Page:Carl Schurz- 1902-03-09 Foreign Commerce.pdf/8

 trade in them than there is now. But there may be much more. In 1869, and  stood before a committee of Congress. What they said on this point can be condensed into two sentences: “Relieve our shipbuilders of the duty on the materials entering into the construction of the iron ship, and they can compete successfully with foreign builders. The difference in the cost of labor would be overcome by the superiority of American mechanics.” Is not that good authority? Attract American ambition, capital and energy once more to ocean shipping by opening new opportunities, and our ship yards will have more work than ever. Neither should it be said that the higher wages to be paid to our officers and seamen would prevent our ships from competing with the foreigner. In the best days of our wooden merchant fleet before 1860 our officers and crews received far higher pay than those of any other nation, and yet they successfully held the sea against the world. Why should they not do the same on iron ships with a fair chance?

I repeat, freedom to buy and freedom to build ships—that will give you again an American merchant marine to be proud of; that will send the stars and stripes again over all the oceans, and nothing else will. In vain will you try to reach the end by sly schemes to circumvent the logic of things and the economic laws of this world of ours.

I come to the fourth point, that if we sell to foreign nations, we must expect to buy from them, for commerce is mutual service. Is it necessary to argue so self-evident a truth before intelligent business men? And yet we have heard strange doctrines—ancient superstitions revived—in our days: that commercial intercourse with foreign nations is a thing of doubtful desirability; that importing is sinful; that goods may go out of the country, but only cash should come in; that when an American merchant sends a ship to a European port with a cargo that cost here $100,000, and he sells that cargo in Europe at a profit enabling him to buy a cargo there costing $125,000, and he ships that cargo to a South American port and sells it again at a profit enabling him to buy $150,000 worth of hides and other merchandise to be brought to New-York, the balance of trade will be against us $50,000, and the United States have lost that amount. And such things we hear at the end of the nineteenth century—the century whose glory it is to have annihilated time and space, thus bringing man nearer to man, nation nearer to nation than they have ever dreamed of being, so that they may without hindrance exchange thought for thought, service for service, benefit for benefit. I think the barbarous doctrines I have