Chapter 19

"But your Committee regard this proposition as one, the mere money feature of which is of minor consequence, when brought into comparison with other more important considerations. The question is no longer whether certain individuals shall be saved from loss or enabled to make fortunes, but whether the _American_ shall succumb to the British lines, and Great Britain be again permitted to monopolize ocean mail steam transportation, not only between Europe and America, but throughout the world. We are aspiring to the first place among the nations of the earth, in a commercial point of view--a place which belongs to us as a matter of right--and are we to suffer ourselves to be overcome by British commercial capitalists under the auspices of the British crown? Shall it be said that, at the very moment when our steamships are admitted to excel those of any other people on the face of the globe, our enterprising citizens have been forced to relinquish the proud position they have attained, for the want of a few thousands of dollars, when the national treasury is full to overflowing? Let this end be attained and our great commercial rival will have postages and freights all her own way, while we shall be compelled to contribute, as heretofore, to her undisputed supremacy.

"With a view to a full and fair understanding of this important subject, your Committee have communicated, through their Chairman, with the Executive Departments of the Government and the presidents of the various companies engaged in carrying the ocean mail by steam, and will now proceed to lay before the Senate the results of their careful inquiries. It may not be improper here again to note, by way of illustration, the benefits to be derived from ocean steam mail transportation, when in successful operation, as manifested in the case of the British Cunard line, under the auspices of the British Government. During the first six years of its existence, the line above named received from the Government no less than $2,550,000, while the Government received from the Company, in the form of postages, the enormous sum of $7,836,800, or $5,826,800 net revenue.

"The Government has paid to the line, (the Collins,) for mail service, in the two years, $770,000, and has received from the line $513,546.80. If the receipts be deducted from the outlay, the balance against the Government is $256,453.20 for the whole time, or $128,226.60 per annum.

"Thus it appears, that from a fair statement of the account current between the line and the Government, the latter is out of pocket, at the end of the two first years of the undertaking and under circumstances the most disadvantageous to the line, $256,453.20, or in other words, has paid $128,226.60 per annum, for carrying the ocean mail by steam over about six thousand miles of the greatest commercial thoroughfare in the world, for which, as yet, it has received nothing in return. But your Committee would ask, what has _the country_ received in return for this $256,453.20? They will furnish the answer. The country has received through the proprietors of this line, in the form of freights and passage money, a no less amount than $1,979,760.85, in cash; and, if the reduction in the prices of freight formerly paid to the British line be taken into account, nearly as much more, by saving the difference in freights and passage money, to say nothing of the general advantages derived by all of our producing interests from the existence of this American line, which, as your Committee believe, are incalculable. The money account will then stand as follows: Government debtor to $256,453.80; Country creditor to $1,979,760.85 _in cash_; and if the former be deducted from the latter, the balance in favor of the country will stand $1,723,307.05, _in cash alone_, leaving out of view the duties on increased importations caused by the establishment of the American line."

Speaking of the Pacific Mail Steam Company, the Report says:

"It will be seen from the above, that the total cost of the six vessels which have been accepted by the officers whose duty it was to supervise them and decide whether they had been built in accordance with the requisitions of the law and terms of the contract, and whose decision is presumed, by your Committee, to be conclusive in the premises, has been $1,555,069, and that their aggregate tonnage is 7,365 tons, instead of 5,200 tons, the amount agreed for. In addition to these ships, as your Committee are informed, the company has in the Pacific seven steamers, with an aggregate tonnage of five thousand tons, not yet accepted by the Government. The additional steamers are, and have been, always kept ready to replace the mail steamers in the event of detention. The cost of these additional steamers has been, it is stated, about two thirds of that of the accepted steamers of the same class, say about $1,036,712, making in all an outlay for steamships alone, of $2,518,337.

