The steamer also has to pay light dues and port charges wherever she goes. Many of these are exorbitant and unreasonable. In Havre the "Fulton" and "Arago" must pay nearly twenty-four hundred dollars each on every departure, or they will not be permitted to leave the docks. This is no small item for each steamer on every passage that she makes. At New-York she pays wharfage again. It is not so high, but it is a large item, and requires the cash. Again, there is the great shore establishment which every steam company must maintain. Large docks, and warehouses, and coaling arrangements, staging, watchmen, porters, and messengers, and a shore-captain equal to those on board, must all be maintained. The Havre Company pays to the city $4,000 per year for its dock, $1,200 for its annual repairs, and also for sheds, fixtures, etc., extra. They keep also two watchmen at $40 each per month, and other persons in the dock service. The Collins Company have a necessarily very costly dock both in New-York and Liverpool. That in New-York would rent for $15,000 per annum. The one in Liverpool is far more costly. On each they keep a large number of men, with watchmen, gatekeepers, runners, porters, and clerks, and always keep an office open. Beside this, is the whole paraphernalia of the office of the company. There must be offices, clerks, bookkeepers, porters, runners, etc.; a president, treasurer, and secretary; an attorney, agents, and agencies; and newspaper advertising, and a hundred little things which no man can mention. I do not pretend to be able to give an adequate conception of the innumerable items which so swell the large actual working expenses of regularly running steamers. Even the charities of a decently managed company are large. Firemen and engineers become disabled and must be supported; or they are killed in the service of the ship, leaving families which no decent company can disregard. The amount which the West-India Royal Mail Company pays in this way, and which our noble American lines advance to the deserving, are beyond all conception of the mere theorist.

There is another source of loss which prevents, mail packets especially, from paying their expenses on their freight and passenger earnings. The table on all of our steamships has become exceedingly expensive, as it has in our hotels. Perhaps there is more necessity for it on steamers than in the hotels, as passengers are generally sea-sick, and need every delicacy of life to keep them up. The supplies which our fine mail packets carry for this purpose are of almost incredible extent and costliness. No vegetable, fruit, game, or other rarity that can be kept fifteen days in large masses of ice, is neglected; so that the table of every steamer is necessarily both luxurious and expensive. Indeed, it has become so much so, and the price of passage fare has been reduced so low on all of the prominent lines, that as a general rule the steamers are not now making much clear money on their passengers. The expense of keeping passengers was not half so great six years ago, as it is now; and there appears to be no safe means of permanent retrenchment. Nothing has been said of Insurance. This is a most costly item. The Havre Company pay on their two ships, which are worth about $900,000, nine and a half per cent. per annum; and Mr. Collins pays on his three ships, which are worth about $2,200,000, nine per cent. per annum. On the Havre steamers this amounts to $85,500 per year, which is nearly as much as the mail pay; and on the Collins, to $198,000 per annum. And these are among what we call the items of mail steamship expenditure. I do not know the sums paid by the United States Mail, or by the Pacific Mail Companies.

I will here give the views of Messrs. Murray and Atherton on the cost of steam, as they replied to letters of inquiry, which I addressed them Sept. 14, 1857. Mr. Murray says in answer to

Query 2. "It is certainly my impression that ocean steamers of sufficient speed to carry the mails with any thing like regularity, will not pay upon any route with which I am acquainted, without assistance from Government."

Query 5: Can Parliament do better in economy than in her present mail contracts, all things considered? Mr. Murray replies:

"I do not see how Parliament can avoid paying the large subsidies she does for the mail contracts under present circumstances."

Query 4: Is the steamship stock of Great Britain, subsidized or unsubsidized, paying stock, and is there much disposition among capitalists to invest, even in the stock of subsidized companies? He replies:

"I do not think the steamship stock of Great Britain to be in a very nourishing condition: in fact, I know of only one company (the Peninsular and Oriental) in which I should like to invest money."

Mr. Atherton replies to a query regarding the cost of running steamers as follows:

"As to whether the effective performance of high speed mail service is compatible with ordinary mercantile service without government subsidy, I am of opinion that the mutual relation of Speed and Cost in connection with long sea-voyages has never yet been duly appreciated by owners, managers, or agents in charge of steam shipping affairs. An acceleration of steaming speed involves an increase of cost expenses, and a decrease of mercantile earnings, as dependent on freight per ton weight far beyond what is generally supposed."

He further says in reply to Query 9, which is as follows:

Do you know of any disposition in the Government to cut down the ocean mail service, as an unproductive expenditure? He says:

"It is impossible to estimate the national value of an effective mail service throughout the whole globe; the breaking of one link, though apparently of trivial consequence, impairs the whole system. I can not imagine that there is any disposition to impair the completeness of the mail system."

From the foregoing considerations it is palpable that fast ocean steamers can not live on their own receipts. And the same will in most cases hold true of freighting and other steamers of all classes, which depend entirely on steam as their agent of locomotion. Propellers will hardly form an exception to this rule. If the power and the passengers fill the hull, if the coal bill and other expenses increase as rapidly as indicated for mail packets, if engineering improvements do not advance as rapidly as the price of coals, if larger and more cheaply running ships can not get an adequate support in business, if there are the many leakages and expenses indicated, and if all of the expenses of running steamers are continually increasing from year to year rather than diminishing, then we may never expect to see the mail and passenger steamers of the ocean become self-supporting, or less dependent than now, on the fostering care of the Government and the national treasury.[C]

[C] Since this was written, Mr. Drayton has shown me the receipt for this year's taxes on the Havre Company, which are $7,782, the two ships being valued at $500,000 only.



SECTION VI.

HOW CAN MAIL SPEED BE ATTAINED?

THE TRANSMARINE COMPARED WITH THE INLAND POST: OUR PAST SPASMODIC EFFORTS: NEED SOME SYSTEM: FRANCE AROUSED TO STEAM: THE SAILING-SHIP MAIL: THE NAVAL STEAM MAIL: THE PRIVATE ENTERPRISE MAIL: ALL INADEQUATE AND ABANDONED: GREAT BRITAIN'S EXPERIENCE IN ALL THESE METHODS: NAVAL VESSELS CAN NOT BE ADAPTED TO THE MAIL SERVICE: WILL PROPELLERS MEET THE WANTS OF MAIL TRANSPORT, WITH OR WITHOUT SUBSIDY: POPULAR ERRORS REGARDING THE PROPELLER: ITS ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES: BOURNE'S OPINION: ROBERT MURRAY: PROPELLERS TOO OFTEN ON THE DOCKS: THEY ARE VERY DISAGREEABLE PASSENGER VESSELS: IF PROPELLERS RUN MORE CHEAPLY IT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE SLOWER: COMPARED WITH SAIL: UNPROFITABLE STOCK: CROSKEY'S LINE: PROPELLERS LIVE ON CHANCES AND CHARTERS: IRON AS A MATERIAL: SENDING THE MAILS BY SLOW PROPELLERS WOULD BE AN UNFAIR DISCRIMINATION AGAINST SAILING VESSELS: INDIVIDUAL ENTERPRISE CAN NOT SUPPLY MAIL FACILITIES: THEREFORE IT IS THE DUTY OF THE GOVERNMENT.

I have endeavored to prove in the foregoing Section that ocean mail steamers can not live on their own receipts. The question now arises, how can we secure speed for the mails and passengers upon the ocean? With so many expenses and so small an income the fast ocean steamer can not become profitable to even the most thoroughly organized and best administered companies. Much less can it be successfully run by individuals and individual enterprise, which has never so many reliable resources at command as a strong, chartered company. It is true that there are a few prominent transatlantic routes where steamers can run as auxiliary propellers; but the number of them is small, and the speed attained will by no means prove sufficient for postal purposes. The transmarine postal service has been a source of constant annoyance to almost every commercial nation. The overland mails have generally been self-supporting, and it has been a favorite idea that those on the sea should be so also; although there is no just reason why either should be necessarily so any more than in the cases of the Navy and the Army; branches of the service which entail large expenses on the Government, and yet without a moiety of the benefits which directly flow from the postal service to all classes of community. No nation except Great Britain has come up to the issue and faced this question boldly. Almost every other country, not excepting our own, has been hanging back on the subject of the transmarine post, "waiting, like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up," in the improvements of ocean steam navigation, which might obviate the necessity of paying for the ocean transit. But every hope has been disappointed; and instead of realizing these wishes the case has been growing worse year by year, until we are at last compelled to move in the matter, or lose our commerce, our ocean prestige, and sink down contented with a second or third-rate position among commercial nations, and acknowledge ourselves tributary to the far-seeing and far-reaching, and superior policy of our competitors.

