than brave and skillful men, until our guns are all antiquated and our forts crumbling. The hundreds of millions it has cost Europe to experiment have been spent equally for our benefit, and by one general consent all Europe has arrived at certain. conclusions that it would be the extremity of folly to reject. There may be better and cheaper clothing next year, but we must wear something to-day. There may be faster ships and railway trains five years hence, but we must travel to-day. There will be better and cheaper roofing some time, but we can not live in the rain to wait for it. It will cost us something to build even a good defensive navy and good coast defenses. True. It was the bold and frank estimate of the Fortifications Board that a proper system of coast defense, though not a complete one, would cost $126,000,000. But that would be a smaller per capita cost than the system that the country was professing to perfect between 1826 and 1860. This would be $2.52 per head; that was $3.35, on the bases of the censuses of 1880 and 1884. us. It is said that we intend no war, and nobody wants war with True; we are not a warlike but we are a military people. The surest guarantee of peace is the ability to defend ourselves. It is not only true that we cannot fight, but we cannot make manly argument. We cannot "talk back." In the face of the most grievous wrongs, our diplomatists must protest, and temporize, and explain, and procrastinate, and compromise. We shut our eyes to history and declare that we shall never have war. From blue skies the awful War of the Rebellion thundered. Some day there may be a demand made upon us that for very shame-" for the glory of mankind to distinguish him from the brute creation"-we must abruptly and finally deny. Then the valor of ten millions of brave citizens capable of making the best army in the world will be as idle as a summer wind, and a day of humiliation may come that will be a stinging shame for a thousand years. who can be called responsible for our on the mountains to fall upon them. ing of guns and the launching of ships. ing hatred, nursed until the inevitable day of ample satisfaction; fierce and devilish rage, infinitely more demoralizing than a Then if any are found brave struggle of a ready people resulting in an honorable defeat. In 1882, when the Republicans had, for the only two years in the last twelve, the control of the House of Representatives, the first ships of what may be a new navy were ordered, and public sentiment amply justifies the still cramped and meager appropriations made annually for that purpose. Since 1882 and 1883 the conclusions already described had been reached by manufacturers and ordnance officers. Yet the Democratic House of Representatives stubbornly refuses to take the indispensable steps to national defense. In the last Congress the Republican Senate sent two simple propositions to the Democratic House of Representatives, one to invite bids for furnishing 10,000 tons of rough parts for steel guns for the army, another authorizing a similar step in behalf of the navy. The House paid no attention to either bill. In the spring of 1886 the Senate took the meager House Fortification Bill and amended it with a perfectly reasonable proposition to build guns for land defense, and insisted upon its amendment. The contest ran through both sessions of the Forty-ninth Congress and resulted in the failure of any fortification bill whatever. The Democratic House sent no practical substitute. Whatever propositions came from the House varied widely from those adopted by impartial experts outside; and if they meant anything more than delay, the purpose was not visible. At this moment of writing, July 2, a fortification bill has not been even reported to the House. The Republican party wisely and patriotically demands, in its national platform, due regard to this great national necessity. The leading and controlling forces of the present Democracy spent twenty-four years in criticism of all the work of the Federal Government. They have not yet learned to take up that work. They have not yet become a true party of the Nation. We are 63,000,000, and we have countless wealth; yet we stand like Samson, blind and shorn, among the nationsblind to our destiny aud our magnificent duties. In a great day of calamity we could not even have Samson's satisfaction of crushing our enemies in a common destruction. THE AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE. BY HON. NELSON DINGLEY, JR., M. C. FROM MAINE. THE enterprising character of the early settlers of the United States, their location on or near the sea-coast, the opportunities for sea-fishing, the abundance and cheapness of excellent timber for ship-building, and the absence of manufacturing industries and other openings outside of the farm for ambitious young men, early turned the attention of our people to maritime pursuits. This maritime spirit was fostered by the founders of our government, incidentally as a source of material prosperity, but mainly to promote commercial independence and secure national safety. The first Congress which assembled after the adoption of the Constitution, on recommendation of Washington, and with the approval of Madison and Jefferson, enacted that only American-built vessels should be entitled to an American register or