"It appears that the whole number of passengers, of all classes, transported by the Pacific Mail Ship Company, the line in question, previously to December 31, 1851, from Panama northward, has been 17,016, and from Oregon southward, 13,332. The prices of passage have constantly fluctuated, but, on the date above named, the 31st of December, 1851, the average rates were, for the first cabin, two hundred and twenty-two dollars; second cabin, one hundred and sixty dollars, and steerage, one hundred and seven dollars, between Panama and San Francisco. In the early stages of emigration the prices were increased in consequence of the enormous prices of labor and supplies on that comparatively unsettled coast, but were subsequently reduced. At the commencement of the undertaking, the Company incurred, of necessity, vast expenses in the selection of proper harbors for taking in provisions, water, coal, etc., and in the construction of _depots_; and even at present, coal and supplies of every description are sent to the Pacific _via_ Cape Horn, a distance of from thirteen thousand to fifteen thousand miles.

"The freights from Panama northward, have been small in amount, and confined to the lighter descriptions of articles sent by express, while the mails have been very large, amounting in some instances to one hundred and fifty bags, each, and, together with coal, water, etc., occupying all of the space not required for passengers. From California, the freights southward, have consisted of treasure, amounting, it is supposed, to the value of seventy millions of dollars, but it is extremely difficult to compute the worth accurately, as a large portion of the gold, etc., sent has been in the possession of passengers, and the value does not appear in the manifests."

In noticing the Panama Railroad and the California lines, the Report says:

"Nearly two millions of dollars have already, as your Committee are informed, been expended on this important work, by a company possessed of ample means, and the completion of it can not fail to open the way for a vast commerce, between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and at the same time cause our fellow-citizens in California and Oregon no longer to be regarded as exiles. This road being once opened, the passage of the Isthmus, now so much dreaded, will be effected with perfect ease and comfort in a couple of hours, instead of two or three days, as at present, and families, instead of individuals, will be enabled to seek homes in the fertile valleys of our possessions on the Pacific coast. The value of the lines of ocean steamers, of which your Committee have been speaking, to the commercial and other great interests of our country and the world at large, can not well be estimated until this road shall have been finished and put into full operation. When such shall be the case, the trade between California and Oregon, as well as that of China and the islands of the Pacific and Indian oceans and the Atlantic States and Europe, which now passes around Cape Horn, a distance of some fifteen thousand miles, will be enabled to take a direct course across the Isthmus of Panama, the passage of which will require but two or three hours. The United States mail, from San Francisco to New York, has already been transported within the space of twenty-five days and eighteen hours, a day less than the time claimed to have been taken by any other route, at a period, too, when there were but seven or eight miles of the road in operation. On a late occasion, five hundred government troops were sent to California by this route, and were placed at the point of their destination in a little more than thirty-five days, without any serious desertion or accident of any kind. A similar operation by the way of Cape Horn would have occupied six months at least. The store-ship Lexington, which sailed from New-York for San Francisco, during the last year, arrived at the latter place on the last day of February, 1852, after a passage of _seven months and one day_. In a country the military establishment of which is so small as that of the United States, facilities of concentrating troops at points distant from each other, in a short time, are of incalculable value, and may be said to add manifold to the efficiency of the military force.

"From what has been already said, it will be seen that the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, independently of the associate line on this side of the Isthmus, and without taking into view the cost of the railroad, has expended in the construction of mail steamers alone $2,518,337; and if to this be added $2,606,440.45, the expense incurred for a similar purpose by the Company on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus, the entire cost of steamships, to the two companies engaged in the transportation of the California and Oregon mails, has been $5,124,777.