The United States have indeed become galvanically aroused now and then, as in 1847 and '8, to a self-protecting and a self-developing system; but as soon as one faint effort has been made, we have, instead of pursuing that effort and developing it fully, relapsed back into our old indifference, and given the whole available talent of the Government either to the administration, or to the everlasting discussion of petty politics. During the time that President Buchanan was Secretary of State, some of our noblest efforts for the establishment of ocean mails were made, with his fullest countenance and aid; but the policy then inaugurated with prospects so hopeful for our commercial future, and which has operated so healthfully ever since, is now half abandoned, or left without notice to take care of itself; until it may be to-day said that we have no steam policy, and run our ocean mails only by expedients. This ever has been and ever will be unfortunate for us, and costly. Individuals and companies build steamers for the accidents of trade, let them lie still a year or two, then pounce upon some disorganized trade, suck the life-blood from it like vampires, and at last leave it, the very corpse of commerce, lying at the public door. All such irregular traffic is injurious to the best interests of the country, destroys all generous and manly competition, and proves most clearly the want of a Government steam mail system. France has been awaiting the issues of time, and under a too high expectation for the improvements of the age, until she finds that unless she inaugurates and sustains a liberal steam policy, and becomes less dependent on foreigners for her mails, she will have the commerce of the world swept from her shores as by a whirlwind of enterprise. She has now become aroused, and has determined to establish three great lines of communication, one with the United States, one with the West-Indies, Central America, the Spanish Main, and Mexico, and one with Brazil and La Plata. She has found, that it will no longer do to abandon her mails to fate, and that in the end it will be far more profitable to pay even largely for good mails than to do without them. Hence, her offer to give to the American, West-Indian, and Brazilian service named an annual subvention of fourteen million Francs, or nearly three million dollars, to be continued for twenty years, which the Government deems a sufficient period for the establishment and test of a system. (See projet of Franco-American Navigation, page 198.)

Among the many expedients adopted for the transmission of the foreign post are those of employing ordinary sailing vessels on the one hand, or the vessels of the war marine on the other. Both systems have been effectually and forever exploded and abandoned. The objections to sailing vessels are very numerous. They are, in the first place, too slow. They are too uncertain in their days of sailing and arrival. They can never be placed under the direction of the Department because they are private property, devoted to private uses, and generally accomplish their ends by private means; one of the most prominent of which is, to keep back all letters except those going to their own consignees. If a merchant runs his ship for personal gain it is not to be supposed that he will carry the letters of his commercial competitors, and thus forestall his own speculations. Sailing vessels have no proper accommodations for the mails, and can not fairly be forced either to transport or to deliver them. The uncertainties of cargo are such that they can not sail on fixed days with punctuality. But the great difficulty is their want of speed and the uncertainty of their progress or arrival. Whenever they have been employed by the British Government for postal service they have always proven themselves inefficient and unreliable. Whenever they have been superceded by steamers, the postal income, before small, has gone up rapidly to five, ten, or twenty times the former income. This was well illustrated in the British and Brazilian lines. The Parliamentary returns for 1842, when postal service with Brazil and La Plata was performed by a line of fine sailing packets, give the total income from postages at L5,034, 13d, 6s Lord Canning, the British Post Master General, stated that, in 1852, two years after the Royal Mail Steam Packets commenced running to Brazil and La Plata, the income from postages was L44,091, 17s, or nearly nine times as much as when the mails went by sailing vessels.[D] Ship owners have a strong aversion to receiving letters for the places to which their ships are bound. As a barque was about sailing from New-York for Demerara in 1855, I called on the owner, who was on the dock, just before the vessel got under way, and asked that some letters which I held in my hand, might be taken to Georgetown. He said that he could not take them; that he sailed his vessel to make money; and that he could not do other people's business. As I walked away from him rather abruptly, he called to me and wished to know to whom the letters were addressed. I told him, to Sir Edmund Wodehouse, the Governor of the Province; and that they related to the establishment of steam mail facilities between this country and that Province. He at once begged my pardon and explained; asked that I would let him send the letters; and said, moreover, that he would at any time be glad to give me a passage there and back on that business.

[D] See Parliamentary Papers for 1852-3, postal affairs, Report of Lord Canning, July 8, 1853.

The experiment of employing the steamers of the Navy in the postal service has been very fully made by Great Britain. After attempts on a considerable number of lines, and extending over a period of ten years, this service has been found inefficient, cumbrous, and more costly, and has been entirely abandoned. Murray, page 172, says that Mr. Anderson, Managing Director of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, said before the Parliamentary Committee as follows: "The postal communication can be done much cheaper by private contract steamers than by Government boats, because of the merchandise and passengers carried. The steam communication between Southampton and Alexandria, with vessels of 300 to 400 horse power, was done for 4s 6d, per mile. From Suez to Ceylon, Calcutta, and Hong Kong, with vessels of 400 to 500 horse power, for 17s, 1d per mile. The East-India Company's line (of naval vessels) between Suez and Bombay with vessels of only 250 to 300 horse power, cost 30s per mile. Her Majesty's vessels in the Mediterranean cost about 21s per mile." France also tried the experiment, but soon abandoned the system, as fruitless and exceedingly annoying. It is quite a plausible idea that our mails should go under the flag of the country, with power to protect them, and that vessels generally supposed to be idle should be engaged in some useful service. But this presupposes a fact which does not exist. No vessels in the world are more actively employed than those of the American navy, and there are many stations on which we could employ twice as many as we have with excellent effect on our commerce and foreign relations generally. We constantly hear the complaint that the Secretary of the Navy has no steamer for some immediately necessary or indispensable service. But if he had, and if two dozen steamers were lying all the time idle in our navy yards, they would probably not be installed six months in the postal service until they would be positively demanded in some way in that of the nation, and this diversion would at once frustrate all of the postal and commercial plans of the country.

But the difficulties in the way of this service are so numerous as to be readily palpable to all who examine it. No vessel that is well fitted for naval service is well adapted to that of the post. The post requires great speed, and hence, full-powered vessels. The navy does not require so great speed, and hence, the steamers are seldom more than auxiliaries. They are built heavier and fuller, and are not so adapted to speed. Filling them with the power necessary to drive them with sufficient rapidity for mail packets would unfit them for the efficient service of war. Naval vessels are, moreover, filled and weighted down with guns, stores, men, and a thousand things which would be in the way if they were employed for the mails. They have no state-rooms, cabins, saloons, etc.; and if they had them so as to accommodate passengers, they would be unfit for the war service. Unless so fitted they could not accommodate passengers, as they will not lash themselves up in hammocks under the deck, as thick as grass, as man-of-war's men will. If they are to be strictly naval vessels while running, they will be filled with their own men, and could not take passengers even if they had state-room accommodations for them. They would thus be deprived entirely of this source of income. Again, they could take no freight; and if a passenger mail steamer has to depend upon both freight and passengers for an income to meet the large expenses, which are generally three, five, and often even ten times the sum of subsidy received from the Government, then the naval vessel running in the postal service will be deprived of both these sources of income, and must fall back on the department for all of its expenses, which would be three, five, and even ten times as much as the sum paid private companies for carrying the mail.

The average round trips of the Pacific mail steamers from Panama to San Francisco and Olympia, and back, are, beyond doubt, enormously expensive; while they receive from the Government only $14,500. This is, consequently, but a small fractional part of their income. The trip of the "Arago," or "Fulton," to Havre and back, costs about $45,000, while the mail pay was only $12,500, under the old contract, and is now probably not above $7,500 per round trip.[E] These estimates are made exclusive of insurance, which is 9-1/2 per cent.; repairs, 10 per cent.; and depreciation, at least five per cent. Here, again, the Government gives but a meagre part of the large sum necessary to keep those packets running. Now, if naval vessels were carrying the same mails, and were deprived of the income which they receive for freight and passengers, it would evidently cost the Government six to eight times as much to carry the mails as it now does, saying nothing about the income from the mails, which is trifling. But this class of vessels never could subserve the purposes of rapid correspondence. If they could carry freight and passengers, the difficulties would still be insuperable. It would cost twice as much for the department to accomplish the same object through its officers and its routine as it would for private companies or individuals, who have but the one business and the one purpose in running their vessels. No man, company, or even department of the Government, can accomplish two important and difficult ends by the same agency at the same time. Either the one or the other must suffer and be neglected, or both will be but imperfectly and ineffectively performed. Many structures of this kind fall of their own superincumbent weight and clumsiness. If naval vessels thus running even had passengers they would never be satisfied or well treated. A captain and crew, to be agreeable and satisfactory to passengers, must feel themselves under obligation to them for their patronage, and would be compelled to exert themselves to merit the best feelings of their patrons. This could never be the case with naval gentlemen, who would be dependent for their living on the department only. It is probable that no one seriously entertains such a plan as this for the postal service, as this must be a distinct, partly self-supporting, unbroken, and continuous service, while that of the Navy must also be distinct, independent, and efficiently directed to one great cardinal object. Therefore, we can not secure postal service by this means.

