Chapter 11

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.