enrollment and license; that the coastwise trade should be restricted to American vessels; and that foreign vessels participating in the business of carrying our exports and imports should be subject to higher charges, and their cargoes to higher duties, than the vessels of the United States and their cargoes. Under the influence of this protection of American vessels in both the foreign and coastwise trade our merchant marine rapidly increased, until the embargo and war of 1812 restricted its growth. In 1789, the year in which the Federal Governernment went into operation under the Constitution, the total tonnage of the merchant marine of the United States was only 201,562 tons, of which 123,893 tons were in the foreign trade and only 77,669 tons in the coastwise trade. In 1807 the total tonnage of our merchant marine had increased to 1,268,548 tons, of which 848,307 tons were in the foreign trade and 410,241 tons in the coastwise trade. Between 1807 and 1840 our shipping in the foreign trade had alternate periods of decline and recovery without permanent growth, our tonnage in that trade in the latter year reaching only 899,765, or but a few tons more than in 1807. But during this period our tonnage in the coastwise trade rose to 1,285,154 tons. Up to 1840 sailing vessels almost exclusively were employed in deep-sea trade; and even in our coastwise trade steam tonnage to the extent of only 202,330 tons appeared in the returns for that year. In the fifteen years between 1840 and 1855, culminating in the latter year, the merchant marine of the United States employed in the foreign trade had its highest prosperity-the tonnage rising each year and in 1855 reaching 2,535,136 tons, of which all but 115,045 tons were sail. The same year our coastwise tonnage was 2,676,865 tons, of which 770,285 tons were steam. While the tonnage of our vessels in the foreign trade remained very nearly stationary in the six years between 1855 and 1861, yet relatively, in consequence of the growth of our exports and imports, it was slowly retrograding-showing that the period of decline had been entered upon. In 1855 75 per cent of our foreign carrying trade was done by American vessels. In 1861 this percentage had fallen to 69 per cent-a decline of 9 per cent, or 1 per cent per annum. The real magnitude of this decline is most clearly shown by the decadence in ship-building during this period. In 1854 there were 507 ships, barks, and brigs built in the United States for the foreign trade. In 1856 there were 409 built. In 1857 there were 309 built; in 1858 only 122; and in 1859 only 117. At no period since has the decline in ship-building for the foreign trade been so great year by year as in the six years between 1855 and 1861. In 1861 our tonnage in the foreign trade was 2,642,628 tons, of which only 102,608 tons were steam-vessels. In the coast wise trade we had 877,204 tons of steam-vessels and 2,020,981 tons of sail-a total in our home trade of 2,897,185 tons. During the four years of civil war the operations of the Confederate cruisers resulted, directly by capture and indirectly by sale to avoid capture, in a loss of more than one third of our shipping in the foreign trade, our tonnage in that trade having been but 1,602,583 tons on the 30th day of June, 1865, only 98,008 tons of which were steam. As our foreign commerce, i.e., our exports and imports, were increasing, our relative loss was much greater than these figures indicate the percentage carried in American vessels having been only 28 per cent in 1865, against 66 per cent in 1861 and 75 per cent in 1855. This decline of our foreign carrying trade has continued slowly since the close of the civil war, the official statistics showing that only 14.2 per cent of our exports and imports were carried in American vessels in the fiscal year ending June 30, 1887-a decline of about three fourths of one per cent per annum. Our registered tonnage, some of which is in the coasting trade or the trade between Atlantic and Pacific ports, was 1,015,563 tons June 30, 1887, of which only 173,571 tons were steam-vessels. Our coastwise tonnage of that date was 3,090,282 tons, of which 1,542,717 tons were steam-vessels and 1,447,565 tons sailing-vessels. Computing by the accepted rule that one ton of steam is equal in carrying power to three tons of sail, our coastwise tonnage in 1869, after it had recovered from the disturbing effect of the civil war, was the equivalent of 4,300,892 tons of sail. Notwithstanding the unexampled development of competing railroads, on June 30, 1887, we had in the coastwise trade an equivalent of 6,075,716 tons of sail—an increase of nearly 50 per cent in twenty years. It is worthy of note also that our coastwise tonnage is more than three times as large as the home fleet of Great Britain, and more than five times as large as that of any other nation. The decline of our merchant marine in the foreign trade is a humiliating fact which has justly attracted wide-spread attention within a few years, and has caused an earnest discussion of the causes, and the remedies which should be applied to recover our position in the deep-sea carrying trade. This topic is rarely alluded to by a free-trader in or out of Congress without the assertion that the decline is the direct result of the national protective policy of the country adopted |