exceptional legislation by a considerable remission of duties in their
favor. But it is not enough.

In order to compete successfully with foreigners, they should obtain
the repeal of all duties which make their daily life so much more
expensive to them than it is to their fellow craftsmen in Scotland.
But having already more protection than any other class of mechanics,
they have scarcely the presumption to demand any partiality to that
extent. Another, and a more forcible reason for their lack of success
is that there has been no competition in the importation of ships to
stir them to exertion. Had there been, the first difficulty might more
readily be overcome. The illustration used by Mr. Frothingham already
given, applies with greater force to ship building than to any other
industry. The importation of ships is absolutely prohibited, whereas
that of all other articles is either free or accompanied by a duty.
And it is worthy of notice that the smaller the duty on whatever is
introduced, the greater is the constantly improving skill of our
domestic manufacturers in its production.

As an argument against free ships, opponents of the measure a few
years since circulated and placed on the desks of members of Congress,
a lithographed drawing. It represented among other things the
destruction of our vessels by the _Alabama_, and a personal
caricature, the compliment of which it does not become me to more
than acknowledge. Its chief ground was occupied by starving mechanics,
standing listlessly around deserted ship-yards and machine-shops.

There was some truth in this part of the picture. There was no reason
why mechanics should starve at that time when a common laborer
obtained from two to three dollars per day for his work, but there was
a reason for the abandonment of wooden ship-yards and old-fashioned
machine-shops.

Wooden ships were no longer in demand at home or abroad, and the world
had discovered better machinery to propel better ships. As an offset
to this pictorial argument, another might have been introduced,
exhibiting in the background the mere blacksmiths' shops of the free
cities of Hamburg and Bremen, as they existed before the era of iron
steamship building, and in the front the subsequent appearance of
great workshops and foundries, first built for the purpose of keeping
in repair the fleet of steamships bought by unhampered Germans to
do our American carrying trade, and afterwards kept in more