[E] This line receives the total postages, ocean and inland, which in 1856 were, according to the Post Master General's report, $88,483.99, or $7,373.33 per round voyage. (See Letter of the Hon. Horatio King, 1st Asst. Post Master General.)

As much has been said of Propellers during the few years past, I propose examining the question with the view of ascertaining whether they are adapted to the mail service, and whether we can secure from them sufficient speed without a subsidy from the Government. It is well known that the British are a far more steady-going people than ourselves, and not being so rushing do not require so much speed. They have had an easy control of the European and foreign commerce generally around them; and when competition aroused them to additional efforts they did not endeavor to outstride themselves, but took merely an additional step of progress and speed, and adopted the propeller for their coasting business, because it was a little faster than wind, and yet cheaper than full steam. And because so many propellers have been built for the peculiar short-route trade of Great Britain, many people in this country can not see why we do not adopt the propeller for our foreign trade. I have already shown (See page 44) that there are some short routes on which steam is cheaper than the wind, and that on others of greater length steamers can not transport freight under any conditions. (See latter part of Section IV., on the Cost of Steam.) I do not propose making the Screw Propeller in any way an exception to the position stated; and shall consequently maintain that it will never be the means of attaining a rapid and yet cheap mail speed.

There are no greater errors entertained by the public on any subject connected with steam navigation than concerning the Screw Propeller. It is generally supposed that it is a more economical and effective application of power than the side-wheel, which is a mistake: it is generally supposed that, with the same amount of power and all other conditions equal, the propeller will not run as rapidly as the side-wheel, which is true of steaming in a sea-way or against a head-wind, but a mistake as regards smooth water: it is generally supposed that the engines weigh less, take up less room, and cost less, which is all a mistake. The best authors on this subject and the most eminent builders generally agree, that in England and Scotland, where the propeller has attained its greatest perfection, the difference between the side-wheel and the propeller as an application of power is very slight and hardly appreciable; or that the same number of tons of coal will drive two ships of the same size at the same speed in smooth water; but that the side-wheel has greatly the advantage in a head-sea or during rough weather generally. Many persons who do not understand the subject, have theorized in just the contrary direction. They say that in rough weather the screw has the advantage, because it is alway in the water, etc. Experience shows just the reverse; and theory will bear the practice out. If, in the side-wheel one wheel is part of the time out, the other has, at any rate, the whole force of the engines, and the floats sink to and take hold on a denser, heavier, and less easily yielding stratum of water; so that the progress is nearly the same. The back current or opposing wave can not materially affect it, because the float is at the extreme end of the arm where the travel is greatest, and is always more rapid than the wave. It is not so with the screw. The blade which meets the wave is not placed at the end of a long arm where the travel is very rapid and the motion more sudden than that of the wave. This blade extends all the way along from its extreme end, where the motion is rapid, to the centre, or the shaft, where there is no motion; and all intermediate parts of this blade move so slowly, that the wave of greater rapidity counteracts it, and checks its progress. The side-wheel applies its power at the extreme periphery, where the travel is greatest, while the screw applies it all along between the point of extreme rapidity, and the stationary point in the shaft. There is, moreover, much power lost as the oblique blades of the screw rise and fall in a vertical line while the vessel is heaving.

In the new edition (1855) of "Bourne on the Propeller," he says in the preface:

"Large vessels, we know, are both physically and commercially more advantageous than small vessels, provided only they can be filled with cargo; but in some cases in which small paddle vessels have been superseded by large screw vessels, the superior result due to an increased size of hull has been imputed to a superior efficiency of the propeller. No fact, however, is more conclusively established than this, that the efficiency of paddles and of the screw as propelling instruments is very nearly the same; and in cases in which geared engines are employed to drive a screw vessel, the machinery will take up about the same amount of room as if paddles had been used, and the result will be much the same as if paddles had been adopted. When direct acting engines, however, are employed, the machinery will occupy a much less space in screw vessels than is possible in paddle vessels, and the use of direct acting engines in screw propellers is necessary, therefore, for the realization of the full measure of advantage, which screw propulsion is able to afford."

Atherton says of the propeller in his "Marine Engine Construction and Classification," page 45:

"Its operation has been critically compared with that of the paddle-wheel, under various conditions of engine power, and experience has shown that, under circumstances which admit of the screw propeller being favorably applied, it is equal to the paddle-wheel as an effective means of applying engine power to the propulsion of the vessel." Again:

I recently addressed to Mr. Atherton the following question: "Taking two ships of the same size, displacement, and power, or coal, the one a side-wheel, the other screw: What will be their relative speed and carrying capacity in smooth water? What in a sea-way, or in regular transatlantic navigation?" He replied under address, "Woolwich Royal Dock Yard, 14 Sept., 1857:

"It is my opinion, based on experiment, that a well-applied screw is quite equal to the paddle-wheel for giving out the power by which it is itself driven, that is, in smooth water. I can not say from observation or experience what is the comparative operation at sea."

I addressed the same inquiry to Mr. Robert Murray, of Southampton, who has written an able work, entitled, "The Marine Engine," and who is considered excellent authority, and have from him the following reply, dated Southampton, 19 Sept., 1857:

"With regard to the relative efficiency of the paddle-wheel and screw for full-powered mail steamers, I am disposed to prefer the paddle-wheel for transatlantic steaming, in which the vessel has to contend with so much rough weather and heavy sea, and the screw for the Mediterranean and the Pacific routes.

"For auxiliary steamers of any kind the screw has manifestly the advantage.

"With regard to the actual speed obtained from each mode of propulsion in vessels of the same power and form, and with the propeller in its best trim, I am disposed to prefer the paddle-wheel, either in smooth water, or when steaming head to wind, but in other conditions the screw." What he means by "other conditions," is evidently when the screw is running with a fair wind, which is seldom, so as to use her sails. Bourne also states very clearly in two places that the propeller is by no means so efficient in a sea-way, as a side-wheel steamer, and admits that when a vessel is steaming at eleven or twelve knots per hour, the sails not only do not aid her, but frequently materially retard her motion. (See Bourne, page 237.)

All of these authorities agree that the application of a given power produces about the same effect, whether through the side-wheel or the screw; and if so, it is evident that the screw can not attain the same speed as the side-wheel, without burning as much fuel, and having as costly and as heavy engines and boilers. Indeed, taking the whole evidence together, it appears well settled by these authorities, that the screw is equal to the side-wheel only in smooth water, and that, as a consequence of this distinction, it is not equal to it in general ocean navigation. It has been seen that much of its power is lost when it contends with head-winds and seas, and that when it has attained a fair average mail speed, the wind will help it very little, if any, under the most favorable circumstances. It is, therefore, reasonable to infer that it would cost more to attain a high average mail speed with the propeller than with the side-wheel. If in attaining this average mail speed the advantages are clearly in favor of the side-wheel, there is no hope that we shall accomplish the mail service at cheaper rates than heretofore, as this agency can not be introduced toward that end; for not only is the prime cost of the steamer the same, as also the consumption of fuel per mile, but there are other and numerous disadvantages connected with the propeller, which are wholly unknown to the side-wheel.

It is a well-known fact that propellers are compelled to be placed upon the docks three or four times as often as side-wheels. The screw either breaks, and must be replaced by another, or it cuts the boxes out, or works the stern of the vessel to pieces. Any one of these requires that the steamer shall be docked, however great the expense; and as these accidents are constantly occurring in even the best constructed and best regulated propellers, it follows that they must be constantly on the docks. This species of vessel being built necessarily narrower than the side-wheel, it rolls more, and is found to be an exceedingly disagreeable passenger vessel. Propellers have become deservedly unpopular the world over; and if it were possible for them to be faster than the side-wheel, it is hardly probable that first-class passengers would even then go by them, as they are known to be so exceedingly uncomfortable.

