We earnestly hope that President Roosevelt will look into the record of the former subsidy experiment before he ever signs a bill of like character.
In 1856 a little more than three-fourths of all our exports and imports were carried in American bottoms. In 1881 seventy-two million bushels of grain were shipped from New York to Europe, and not one bushel of it went in American ships.
Less than one-sixth of our marine freight was handled by ourselves in 1881, and the amount has gone on dwindling.
Great Britain improved her methods of building ships; built cheaper and better vessels than ours. The law did not permit us to buy from her, but did permit her to bring her ships into our waters and capture our trade; and so she captured it.
We are the only people in the world who are not allowed to buy ships wherever we can buy them cheapest. We are the only serfs alive who are chained hand and foot to obsolete Navigation laws. And to escape the logical consequences of our folly we do not propose to repeal the monstrous laws which led us into the difficulty, but we do propose to compel the taxpayers to make good, by subsidies, the difference between the costly American ship and the cheaper, better European ship!
When statesmanship gets down to that low ebb its morality is gone.
A venal Congress may pass such a measure, but we do not believe an honest President will sign it.
Because he is not perpetually making an exhibit of himself, a good many shallow politicians sneer at W. R. Hearst and call him a myth.
Because he is not everlastingly on his feet reeling off speeches which come from nowhere and go nowhere, the average regulation “orator” looks down upon the modest, silent man from New York as a very inferior mortal, indeed.
Yet W. R. Hearst, with all his shyness and silence, has a way of hitting out quick, hard and sure that does more good for the people than all the “orators” have done in the last decade. If there is anything on this blessed earth that we have got enough of at this time, it is talk, _talk_, TALK! From Presidents in fact and Presidents in prospectus, from Senators of all shades and Congressmen of every variety down to oratorical Federal Judges, College Doctors and legislative lights we have floods of talk, _talk_, TALK! The misery of it all is that this oratory doesn’t mean anything. It strikes a bee-line for the waste basket.