"It is no more than sheer justice that your Committee should state that the California lines, east as well as west of the Isthmus of Panama, have proved themselves worthy in all respects of the confidence of the country. In no single instance has an accident occurred involving loss of life or serious injury in any way to the travelling public. Such is the strength of the vessels employed, that on two several occasion when, owing to dense fogs and under-currents, cooperating with the defectiveness of the charts of the Pacific coast, one of the ships of the Aspinwall line struck, at one time, upon a soft bottom, and, at another, upon a hard sandy bar, she was steamed off, after thumping, without the slightest injury whatever. Facts such as these are the more important, inasmuch as several steamers have lately been lost on the same coast with a great sacrifice of human life, evidently owing to a want of the strength necessary to resist, effectually, the force of the winds and waves. In the opinion of your Committee, the security afforded to travellers by the strong fastenings and heavy timbers of the ocean mail steamers, built as they are, under the supervision of naval officers, who are selected on account of their thorough acquaintance with and experience in such matters, and made capable of sustaining heavy armaments, is a matter of the greatest moment. Experience has shown that, in the race after gain, our countrymen are, perhaps, more regardless of risk to human life than the people of any other country in the world. Scarcely a day passes without fresh evidences of the truth of this proposition. The river, as well as the sea-going steamers, are generally built with reference to speed and lightness, coupled with smallness of draft of water, and hence, in case of touching the ground, or of violent storms, it is found that if one portion of the frame gives way, the breaking up of the entire structure follows with a rapidity that is but too well calculated to show the slight manner in which these vessels are constructed. Your Committee think that the additional expenditure of a few hundreds of thousands of dollars is a matter not worthy of consideration, when brought into comparison with the loss of life, and would rather see even millions devoted to the construction of _strong steamers_, than witness the sudden and heart-rending ruptures of the dearest ties of our nature, caused by the accidents that so frequently occur. Such is their feeling of stern disapprobation of the reckless indifference respecting the safety of passengers, daily manifested by some of the proprietors and officers of steam lines, that they are resolved, so far at least as they are concerned, not in any way to countenance, directly or indirectly, such a course of proceeding. In the extension of the system of ocean mail transportation which they propose to recommend, care will be taken, that the steamers which carry the Government mails shall be regarded as national ships, to a certain extent, and as such, under the charge of the law-making power, and be so built as to secure safety to travellers; and that, in all contracts, this consideration shall be regarded as one of paramount importance."

Regarding a few sailing-ship owners in New-York and Boston, who had memorialized Congress against the Collins and other lines, the Report says:

"The memorialists are loud in their complaints respecting the alleged improper interference of the Government with matters that should be left, as they say, entirely to individual enterprise, which in their opinion becomes paralyzed under the effects of Government patronage bestowed upon some to the exclusion of others. If the authors of this memorial will take a fair and dispassionate view of the matter, they will, as your Committee think, be convinced that they are wrong in their supposition, and that the Government has not gratuitously meddled in concerns with which it should have nothing to do. The merchants and ship-owners referred to seem to forget, in the first place, that the system of ocean steam mail navigation is intended to secure adequate protection for our commerce from foreign aggression in the event of war; and in the second, that it was instituted at a moment when the fine packet ships, to which the memorialists refer with such becoming pride, had in fact been driven from the ocean to a certain extent by the overwhelming power of a British mail steam line, sustained by the British Government, which had monopolized ocean mail and passenger steam transportation, as well as the freights of lighter and more perishable descriptions of merchandise. If, as these gentlemen have stated, the sailing ships have been made to succumb, it has been under the force of an agency more certain and not less powerful than the one named by them--wielded by foreign capitalists and directed by a foreign government claiming for itself the supremacy of the ocean. The Cunard line of ocean steamers had been in possession of a monopoly of freights, letter postage, and passage money for years, in despite of the attempts of the memorialists to resist, successfully, before the Government of the United States, seeing that American interests were made tributary to foreign capital, aided by a foreign government, adopted the wise course of correcting the evil by kindred means, and placing, at least, to a certain extent, American interests under the auspices of American intelligence and enterprise. What would have been the condition of the New-York lines and other ships had not the Government of the United States thought proper to extend its aid to the establishment of the Collins line? Would it have been any better than at present? or rather would it not have been infinitely worse? Had the Cunard line continued to prosper, as it must have done in the natural course of things, would it not in all probability have increased its number of ships until it would have monopolized every description of ocean transportation? Would not the trade with the United States have been entirely carried on in British steamers, navigated at small expense, and therefore able to do the carrying trade at low prices? Again, what would have been the condition of the Southern coasting business, so far as mails, passengers, and light freights, at least, are concerned, had the fourteen British steamers then employed been permitted to operate, unchecked by the American line of mail steamers, between New-York and Chagres? Would it not have been entirely at the mercy of the commissioned agents of the British crown, who so well know how to avail themselves of opportunities to promote their own interests by advancing those of their government? To carry the inquiry further, what would have been the condition of our possessions on the Pacific coast, visited as they would have been by British steamers--for where is the spot on the inhabited or inhabitable globe to which they do not bear the union jack of old England--had not the Aspinwall line been established? Such is the universal pervasion of the money power in British hands, that at present, as is well known, the Cunard line has extended a branch to Havre, to transport goods to England almost free of cost, with a view to appropriate to itself the freights from that quarter, and thus not only crush the American line of steamers to Havre, but be enabled to underbid the Collins line, and, if possible, again monopolize the trade with the United States over that route. Would all this have raised the prices of freights in American sailing vessels, and given an advantage to the memorialists in question, who had at one time monopolized to themselves the freights, postage, and passage money in sailing ships? or would not, on the contrary, such a state of things have operated so to give a British tendency to trade everywhere, and to furnish freights to British ships, at prices at which the American ship owners could not afford to navigate their vessels?