The propeller, I have before said, is erroneously supposed to run more cheaply than the side-wheel. I think that I have shown that as a mail packet it will cost more to run it at a given speed. But there are certain cases in which it does run more cheaply; these are, however, only where the speed is low, and the machinery not geared, and where, as a consequence, sail can be used to more advantage than on a side-wheel. The economy is not the result of the application of the power by the screw, as compared with the side-wheel, but of the sail alone; and this economy is more or less, just as canvas is employed more or less in the propulsion. The screw is the better form of steamer for using sail; and the low speed at which propellers generally run, is a means of making that sail more effective. We have already seen, in the section on the cost of steam, that it generally requires twice the original quantity of fuel to increase the speed from eight to ten knots per hour in either style of steamer. Now, it is a well-known fact that the transatlantic propeller lines are on the average more than two knots per hour short of the speed of the side-wheels, which makes their passages across the Atlantic from two to six days longer than by the mail packets. They thus save from one half to two thirds of the fuel, and deducting its prime cost from the bill of expenses, they add to that of receipts the freight on the cargo, which occupies the space of the coal saved. They consequently run on much smaller expenses; but only when their speed is less than that of the side-wheels, and far too low for effective postal service. Economy thus purchased at the expense of speed may do for freight, and enable propellers to derive some profits from certain cargoes; but it can never subserve the purposes of mails and passengers. It must alway be recollected that the effective speed of the propeller is reduced just in the ratio of the greater economy as compared with the side-wheel.

It thus appears that with any appreciable economy the propeller must be slower than the side-wheel; and that with any considerable economy it can be but little faster than sail. It has, however, the advantage over sail of being rather more reliable and punctual, and can make arrivals and departures rather more matters of certainty. This at the same time secures to it a better class of freights as well as vast numbers of emigrants which together, enable it to incur the extra expense over a sailing vessel. The cargo is less in the propeller than in the sail, as much of the room is occupied by the engines, boilers, and fuel. Hence, the prices must be proportionally higher to meet the deficit arising from the smaller quantity. But there are very few trades in which propellers can run as noticed on so long a voyage as 3,000 to 4,000 miles; and these lie between a few countries in Europe and the ports of the United States. Their support arises chiefly from the emigrant trade; as without this their freights would not on any known lines enable them to run one month. And this is not simply an assumption of theory, but the experience of all the European lines. I was recently told in England and France by many persons who had no interest or desire to deceive me, that propeller stock was invariably a burthen to every body having any thing to do with it, and could generally be bought at sixty to seventy cents on the dollar, while much of it would not bring half of its cost price. They cited as an evidence the fact that no line of propellers is permanent, unless in some way connected with a subsidized company, as in the case of the Cunard screws running between Liverpool and New-York. The Glasgow line is also an exception, and is said to pay dividends. The screw lines are always hunting a home and a new trade. (See views of Mr. Murray, page 111.)

The only way in which some lines can run is by getting their stock at half its value and thus having to pay the interest on a smaller sum. The "General Screw Steam shipping Company" is an example. The Company had from the first lost money, although they had nine fine steamers, and were compelled finally to close up and sell out. Mr. Croskey, the United States Consul at Southampton, supposed that they might be put into a new trade and make a living on a smaller capital stock; that is, if the new company should get them at half their value. The transfer was made and the "European and American Steamship Company" was established. Some of the vessels were put into the trade between Bremen and London, Southampton, and New-York; some between Antwerp and Brazil; and some between Hamburg and Brazil. None of these lines have paid, except, perhaps, the New-York, which has had large cargoes of emigrants; and Mr. Croskey freely acknowledges that the new Company would have been ruined but for the Indian Revolt, which enabled him to charter five of the vessels to the Government at good prices, for the conveyance of troops by way of the Cape of Good Hope to India. Had the lines on which they were running been profitable they would never have been chartered to the Government. But like the whole propeller service of the world, this Company took the chances; and it may be safely asserted that but for the opportunities which vessels of this class find for chartering to the Government they could not live on their own enterprise three years. The number of these vessels is now very unnecessarily large; and many of them have been built to supply labor to the establishments, and for taking the chances of Government employment at high prices. Their largest employment results from casualties rather than from the pursuit of legitimate trade. But the business is overdone, even for the English market, when foreign war is rather the rule, and peace the exception. But few propellers are now building; these few being small and intended for the coasting, or the short-line Continental trade, where they will readily pay. (See page 42 for propeller stock; also pages 44 and 45 for the propeller coasting service.)

It does not materially alter the complexion of this question to say that propellers are generally constructed of iron. There is not such a difference in their prime cost or their stowage capacity as to enable them to take the large receipts necessary to their support; while certainly there is no advantage to be gained in speed from iron as a material of construction. The iron propeller can be constructed cheaper than the wooden in Great Britain, because of the great scarcity of timber and the large and redundant quantity of iron; and an iron vessel has some advantage in being able to stow a larger cargo, from the fact that her sides and bottom are not so thick as those of wooden vessels; but these considerations do not very materially affect the consumption of fuel, and the quantity necessary to carry a ton of freight. Iron is probably a better material than wood for the construction of propellers, as the part about the stern, where the screw works, can be made stronger, and as all iron vessels can be rather more readily divided into water-tight compartments by bulkheads. Yet as a material of construction it offers no transcendent advantages over the side-wheel for transatlantic navigation, while it is not probably so safe, or so comfortable for passengers. Yet, it will be well for us to adopt the propeller largely in our coasting trade, and iron as the material of its construction.

We have thus seen that to save fuel and carry freight, the speed of the propeller must be low; indeed very low, if it is to live on its own receipts. It is therefore clearly impossible that with such comparatively low speed it should carry the mail. Neither can it support itself except by this low speed. By running thus but a fraction faster than the sailing vessel, it can command on a few prominent lines a large freight; but to give vessels of such speed a subsidy for carrying the mails would be both to render the mail service inefficient, and to enable the propeller to compete with the sailing lines of the country at very undue advantage, which would be an unfair discrimination against all sailing interests. Should the propeller, like the side-wheel, run fast enough on the average trips of the year to carry the mails, which would certainly be at the expense and abandonment of any considerable freighting business, then the Government might with propriety pay for the mails, as these steamers would not injure the freighting business of sailing vessels. The outcry by sail owners against steamers as competitors can not be against the mail packets; for these carry but little freight; but against these slow screws which should be treated like all other freighting vessels, notwithstanding the fact that some of their owners have had the impudence to propose them for the paid mail service and to ask a subsidy from the Government, but the better to cripple the interests of sailing vessels. As well might Government subsidize fast clippers, because they are a little faster than regular, ordinary sailers. When the steamer runs with sufficient rapidity for the mails, the sailing ship has nothing to fear from competition, and has all the benefits of the more rapid correspondence. Thus, Government must pay only where there is a fast mail, whether it be in a side-wheel or propeller; otherwise it destroys individual competition and cripples private enterprise.

If, as we have seen from all the facts regarding the expense of running steamers, individual enterprise can not supply adequately rapid ocean postal facilities, and if such facilities are yet wholly indispensable to the commerce, the people, and the Government, the only alternative presented is for the Government to pay for them, and to require, as it has of all the American lines, such a speed as to prevent injurious competition to sailing vessels and private enterprise. Much capital is made by certain ship owners out of what they call the undue discrimination of subsidies against their vessels; but they can never lay this charge at the door of the fast and very expensive mail packets, or elsewhere than upon the slow auxiliary propellers which any of them have a right to attempt to run, and which the Government never did and never will subsidize. This is the source and the only source of all the vaunted injurious effects of steam on the sailing stock of the country. It is a question with which the Government has nothing to do, and which must be settled between propeller owners and sail owners themselves, and with reference, perhaps, to the wishes of their customers. Mail steamers have enough to do to get money to pay their coal, provision, repair, and innumerable extras bills, without wrangling over the freighting business. And, from all this we conclude that the only means of the Government securing an adequate mail speed is by paying for it. (See remarks of Committee on this subject, Paper E.)



SECTION VII.

WHAT IS THE DUTY OF THE GOVERNMENT TO THE PEOPLE?

