stripes, and these were put afloat mainly at the
cost of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Three hundred steamships,
employing fifty thousand men earning a million and a half of dollars
monthly; these men supporting and educating families, and themselves
becoming reserves for their respective countries to call upon for
naval service in time of war! Look at the ports from which these
vessels wherever built, now hail, and which they enrich by the capital
they distribute. Behold the warehouses, repairing shops, foundries,
and other various industries connected with these enterprises, and the
shipowners engaged in promoting them pursuing a legitimate business.

Then look at home. First calculate the sum of one hundred and thirty
millions of dollars that has been annually paid by us to those
foreigners for transporting ourselves and our merchandise. Then go
back in memory to the time when in the days of sailing ships, our
packets almost monopolized the ocean on account of the skill of our
officers and seamen.

Reflect that if a policy of ordinary foresight had prevailed in our
national councils when these sailing ships were killed off by the
competition of the newly-invented iron screw, their old commanders
and their noble crews would have kept their employment, and as they
died would have been succeeded by men as worthy as themselves, adding
to our revenue in time of peace, and, when needed, supplying a navy
now maintained at an immense expense--God save the mark!--for the
protection of an extinct merchant service!

See how few American steamship offices, how few repairing shops we
have need of for these foreigners, who employ their own agents instead
of our merchants, and naturally endeavor to do all the work required
upon their vessels at home. Then search for the American shipowners
engaged in trade beyond the seas. Look for them in their deserted
counting-rooms of South street, in New York. As their old captains
have retired in poverty and are begging for such offices as that of
inspector or port warden, or for same subordinate place in the
Custom-House, while the seamen are mostly dead with none to come after
them, so South street is abandoned by its honorable merchants, who
have, in too many cases, moved up to Wall street, and become gamblers
by being deprived of their original business. When you have done all
this, finish up your investigation by estimating how much sooner the
rebellion might have been overcome,