The British axiom “Trade follows the flag” is the key to the national prosperity of the United States. In recent years and more particularly since the World War, American men-of-war have been busily engaged in “showing the flag” in the seven seas and ports of the world. The officers and men of the Navy have everywhere left the stamp of American individuality and everywhere have secured the respect and consideration that is the due merit of a great nation. Wherever the American flag has been carried by our splendid fighting machines it has been on a mission bent not upon destruction or aggression, but to succor and assist less fortunate peoples and to establish an entente cordiale between the American Republic and the nations of the earth. The personnel of our Navy deserve the greatest praise for the uniform and consistent way in which they have cultivated a deep rooted and lasting friendship between our people and the nationals of other countries. It is an unfortunate fact, however, that the United States has not made the most of these splendid opportunities for commercial development. While the flag has proceeded unmolested over the face of the earth and received a hearty welcome, the carriage of our foreign trade has been allowed to lag behind. Each year since the close of the World War has seen a further deterioration in the greatest single agent of American prosperity. The people of the United States should be vitally interested in the American merchant marine from the point of national prosperity as well as security. The personnel of our Navy should realize that an adequate merchant marine in peace is essential to the prosecution of a great naval war in time of trouble.
The fifth anniversary of Navy Day will be celebrated on October 27 under the auspices of the Navy League of the United States. October 27 was selected as Navy Day on account of its being the birthday of Theodore Roosevelt, twenty-sixth .president of the United States, who throughout his life bent his energies to the perpetuation of American institutions and particularly the integrity of American sea-power. The sponsors of Navy Day will in their annual celebration this year emphasize the importance to the nation of our peace-time place upon the high seas. To inform the American public of the importance of this industry to our national prosperity and national security is the primary object of Navy Day 1926.
Six per cent of the productive effort of the American people must find an outlet beyond our shores. This means that one out of every sixteen individuals gainfully employed in the United States works solely for the foreign markets. If those people are to continue to enjoy the prosperity and high standard of living which is now second nature, our country must insure the unmolested transportation of the surplus of farm and manufactured products to our foreign customers. While the United States has always adhered to the proposition that the high seas are the common property of all nations, other countries have from time to time seen fit to disregard this opinion. On at least three occasions in a relatively short national existence our country has resorted to arms to defend this principle. The fathers of the Republic early realized the importance to a nation such as ours, rich in natural resources, of free movement of our carrying trade. In fact our Navy had its inception in the desire of the American people to protect their merchantmen from the Barbary pirates. The United States’ entry into the late war swiftly followed a threatening menace to American merchant shipping. Germany’s declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare jeopardized our national prosperity. From this war we emerged with a powerful Navy and an adequate merchant marine—ample assurance of our economic independence. Our position in 1919 was decidedly favorable. No longer were we as a nation dependent for a continued prosperity upon the whims, eccentricities, or peace conditions of any other nation. Our position was an enviable one.
When the representatives of the great maritime powers of the world assembled in Washington in 1921, we were in a position to make generous sacrifices. These sacrifices are known to the world. As a material evidence of our good intentions we scrapped splendid fighting craft of the post-Jutland type—in some cases ninety per cent completed.
As a further evidence of this nation’s abhorrence of war and a sincere desire for international good will, we have recently sent a delegation to the preliminary arms conference at Geneva. If any practical scheme can be evolved for the further limitation of land or naval armaments, we may be very certain this country will not be loathe to again set the example. It must be borne in mind however that from a strictly military point of view the further the limitation of armament is carried the more important becomes the merchant marine. Correspondingly as we reduce the number and size of fighting craft the value of our merchant fleet for war purposes increases until in the final analysis the total abolition of naval armaments would place the nation with the largest fleet of merchant vessels as the great naval power of the world.