RESUME OF THE PREVIOUS SECTIONS AND ARGUMENTS: IT IS THE DUTY OF THE GOVERNMENT TO FURNISH RAPID STEAM MAILS: OUR PEOPLE APPRECIATE THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMERCE, AND OF LIBERAL POSTAL FACILITIES: THE GOVERNMENT IS ESTABLISHED FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PEOPLE: IT MUST FOSTER THEIR INTERESTS AND DEVELOP THEIR INDUSTRY: THE WANT OF SUCH MAILS HAS CAUSED THE NEGLECT OF MANY PROFITABLE BRANCHES OF INDUSTRY: AS A CONSEQUENCE WE HAVE LOST IMMENSE TRAFFIC: THE EUROPEAN MANUFACTURING SYSTEM AND OURS: FIELDS OF TRADE NATURALLY PERTAINING TO US: OUR ALMOST SYSTEMATIC NEGLECT OF THEM: WHY IS GREAT BRITAIN'S COMMERCE SO LARGE: CAUSES AND THEIR EFFECTS: HER WEST-INDIA LINE RECEIVES A LARGER SUBSIDY THAN ALL THE FOREIGN LINES OF THE UNITED STATES COMBINED: INDIFFERENCE SHOWN BY CONGRESS TO MANY IMPORTANT FIELDS OF COMMERCE: INSTANCES OF MAIL FACILITIES CREATING LARGE TRADE: THE PENINSULAR AND ORIENTAL COMPANY'S TESTIMONY: THE BRITISH AND BRAZILIAN TRADE: SOME DEDUCTIONS FROM THE FIGURES: CALIFORNIA SHORN OF HALF HER GLORY: THE AMERICAN PEOPLE NOT MISERS: THEY WISH THEIR OWN PUBLIC TREASURE EXPENDED FOR THE BENEFIT OF THEIR INDUSTRY: OUR COMMERCIAL CLASSES COMPLAIN THAT THEY ARE DEPRIVED OF THE PRIVILEGE OF COMPETING WITH OTHER NATIONS.

1. Conceded (Section I.) that steam mails upon the ocean control the commerce and diplomacy of the world; that they are essential to our commercial and producing country; that we have not established the ocean mail facilities commensurate with our national ability and the demands of our commerce; and that we to-day are largely dependent on, and tributary to our greatest commercial rival, Great Britain, for the postal facilities, which should be purely national, American, and under our own exclusive control:

2. Conceded (Section II.) that fast ocean mails are exceedingly desirable for our commerce, our defenses, our diplomacy, the management of our squadrons, our national standing, and that they are demanded by our people at large:

3. Conceded (Section III.) that fast steamers alone can furnish rapid transport to the mails; that these steamers can not rely on freights; that sailing vessels will ever carry staple freights at a much lower figure, and sufficiently quickly; that while steam is eminently successful in the coasting trade, it can not possibly be so in the transatlantic freighting business; and that the rapid transit of the mails and the slower and more deliberate transport of freight is the law of nature:

4. Conceded (Section IV.) that high, adequate mail speed is extremely costly, in the prime construction of vessels, their repairs, and their more numerous employees; that the quantity of fuel consumed is enormous, and ruinous to unaided private enterprise; and that this is clearly proven both by theory and indisputable facts as well as by the concurrent testimony of the ablest writers on ocean steam navigation:

5. Conceded (Section V.) that ocean mail steamers can not live on their own receipts; that neither the latest nor the anticipated improvements in steam shipping promise any change in this fact; that self-support is not likely to be attained by increasing the size of steamers; that the propelling power in fast steamers occupies all of the available space not devoted to passengers and express freight; and that steamers must be fast to do successful mail and profitable passenger service:

6. Conceded (Section VI.) that sailing vessels can not successfully transport the mails; that the propeller can not transport them as rapidly or more cheaply than side-wheel vessels; that with any considerable economy of fuel and other running expenses, it is but little faster than the sailing vessel; that to patronize these slow vessels with the mails the Government would unjustly discriminate against sailing vessels in the transport of freights; that we can not in any sense depend on the vessels of the Navy for the transport of the mails; that individual enterprise can not support fast steamers; and that not even American private enterprise can under any conditions furnish a sufficiently rapid steam mail and passenger marine: then,

The inference is clear and unavoidable, and we come irresistibly to the conclusion, that it is the duty of the Government to its people to establish and maintain an extensive, well-organized, and rapid steam mail marine, for the benefit of production, commerce, diplomacy, defenses, the character of the nation, and the public at large; and as there is positively no other source of adequate and effective support, to pay liberally for the same out of any funds in the national treasury, belonging to the enterprising, liberal, and enlightened people of the Republic. There is no clearer duty of the Legislative and Executive Government to the industrious people of the country than the establishment of liberal, large, and ready postal facilities, for the better and more successful conduct of that industry, whether those facilities be upon land or upon the sea. It is sometimes difficult to extend our vision to any other sphere than that in which we move and have our experiences; and thus there are many persons who, while they would revolt at the idea that the Government should refuse to run four-horse coaches to some little unimportant country town, would be wholly unable to grasp the great commercial world and the wide oceans over which their own products are to float, and from whose trade the Government derives the large duties which prevent these same persons having to pay direct taxes. They do not understand the necessity of commerce, to even their own prosperity, or of the innumerable steam mail lines which must convey the correspondence essential to the safe and proper conduct of that commerce. But the great mass of the American people understand these questions, understand the reflex influences of all such facilities, and knowing how essential they are to the proper development of enterprise and industry in whatever channel or field, boldly claim it as a right that easy postal communication shall be afforded them as well upon the high seas as upon the interior land routes.

It is generally admitted that the government of a country is established for the benefit of the people; and constitutions conflicting with this purpose are simply subversive of justice and liberty. If labor is a thing so desirable and so noble in a people that the protection of its rewards in the form of property becomes one of the highest attributes of good government, then it is equally an indisputable attribute of that protecting and fostering government to afford those facilities to labor, which experience shows that it needs, and which the people can not attain in their individual capacity, or without the intervention of the government. It is idle for a government to say to the people that they are free, when it denies to them the ordinarily approved means of making and conserving wealth. The common experience of mankind points to commerce as the next great means to production in creating national and individual wealth. It equally shows us that foreign commerce can not flourish without liberal foreign mail facilities, and the means of ready transit of persons, papers, and specie. It also clearly indicates that the most successful means of accomplishing this, is the employment of subsidized national mail steamships. It therefore becomes obviously the duty of a paternal government to an industrious, enterprising, producing, and trading people, to give them the rapid ocean steam mails necessary to the profitable prosecution of their industry.

We have for many years neglected many important fields of foreign trade, and many profitable branches of industry and art, which we could easily have nurtured into sources of income and wealth, by adopting the foreign mail system, so wisely introduced and extended by Great Britain. And in the absence of such efforts on our part, a large and remunerative traffic has been swept from us, and this suicidal neglect has been the means of our subordination to so many controlling foreign influences. We are at this very hour commercially enslaved by England, France, Brazil, and the East. How is it that the trade of the world is in the hands of Great Britain; that she absorbs most of every nation's raw material; and that she and France supply the world with ten thousand articles of industry, that should furnish work to our manufacturers, and freight to our ships? There are some who will say that it is because of her manufacturing system. Grant it. But how did she establish that imperious, and overshadowing, and powerful system, and how does she keep it up? Her energetic people have ever had the fostering care of her government. Their steam mail system has been established for twenty-four years. It has furnished the people with the means of easy transport, rapid correspondence, the remittance of specie, and the shipment of light manufactured goods to every corner of the world; it has invited foreigners from every land to her shores and her markets; and it has been the means of throwing the raw material of the whole world into the lap of the British manufacturer and artisan, and enabling them thus to control the markets in every land.

But we can get along, it is said, without such a manufacturing system and such an ubiquity of trade. This is a mistake. The productions of our soil are not sufficiently indispensable to the outer world to bring us all of the money we need for importing the millions of foreign follies, to which our people have become attached. It is not right or best for us that while our "Lowell Drillings" stand preeminent over the world, we should so far neglect the Brazilian, La Platan, New-Granadian, Venezuelan, and East-Indian trade, that Manchester shall continue, as she now does, to manufacture an inferior fabric, post it off by her steamers, forestall the market, and cheat us out of our profits; and that, by means of the reputation which our skill has produced. And a few more crises like the one through which we have just begun to pass, will open our eyes to the necessity of doing something ourselves to make money, and show that foreign trade in every form, and the sale of every species of product known to the industry of a skillful people, must be watched with jealous national and individual care, and nurtured as we would nurture a young and tender child. There are many fields of trade which may be said to pertain naturally to this country, and which we have as wholly neglected and yielded to Great Britain, as if she had a divine right to the monopoly of the entire commerce of the world. No one can believe that the trade of the islands which gem the Carribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, or the great Spanish Main, or the Guianas, or the Orinoco and Amazon, or the extended coast of Brazil, the Platan Republics, or Mexico, and the Central American States lying just at our door, belongs naturally to Europe, or that their productions should be transported in European ships, or that their supplies come naturally five thousand miles across the ocean, rather than go a few hundred miles from our own shores, in our own ships, and for the benefit of our own merchants and producers. Yet, such is the impression which our apathy of effort in those regions would produce. We have acted as if our people had no right of information concerning the West-Indies and South-America, until it had gone to Europe and been emasculated of all its virtues.

