s of the commission, and the mass
of testimony taken at the hearings: the whole filling three large
pamphlet volumes, in all of nearly two thousand pages.[HS]

The majority reported a bill. This was presented as merely an extension
of the principles of the Postal Aid Act of 1891, involving "no new
departure from the established practice of the Government." Its ocean
mail sections were intended "simply to strengthen the existing act on
lines where it has happened to prove inadequate." The subsidies which it
granted were termed, inoffensively, "subventions," and its promoters
protested that these "subventions" were "not in any opprobrious sense a
subsidy or bounty." They were "not bounties outright, or mere commercial
subsidies such as many of our contemporaries give." They were "granted
frankly in compensation for public services rendered and to be
rendered."[HT]

The proposed measure, however, was more than an extension of the act of
1891. Its scope was indicated by its title: "To promote the national
defence, to create a force of naval volunteers, to establish American
ocean mail lines to foreign markets, to promote commerce, and to provide
revenue from tonnage." The subsidies offered comprised mail subventions
to steamships; subventions to general cargo carriers and deep-sea
fishing-ships, both steam and sail; and retainers to officers and men of
American merchant ships and deep-sea fishing vessels enrolling as naval
volunteers. It opened with provisions for the establishment of a naval
reserve.

The new mail subsidies provided for ten specified lines of "steamships
of the United States" of sixteen, fourteen, thirteen, and twelve knots
speed, to the greater countries of South America, to Central America, to
Africa, and to the Orient, with a total maximum subsidy for the ten
lines of $2,665,000 a year. In all contracts it was to be specified that
the steamships must carry in their own crews a certain increasing
proportion, up to one-fourth, of men enrolled as naval volunteers. The
subventions to American general cargo carriers, or the "tramp" type of
ships, and deep-sea fishing-vessels, steam or sail, were fixed at these
rates: those engaged in the foreign trade for a full year, five dollars
per gross ton; so engaged for nine months and less than a year, four
dollars; for six months, two dollars. These subsidies were conditioned
upon these requirements: the employment in the crews of a certain
proportion of naval vo