In a world where navies were outlawed the nation with a fleet of swift passenger vessels under her flag would be the great maritime power of the earth. There are today afloat trans-oceanic liners constructed of steel with gun mount installations which could be converted into commerce raiders and cruisers within a week’s time. Should limitation of naval armament ever reach that stage these are the potential capital ships of the morrow. Aside from their capacity as converted cruisers such vessels would be indispensable to any nation desiring to carry hostilities into territory other than her own. The slow moving cargo vessels if in sufficient quantity could supply the fleet with tender facilities but to act as transports, prospective aircraft carriers, and to supplement the fighting arm of the fleet, fast converted liners would be essential. The United States stands next to Great Britain in actual merchant ship tonnage. The British Empire has 309 vessels ranging in speed from fifteen to nineteen knots while the United States has fifty-one, the former nation outranking this country six to one in fast liners. France runs second to Great Britain with seventy- eight such vessels, Italy having thirty, and Japan nineteen. When considering the sea power of any nation it is well to have in mind such figures.
Our presidents one and all have been advocates of American sea power. It is a fact worth noting that where the Navy of the United States has been concerned no phase of political faith or party feeling has ever been injected into the question. As the spokesmen of the American people it may be well to review the opinion of some of our great leaders regarding a merchant marine.
George Washington
December 8, 1790
I recommend it to your serious reflections how far and in what mode it may be expedient to guard against embarrassments from these contingencies by such encouragements to our navigation as will render our commerce and agriculture less dependent on foreign bottoms, which may fail us in the very moments most interesting to both these great objects. (General peace and security of the United States.)
John Adams
November 22, 1797
The commerce of the United States is essential if not to their existence at least to their comfort, their growth, prosperity, and happiness. The genius, character, and habits of the people are highly commercial. In short, commerce has made this country what it is and it cannot be destroyed or neglected without involving the people in poverty and distress. Great numbers are directly and solely supported by navigation. The faith of society is pledged for the preservation of the rights of commercial and seafaring no less than of other citizens.
Thomas Jefferson
December 16, 1793
But it is as a resource of defense that our navigation will admit neither neglect or forbearance. The position and circumstances of the United States leave nothing to fear on their landboard, and nothing to desire beyond their present rights. But on their seaboard they are open to injury, and they have there too, a commerce which must be protected…
The carriage of our own commodities, if once established in another channel, cannot be resumed in the moment we may desire. If we lose the seamen and artists whom it now occupies, we lose the present means of defense, and time will be requisite to raise up others, when disgrace or losses shall bring home to our feelings the error of having abandoned them.
Franklin Pierce
December 4, 1854
Our foreign commerce has reached a magnitude and extent nearly equal to that of the first maritime power of the earth, and exceeding that of any other. Over this great interest, in which not only our merchants, hut all classes of citizens, at least indirectly are concerned, it is the duty of the executive and legislative branches of the government to exercise a care- fid supervision and adopt proper measures for its protection.
Ulysses S. Grant
December 5, 1870
Our depressed commerce is a subject to which I called your special attention at the last session, and suggested that we will in the future have to look more to the countries south of us, and to China and Japan, for its revival. Our representatives to all these governments have exerted their influence to encourage trade between the United States and the countries to which they are accredited. But the fact exists that the carrying is done almost entirely in foreign bottoms and while this state of affairs exists we cannot control our due share of the commerce of the world, that between the Pacific States and China and Japan is about all the carrying trade now conducted in American vessels. I would recommend a liberal policy toward that line of American steamers—one that will insure its success, and even increased usefulness.
(Second Annual Message, December 5, 1870)
Rutherford B. Hayes
December 3, 1877
The commerce of the United States with foreign nations, and especially the export of domestic productions, has of late years largely increased, but the greater portion of this trade is conducted in foreign vessels. The importance of enlarging our foreign trade, and especially by direct and speedy interchange with countries on this continent, cannot be overestimated; and it is a matter of great moment that our own shipping interests should receive, to the utmost practical extent, the benefit of our commerce with other lands. These considerations are forcibly urged by all the large commercial cities of the country, and public attention is generally and wisely attracted to the solution of the problems they present. It is not doubted that Congress will take them up in the broadest spirit of liberality and respond to the public demand by practical legislation upon this important subject.
(First Annual Message, December 3, 1877)
Chester A. Arthur
December 6, 1881
The continuing decline of the merchant marine of the United States is greatly deplored. In view of the fact that we furnish so large a proportion of the freights of the commercial world and that our shipments arc steadily and rapidly increasing it is a cause of surprise that not only is our navigation interest diminishing, but it is less than when our exports and imports were one half so large as now, either in bulk or value.