"What, the Committee would ask, has the Government of the United States done in the premises? Having under its charge the control and direction of the United States mails upon land and sea, it has thought proper to say that it would pay for the transportation of the mails in _American steamers_, which can, if necessary, be converted, at a small expense, into war steamers, and adopted, if need be, into the navy proper, at an appraised value, and thereby become efficient protectors of American commerce in the event of a war. This is the head and front of the Government's offending, and has, forsooth, aroused the ire of the commercial monopolists of New-York, Boston, and elsewhere, because they can not any longer enjoy the gains which, for more than a quarter of a century, they had wrested from the mass of consumers throughout the land, north, south, east, and west. Your Committee must say that, in their opinion, such complaints come with a bad grace from such quarters, and it is to be feared that victorious steam will ere long, without the aid of the Federal Government, supersede the sailing ships of the memorialists, through the instrumentality of the discoveries daily in progress, whereby the navigation of vessels propelled by that power will be made a matter of comparatively small cost."

Speaking of steam communication with Para and Rio de Janeiro, the Report further says:

"When the almost unbounded capacity for trade of the basins of the La Plata and Amazon is taken into view, embracing as it does a great variety of useful products which may be advantageously exchanged for the manufactures and agricultural productions of our own country, the mind is at a loss what limit to assign to the trade to which civilization and the extension of commercial facilities must eventually give rise. Nor are the advantages of this great prospective commerce to be confined to the immediate intercourse between this country and the regions to which we refer. While the prevalence of certain winds, and the form of the coast of South-America, are favorable to a direct trade with the continent of North-America, they are such as to compel the commerce with Europe to pass along our shores, and thus constitute our Atlantic seaports so many stopping places at which the ships of the old world may touch in their voyages to and fro. Heretofore the policy of the governments which occupy the regions watered by the La Plata and the Amazon, and their respective tributaries, has been so exclusive in its character as to trammel, if not entirely prevent, their intercourse with distant nations. The different sovereignties which have sprung into existence since South-America became independent of European control, have been so jealous of each other that they have appeared to try which should be most succesful in expelling foreign commerce, lest it might bring to some one of them benefits which others did not and could not possess. A wiser policy, however, appears to be about to prevail since the fall of Rosas, and there is good reason to believe that, hereafter, the commerce of those communities with the rest of the world, will be placed upon a more liberal foundation. Should such be the case, Rio de Janeiro can not fail to become the great centre of a largely increased trade in the southern hemisphere."

"Should it be preferred to limit the extent of the American line to Para, at the mouth of the Amazon, the largest river in the world, there is at present a Brazilian line between that point and Rio de Janeiro, which, with the lines between Rio and the mouth of the La Plata, will render the connection complete.