The same thing is true of the Pacific South-American, the Chinese, and the East-Indian trade. That of the Pacific coast is not half so far from us, as it is from Europe; that of China, and the East-Indies, and Australia, is by many thousand miles nearer to us; and yet the greater portion of the commerce of all three of those great fields is triumphantly borne off by Great Britain alone. And why is all this? Why is her foreign trade sixteen hundred millions of dollars per year, while ours is only seven hundred millions? Causes can not fail to produce their effects; and prime causes, however little understood in their half obscure workings, are yet made manifest as the sun at noon-day by effects so brilliant and important as these. Here, as ever, the tree is known by its fruits. The tree of knowledge, of British wisdom, "whose mortal taste brought death into our world," our Western world of commerce, "with loss of Eden," and many a fair paradise of enterprise and effort, has filled the bleak little islands of Britain with the golden fruits of every clime, and scattered broadcast among its people the rich ambrosia of foreign commerce. When it was necessary to command the trade of the West-Indies, Central America, and Mexico, lying at our southern door, she established the Royal Steam Packet service with thirteen lines and twenty steamers, and paid it for the first ten years L240,000, and for the present twelve years L270,000 per annum. In addition to this she pays L25,000 per annum for continuing the same lines down the west coast of South-America to Valparaiso, and contracts to pay the Royal Mail Company an annual addition of L75,000 in the event of coal, freight, insurance, etc., being at anytime higher than they were at the date of the contract in 1850. This aggregate sum of L295,000, or $1,475,000, to say nothing of the increased allowance of L75,000 probably now paid to this one branch alone of the British service, is considerably greater than that paid for the entire foreign mail service of the United States.

Now, it is a very extraordinary fact that, with such a field of commerce lying along the sunny side of our republic, and with such an array of facilities for converting it into European channels, our Government has done literally nothing to protect the rights of its citizens and give them the means, which they do not now possess, of a fair competition with other countries for this rich and remunerative trade. Yet such is the fact; all of the petitions and memorials of the seaboard cities to the contrary notwithstanding. The same is the case with the Pacific and East-India trade before noticed. While we have a noble chain of communication between the Eastern States and California and Oregon, which is manifestly essential to the integrity of the Union and the continued possession of our rich Western territory; while California is admirably situated to command the trade of those vast regions and concentrate it in the United States; while the British have several lines to China, the Indies, Australia, and Southern as well as Western Africa; and while our citizens have petitioned Congress year after year for even the most limited steam mail facilities to those regions, which could be afforded at the smallest price, it is truly astonishing that these facts and petitions have hitherto been treated with contempt, and almost ruled out of Congress as soon as presented. Such has been the course of action that, instead of fostering foreign commerce and encouraging the enterprise and industry of the people, the Government has really repressed that enterprise, and practically commanded the intelligent commercial classes of this country to look upon foreign trade as forbidden fruit which it was never intended should be grown upon our soil.

It is not to be disputed that foreign mail steamers, by creating almost unlimited facilities for the conduct of trade, greatly increase the commerce of the nation with the countries to which they run. The evidences of this position are patent all around us, and too evident to need recital. The growth of our trade with Germany, France, Switzerland, and Great Britain since the establishment of the Bremen, Havre, and Liverpool lines of steamers has been unprecedented in the history of our commerce. That with California has sprung up as by magic at the touch of steam, and has assumed a magnitude and permanence in eight years which but for the steam mail and passenger accommodations created, could not have been developed under thirty years. The mail accommodations have wholly transformed our commerce with Havana and Cuba, until they are wrested from foreign commercial dominion, as reason suggests that they must ere long be from foreign political thraldom. As well might Europe attempt to attach the little island of Nantucket to some of her own dynasties as to deprive the United States of the control of the trade of Cuba so long as her steam lines are continued to that island.

Mr. Anderson, the Managing Director of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, recently testified before a Committee of the House of Commons, that, "the advantages of the communication (between England and Australia) should not be estimated merely by the postage. After steam communication to Constantinople and the Levant was opened, our exports to those quarters increased by L1,200,000 a year. The actual value of goods exported from Southampton alone, last year, (1848-9,) by those steamers is nearly L1,000,000 sterling. Greek merchants state that the certainty and rapidity of communication enable them to turn their capital over so much quicker. Forty new Greek establishments have been formed in this country since steam communication was established. The imports in that trade, fine raw materials, silk, goats' hair, etc., came here to be manufactured. Supposing the trade to increase one million, and wages amount to L600,000, calculating taxes at 20 per cent., an income of revenue of L120,000 would result from steam communication."

I am prepared to speak from my own observation, and from the reliable statistics of the Brazilian Government, from the pen of the late Prime Minister, the Marquis of Parana, a few facts of the same nature relative to the trade between Great Britain and the Brazilian Empire. In a paper which I prepared for the New-York Historical Society, and published in "Brazil and the Brazilians," Philadelphia, Childs & Peterson, I said, at page 618, in speaking of the trade of Great Britain:

"From 1840 to 1850 her total imports from Brazil made no increase. In 1853, they had advanced one hundred and fifty per cent. on 1848; and, in 1855, they had advanced over 1848—or the average of the ten years noticed—about three hundred per cent. This, however, it must be recollected, was in coffee, for reexportation; a trade which was lost to our merchants and to our shipping. Her total exports to Brazil from 1840 to 1850 were stationary at about two and a half million pounds sterling annually. In 1851—the first year after steam by the Royal Mail Company—they advanced forty per cent.; and, in 1854, they had advanced one hundred and two per cent. on 1850. Thus, her exports have doubled in five years, from a stationary point before the establishment of steam mail facilities; whereas ours have been thirteen years in making the same increase. The total trade between Brazil and Great Britain has increased in an unprecedented ratio. The combined British imports and exports, up to 1850, averaged L3,645,833 annually; but, in 1855, these had reached L8,162,455. Thus, the British trade increased two hundred and twenty-five per cent. in five years after the first line of steamers was established to Brazil."

In the analysis of the tables presenting these facts I had occasion to make the following deductions, page 619:

"We see, from a generalization and combination of these tables and analyses, that our greatest advance in the Brazilian trade has arisen from imports instead of exports; whereas the trade of Great Britain has advanced in both; and particularly in her exports, which were already large; the tendency being to enrich Great Britain and to impoverish us: that until 1850 her exports were stationary, while ours were increasing; due, doubtless, to the superiority of our clipper ships at that period, which placed us much nearer than England to Brazil: that she is now taking the coffee-trade away from us, and giving it to her own and other European merchants and shipping: that she is rivalling us in the rubber-trade; wholly distancing us in that of manufactures: and that from 1850 to 1855 she has doubled a large trade of profitable exports, and increased her aggregate imports and exports two hundred and twenty-five per cent.; whereas it has taken us thirteen years to double a small trade, composed mostly of imports: it being evident that, with equal facilities, we could outstrip Great Britain in nearly all the elements of this Brazil trade, as we were doing for the ten years from 1840 to 1850.

"It will hardly be necessary to suggest to the wise and reflecting merchant or statesman the evident causes producing this startling effect. It is the effect of steamship mail and passenger facilities, so well understood by the wise and forecasting British statesmen who established the Southampton, Brazil, and La Plata lines; not as a means of giving revenue to the General Post-Office, but of encouraging foreign trade and stimulating British industry. If England by steam has overtaken and neutralized our clippers and embarrassed our trade, then we have only to employ the same agent, and, from geographical advantages, we feel assured that we will soon surpass her as certainly, and even more effectually, than she has us. She sweeps our seas, and we offer her no resistance or competition. Not satisfied with the Royal Mail lines, it is reported that she is making a contract with Mr. Cunard to run another line along by the side of the Royal Mail, from Liverpool to Aspinwall, and from Panama to the East-Indies and China. She gains in these seas an invaluable trade, because she employs the proper means for its attainment and promotion, while we do not. Hence, although much farther off she is practically much nearer. Suppose that Great Britain had no steamers to the great sea at her threshold, the Mediterranean; and we had the enterprise to run a great trunk-line to Gibraltar and Malta, and nine branches from these termini to all the great points of commerce in Mediterranean Europe, Asia, and Africa. Would we not soon command the trade of all Southern Europe, of Western Asia, and of Africa? But we find her wisely occupying her own territory, and that it is impossible for us to get possession. If we had been there, she would soon have given us competition. But Great Britain did not wait for competition to urge her to her duty to her people. She could easily have continued the trade already possessed; but she could enlarge and invigorate it by steam, and she did it; not from outside pressure, but for the advantages which it always presents per se. For the same reason we should have established steam to the West-Indies, Brazil, the Spanish Main, and La Plata long since; to foster a trade naturally ours, but practically another's. It is preeminently necessary now when steam, under the system of Great Britain, is ruining our trade; whereas, by a similar process, we could reestablish ours, if not paralyze theirs. Neutrality is impossible. Indifference to the present posture of affairs only leads to the ruin of our interests. We must advance and contend with Great Britain and Europe step by step, and employ the means of which we are generally so boastful, or we will be forced to retreat from the field, and be harassed into ignominious submission."

