democracy s platform denunciation of the Shipping Subsidy bill will nowhere be received with such favor and gratitude as in Great Britain, whose command of the sea and especially of American foreign carrying the Democrats would perpetual" perpet-ual" and which present British monopoly mon-opoly the passage of that bill would do much to destroy, the insincerity and the secret pro-British leanings of the Democrats are clearly dis- Not 'a word have the Democrats to utter in behalf of a policy that would cause the building of the ships our JoreTgn commerce employs out of American material and with American fabor instead of, as now, their construction con-struction out of foreign materials by foreign labor in other countries. No noltcy is suggested by them-they Pm X denounce the Republican pol cy would substitute American for Bri ish and other foreign ships m our foreign trade. Having no plan of their foreign " f building up our -fip-lsn) ZVwZ our commerce, the Dem-for Dem-for Carrying question at -aUies of England. DEMOCRACYONJSHIPPINO. ' Bas No Plan by Which to Build Cp-Can Cp-Can Only Tear Down. The platform utterance of the Dem-' Dem-' ocratic party regarding American .hipping is a clear Index ol the inber ent inability of that P0. struct. It seems only to be able tc op pose and denounce the onsuctive policies of its progressive political op P"he1ore.gn commerce of tUnlted States 1. regarded the world over the most important of all. 1 .nnntrv come the flne.t foreign ships. |