(First Annual Message, December 6, 1881)
Benjamin Harrison
December 3, 1889
There is nothing more justly humiliating to the national pride and nothing more hurtful to the national prosperity than the inferiority of our merchant marine compared with that of other nations whose general resources, wealth, and seacoast lines do not suggest any reason for their supremacy on the sea. It was not always so, and our people are agreed, I think, that it shall not continue to be so…That the American lines of steamships have been abandoned by us to an unequal contest with the aided lines of other nations until they have been withdrawn, or in the few cases where they are still maintained are subject to serious disadvantages, is matter of common knowledge.
(First Annual Message, December 3, 1889)
William McKinley
March 4, 1897
Commendable progress has been made of late years in the upbuilding of the American Navy, but we must supplement these efforts by providing as a proper consort, a merchant marine amply sufficient for our own carrying trade to foreign countries. The question is one that appeals both to our business necessities and the patriotic aspirations of a great people.
December 5, 1899
The reestablishment of our merchant marine involves in a large measure our continued industrial progress and the extension of our commercial triumphs. I am satisfied the judgment of the country favors the policy of aid to our merchant marine, which will broaden our commerce and markets and upbuild our sea-carrying capacity for the products of agriculture and manufacture; which, with the increase of our Navy, means more work and wages to our countrymen, as well as a safeguard to American interests in every part of the world.
December 3, 1900
American vessels during the past three years have carried about nine per cent of our exports and imports. Foreign ships should carry the least, not the greatest, part of American trade. The remarkable growth of our steel industries, the progress of shipbuilding for the domestic trade, and our steadily maintained expenditures for the Navy have created an opportunity to place the United States in the first rank of commercial maritime powers.
Besides realising a proper national aspiration this will mean the establishment and healthy growth along all our coasts of a distinctive national industry, expanding the field for a profitable employment of labor and capital. It will increase the transportation facilities and reduce freight charges on the vast volume of products brought from the interior to the seaboard for export, and will strengthen an arm of the national defense upon which the founders of the government and their successors have relied. In again urging immediate action by the Congress on measures to promote American shipping and foreign trade, I direct attention to the recommendations on the subject in previous messages.
Theodore Roosevelt
January 23, 1907
It would surely be discreditable for us to surrender to our commercial rivals the great commerce of the Orient, the great commerce we should have with South America, and even our own communications with Hawaii and the Philippines.
Woodrow Wilson
December 7, 1915
To speak plainly, we have grossly erred in the way in which we have stunted and hindered the development of our merchant marine.
The merchants and farmers of this country must have ships to carry their goods.
It is of capital importance not only that the United States should be its own carrier on the sea and enjoy the economic independence which only an adequate merchant marine would give it, but also that the American hemisphere as a whole should enjoy a like independence and self-sufficiency if it is not to be drawn into the tangle of European affairs.
There are other great matters which will be thrust upon our attention whether we will or not. There is, for example, a very pressing question of trade and shipping involved in this great problem of national adequacy. It is necessary for many weighty reasons of national efficiency and development that we should have a great merchant marine. The great merchant fleet we once used to make us rich, that great body of sturdy sailors who used to carry our flag into every sea, and who were the pride and often the bulwark of the nation, we have almost driven out of existence by inexcusable neglect and indifference and by a hopelessly blind and provincial policy of so-called economic protection. It is high time we repaired our mistake and resumed our commercial independence on the seas.
Warren G. Harding
April 12, 1921
The Republic can never realize its righteous aspirations in commerce, can never be worthy of the traditions of the early days of the expanding Republic, until our shipping has government encouragement, not government operation, in carrying our cargoes under our flag, over regularly operated routes, to every market in the world agreeable to American exchanges. It will strengthen American genius and determination because carrying is second only to production in establishing and maintaining the flow of commerce to which we rightfully aspire.
Calvin Coolidge
December 6, 1923
The entire well-being of our country is dependent upon transportation by sea and land. Our government during the war acquired a large merchant fleet which should be transferred as soon as possible to private ownership and operation under conditions which would secure two results, first, and of prime importance, adequate means for national defense; second, adequate service to American commerce.