As in the case of Brazil and La Plata so is it in that of the Pacific South-American States, and the great fields of Australia, China, and the East-Indies generally, as before noticed. The trade of Great Britain with those regions has gone on at a rate of progression truly astonishing. Ours has continued just as much behind it as the slow and uncertain sailing vessel is behind the rapid and reliable mail steamer. Our Pacific possessions have been shorn of half their glory and power by the refusal of those steam aids which would by the present time have converted half the commerce of the fields mentioned into the new channels of American enterprise and transport. The injustice has operated equally against the people of California and Oregon, and against ourselves of the East; while there is no good and valid reason for thus making the Pacific coast the ultima thule of civilized, steam enterprise. The people of the United States, of whatever class, are far from being misers. They do not desire an economy of two or three millions of dollars per year, which would give them great opportunities of obtaining wealth and power, merely that the sum so economized may be squandered, with twenty or thirty millions more, on schemes of doubtful expediency, and of no real or pressing necessity. They do not, indeed, ask that these mail accommodations may be paid for simply because much money is uselessly otherwise spent; but because these accommodations are necessary to themselves, to the development of their enterprise and labor, and to the general good of all the active and industrial, and, consequently, all of the worthy classes. It is a question of little importance to the great people of this country, whether the Government expends forty millions per year or eighty millions. But it would be a delightful consolation to them to know that while they might be paying ten, twenty, or thirty millions per year more than strictly necessary, three or four millions of it at least were so appropriated as to better enable them to pay the large general tax for the aggregate sum. No one hears any complaint regarding the sum necessary to support the General Government, except by those in remote districts, who have but an infinitesimal interest involved, but an imaginary part of the sum to pay, and who, producing but little, and having nothing to do, assume the right to manage the affairs of those who really have something at stake. The American people are willing and anxious that their money shall be expended for their own benefit, for the benefit of those who are to come after them, and for the glory of our great country.

The many instances of our dereliction in the establishment of steam mail facilities, and the failure to establish locomotive accommodations for our merchants and other business classes call loudly for a change in our affairs, and the establishment of a national steam policy in the place of the accidental and irregular support hitherto given to foreign steam enterprise. The nation demands the means of competing with other nations. We have lost much of the trade of the world without it. The commercial men of this country complain bitterly that the Government gives them no facilities for conducting our trade or cultivating the large fields of enterprise successfully which I have named, and competing, on fair terms, with foreign merchants. They see the West-Indies, the Spanish-American Republics, Brazil, Central America, and Mexico, lying right at our southern door, and the whole Pacific coast, the East-Indies, China, the Mauritius, Australia, and the Pacific Islands but half as far from California as from England, all much nearer to us than to Great Britain and other European countries, and offering us a trade which large as it necessarily is to-day, is yet destined within the coming generation to transcend that of all other portions of the globe combined, in extent, in richness, and in the profits which it will yield. The capacity of these great fields for development and expansion is indefinite and almost boundless. There is no doubt that an American trade could be developed in those regions within the next thirty years whose opulence and magnificence would rival and far surpass our entire commerce of the world at the present time, and give to our nation a riches and a power which would enable it to shape the destinies of the entire civilized world.

Our commercial classes complain not so much that Great Britain has the monopoly of this trade, which naturally belongs to the United States; not so much that she conducts that trade by steam facilities, to the detriment of us who have none; not so much that she has lines of steamers by the dozen, and weekly communication, as well as the advantage and use of all the other European lines; but that the citizens of the United States are not permitted to enter into a fair competition for this trade. Our people probably surpass every other people in the world in individual and aggregate enterprise and energy. They ask as few favors of the Government as any people on earth; doing every thing that is practicable, and that energy and capital can accomplish, without the intervention of the Government. But there are some things that, with the entire concentrated skill and ability of the nation, her citizens can not accomplish; and one of these is the maintenance of steamship mail lines upon the ocean. In ordinary enterprises competition necessitates improvement; and mechanical improvement and skill, in due course of time, enable individuals to compass ends otherwise deemed impracticable and unattainable. These attempts have all been made, in every form, with ocean steam navigation. It was supposed, as elsewhere stated, that, by superior engines and great economy of fuel, a speed high enough for all ordinary mail purposes could be attained, and yet leave enough room for freight and passengers to enable the income from these, at rates much higher than on sailing vessels, to pay for fuel, engineering, and the great additional cost of running a steamer. Vast engineering skill and ability have been directed to this point both in this country and Europe; and this object has been declared the commercial desideratum of the age. But all of these efforts have failed in their design; so much so that there is not, to-day, more than one permanent steam line upon the high seas of the whole world which is not sustained by a subsidy from some government. Many attempts have been made by British merchants to do a freighting and passenger business in propellers, without any mail pay, and depending on their receipts alone. These, too, have all failed. No permanent line of these propellers has been established to any of our American cities, except by subsidized companies, owning side-wheel steamers also.

The only trade in which it has ever been supposed that steamers of any description whatever could carry freight is that between Europe and the United States, where there are large quantities of rich, costly goods, in small and valuable packages, which pay an extra rate of freight, as express goods; but, even here, the steam freighting system without governmental aid has proved a failure. There have been one or two cases where a steamer could make money in carrying freight and passengers alone, as between this country and California during the early part of the gold crisis, and owing to the great distance around the Horn, as well as an unnaturally large passenger trade. This, however, was a state of commerce wholly abnormal and of short duration, and such as is not likely to occur once in a century, or last very long; or prove more than an infinitesimal exception to the great general laws of freighting and commercial transport.

Great Britain has learned this doctrine from experience, and is profiting by it. Her wise merchants and statesmen know that commerce can be accommodated only by rapid steam mails, which have regular and reliable periods for arrival and departure; and that, although these mails cost the Government and the people something more than those slow and uncertain communications which depend on sailing vessels and overland transit, yet they are enabled, by the facilities which they afford, to monopolize and control the commerce of the world, and divert it from even the most natural channels into the lap of British wealth. It is in this view of the subject that our merchants so justly complain that our Government, by refusing to give them the facilities commensurate with the demands of the age, deprives them of the power or privilege of competing with foreign nations, and palsies their hands, simply because they are not able, individually and by their associated capital, to do that which the Government only can do. The reason why our mail steamers require the aid of our Government is that foreign Governments subsidize their lines; hence our individual enterprise can not compete with their individual enterprise and that of their Government combined. The reason why foreign Governments thus subsidize their mail lines is, that those lines can not depend upon their own receipts for support, or run without Governmental aid. This is also the prime reason for Governmental aid in running our lines. These facts are undisputed by steamshipmen and merchants, and are verified by the practice of the whole world, and the great number of failures in attempting to sustain steamers, from year to year, on regular lines, by their receipts alone.

Being thus unable to compete with other countries under our present limited steam arrangements, and considering the startling expenses which attend the running of steamers, such as their fuel, their extra prime cost, their large repairs, their depreciation, their wages, their insurance, their dock charges and light dues, their shore establishments, and the long list which comes under the head of items and accidents, it is unquestionably the duty of the Government to meet this question in a frank and resolute manner, and afford to the people all those necessary facilities which they can get in no other way.



SECTION VIII.

HOW SHALL THE GOVERNMENT DISCHARGE THIS DUTY?

WE NEED A STEAM MAIL SYSTEM: HOW OUR LINES HAVE BEEN ESTABLISHED: AMERICAN AND BRITISH POLICY CONTRASTED: SPASMODIC AND ENDURING LEGISLATION: MR. POLK'S ADMINISTRATION ENDEAVORED TO INAUGURATE A POLICY: GEN. RUSK ENDEAVORED TO EXTEND IT: THE TERM OF SERVICE TOO SHORT: COMPANIES SHOULD HAVE LONGER PERIODS: A LEGISLATION OF EXPEDIENTS: MUST SUBSIDIZE PRIVATE COMPANIES FOR A LONG TERM OF YEARS: SHOULD WE GIVE TO OUR POSTAL VESSELS THE NAVAL FEATURE: OUR MAIL LINES GAVE AN IMPULSE TO SHIP-BUILDING: LET US HAVE STEAM MAILS ON THEIR MERITS: NO NAVAL FEATURE SUBTERFUGES: THESE VESSELS HIGHLY USEFUL IN WAR: THEY LIBERALLY SUPPLY THE NAVY WITH EXPERIENCED ENGINEERS WHEN NECESSARY: THE BRITISH MAIL PACKETS GENERALLY FIT FOR WAR SERVICE: LORD CANNING'S REPORT: EXPEDIENTS PROPOSED FOR CARRYING THE MAILS: BY FOREIGN INSTEAD OF AMERICAN VESSELS: DEGRADING EXPEDIENCY AND SUBSERVIENCY: WE CAN NOT SECURE MAIL SERVICE BY GIVING THE GROSS RECEIPTS: THE GENERAL TREASURY SHOULD PAY FOR THE TRANSMARINE POST: REQUIREMENTS FOR NEW CONTRACTS: METHOD OF MAKING CONTRACTS: THE LOWEST BIDDER AND THE LAND SERVICE: THE OCEAN SERVICE VERY DIFFERENT: BUT LITTLE UNDERSTOOD: LOWEST-BIDDER SYSTEM FAILURES: SENATOR RUSK'S OPINION: INJURIOUS EFFECTS OF LOWEST BIDDER: INDIVIDUAL EFFORTS AND RIGHTS.

As it will scarcely be denied that the Government should furnish ample and liberal mail facilities, as well foreign as domestic, to its people, in view of the well-established fact that these facilities can not be attained in any other way, the question naturally arises, how shall the Government discharge this clear and unquestionable duty to the citizen? I trust that it will be admitted that we can not rely on the Sailing-ship mail, or the Naval steam mail, or the Private Enterprise mail; while it is equally evident that we can not depend on the Foreigner's mail, or should not if we could.

A first step toward this important end, and one which every interest of the country demands, is the establishment of a governmental steam mail system, a fixed steam policy, based upon common-sense, and guided by the dictates of justice to the enterprising citizen, at the same time that it is productive of certain efficiency toward the people. It can not be denied that our legislation on this subject has hitherto been that of expedients, and merely temporary arrangement. We have had no wise, immutable purpose, no great fixed rule of action. We have laid no broad foundations for a system which should extend itself wherever our trade extended, and work equitably with all of the large interests of the American people. When, by a spasmodic effort, we opened communication in one direction, and found that we had a few steamers running, we became self-complacently satisfied with our action, shut our ears to all other equally urgent claims and appeals, forgot that we had simply commenced instead of having finished, and contented ourselves with the appearance of a mail system rather than its realization. When we established the two lines to Europe, which were positively necessary to commerce, it was not so much because those were the only necessary lines, but because they were urged by parties who stood ready to build the ships, and run them in the service. The California lines were established because the people would not longer tolerate the neglect of our large and important interests in the Pacific. But there were several other lines which were of the greatest importance to our commerce and manufactures, extending to fields where we could have established the richest trade, but which never enlisted the attention of Congress, simply because there was no one who made it his special business to press them. This of itself manifested great want of a matured steam mail system, which should operate equally on all of the great interests of the country, and extend its facilities wherever American industry and enterprise could find a footing.

We need not only a steam system, but a fixed steam policy that shall extend from generation to generation, and operate equally, as well at all times and in all fields of American enterprise, as upon all classes. No such system can be built up in one year or in ten years; much less by one spasmodic steam effort, even in the right direction, followed by an eternal sleep, or a total indifference. It is the work of ages. It is not a system which, if set in motion, will work on perpetually of itself, without assistance. It needs constant care and fostering; and its results prove it worthy of all the care and attention that can be expended on it. The mature system of Great Britain has not grown up in a day. It has been constantly before the British public during twenty-four years, and has never been neglected for an hour. There has been no hiatus in it; for this would have disrupted the system, broken the chain, and resulted in disastrous failure. Neither has the one great purpose been changed every few years to suit the caprice of some new cabinet. It was a great cardinal idea, founded in reason and justice, that has gone on maturing from year to year; and none had the hardihood to touch it, or trifle with the people's purpose in establishing it; not even so far as to make it a passing text for demagoguery. It composed and yet composes a part of the far-reaching and controlling policy of the British crown; a purpose limited not to the visions of to-day, or the financial crises and panics of to-morrow, or to some new field of British effort, to be developed in a year or two; but limited to that time only, when men shall cease the strife of commerce, abandon the pursuit of wealth, yield the palm of enterprise, and unlearn the love of money and its power. There has been nothing spasmodic in this; nothing fitful, alluring, and evanescent; nothing that held out a hope to the enterprising man, and deceived him in all the essential conditions of its fulfillment in the end. It was founded in reason, founded in necessity; and it was well determined that it should endure.

It is creditable to the administration of President Polk, that there was one effort made in this country to found a similar judicious and fruitful system. We had until that time taken no notice whatever of marine steam navigation; and British steamers swarmed around our coast north and south, thick as cruisers in a blockade. (See Paper E.) Indeed, it was a veritable blockade of our commerce, and told most disastrously upon our enterprise and independence. The Cabinet of Mr. Polk, headed by our present venerable Chief Magistrate of the Nation, determined to reverse this system, and did it as effectually as any thing can be accomplished in a country, where a given policy, however wisely inaugurated, has no guaranty or safeguard against the revolutionary changes of new administrations. They established a basis of action, and inaugurated three steam lines under contracts which placed them beyond the attacks of the capricious; well knowing that if the system had merits, they would be manifested to the country within ten years by the fruits of these lines. The period was shorter than that designated by Great Britain; yet with the immensely rapid development of our people it inwrought itself into the affections of the public so effectually, even in this short time, that none will dare risk his reputation by attacking it boldly, or by other means than an indirect and harassing guerrilla warfare. But here the effort ended, and the system, deprived of the aids and new lines which Congress should have extended it, and of that continued development which was necessary to its perfection and usefulness, has been left to work itself out and die, until it may be resurrected by another great demonstration of public sentiment, and by an administration bold enough and far-seeing enough to grasp the interests of the whole country, and do itself and the people justice. It is due, however, to the reputation of a lamented and departed statesman, the large-minded and noble Gen. Rusk, of Texas, to say that he made a manly and systematic effort in 1852, after seeing the fruitful workings of the three lines noticed, to extend, enlarge, and fortify the good beginnings of President Polk and Secretary Buchanan, by inaugurating several new lines, and establishing a permanent and recognized basis of action. But in all this he was thwarted by the machinations of narrow-minded men, who deemed it a higher effort to agitate the country and endeavor to separate the North and the South, than establish and secure those mighty aids to industry which should give development, wealth, strength, and security to the whole American Union, and check the fratricidal blow of the disunionist.

It is essential that we shall have in this country a policy on this subject, which shall remain untouched under the changes of administrations, just as standard commercial laws and regulations remain untouched. No system of such magnitude can mature or cheapen when but a few years are assigned to it, and when there is no certainty that it will survive the life of a single ship. Companies undertaking the mail service under such circumstances must be paid larger sums for their general establishment, that they may be enabled to meet the exigencies and caprices of irregular legislation, which may at the close of their contracts suddenly throw a dozen good ships out of employment. Every well-regulated and efficient company necessarily builds new steamers through all the stages of its existence; and when the term of its service expires, necessarily has several partially new ships. If the term of service is to be short, and if there is no rule by which those who do good service on a line are to have, in renewing contracts, the preference of new and untried parties, then it is reasonable to infer that they can not themselves incur the expense of so large an establishment of new and useless vessels, and that their service is either to be inefficient and unreliable, or that the department must pay a larger price than necessary under a judicious and fixed system. The want of a reliable system operates injuriously both on the department and on the contractors. It subjects us to expedients, and to all of the evils of constant lobbying and legislation on the subject. And one of the first wants of this system is an extension of the term of contracts. The period hitherto assigned has not been long enough for the proper development of the service. The short term is a constant premium for building an inferior class of vessels, which shall have become worthless by the time that the contract expires, so as not to entail loss upon the company. Such vessels are ever unfit for the mails or passengers. Short terms also keep the subject continually before Congress and the Executive Government, and foster that extensive and depraved lobbying which has wrought so injuriously on our legislation. Moreover, there is no reason why the term of service should not be extended, when it will certainly simplify and cheapen it, if, as I have assumed, the progress of engineering is not such as to throw well-built ships out of use within twelve years, or in any way introduce improvements by which the Government could get the service at lower rates. Nor have we any reliable hope for the future. We wait until commerce has been perverted into unnatural channels, and then become suddenly and galvanically aroused, when it is too late to effect a change until two or three years have expired in building ships. We thus find ourselves in the midst of the difficulty without having foreseen it, and without being prepared for it. The wise man planned the campaign before others had even contemplated any disturbance of the peace. As a matter of course he controlled the battle, and brought up the victory in his own way.