ARE OCEAN STEAM MAILS DESIRABLE AND NECESSARY FOR A COMMERCIAL PEOPLE? THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE DEMANDS THEM: MUTUAL DEPENDENCE OF NATIONS: FAST MAILS NECESSARY TO CONTROL SLOW FREIGHTS: THE FOREIGN POST OF EVERY NATION IS MORE OR LESS SELFISH: IF WE NEGLECT APPROVED METHODS, WE ARE THEREBY SUBORDINATED TO THE SKILL OF OTHERS: THE WANT OF A FOREIGN POST IS A NATIONAL CALAMITY: OTHER NATIONS CAN NOT AFFORD US DUE FACILITIES: WARS AND ACCIDENTS FORBID: THE CRIMEA AND THE INDIES AN EXAMPLE: MANY OF OUR FIELDS OF COMMERCE NEED A POST: BRAZIL, THE WEST-INDIES, AND PACIFIC SOUTH-AMERICA: MAILS TO THE CONTINENT OF EUROPE BY THE NUMEROUS CUNARD VESSELS: CORRESPONDENCE WITH AFRICA, CHINA, THE EAST-INDIES, THE MAURITIUS, AND AUSTRALIA: SLAVISH DEPENDENCE ON GREAT BRITAIN: DESIRABLE FOR OUR DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR SERVICE: FOR THE CONTROL OF OUR SQUADRONS: CASES OF SUFFERING: NECESSARY FOR DEFENSE: FOR CULTIVATING FRIENDLY RELATIONS AND OPENING TRADE: THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH WILL REQUIRE FASTER AND HEAVIER MAILS: OUR COMMERCE REQUIRES FAST STEAMERS FOR THE RAPID AND EASY TRANSIT OF PASSENGERS: MODES OF BENEFITING COMMERCE.
ARE OCEAN STEAM MAILS DESIRABLE AND NECESSARY FOR A COMMERCIAL PEOPLE? THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE DEMANDS THEM: MUTUAL DEPENDENCE OF NATIONS: FAST MAILS NECESSARY TO CONTROL SLOW FREIGHTS: THE FOREIGN POST OF EVERY NATION IS MORE OR LESS SELFISH: IF WE NEGLECT APPROVED METHODS, WE ARE THEREBY SUBORDINATED TO THE SKILL OF OTHERS: THE WANT OF A FOREIGN POST IS A NATIONAL CALAMITY: OTHER NATIONS CAN NOT AFFORD US DUE FACILITIES: WARS AND ACCIDENTS FORBID: THE CRIMEA AND THE INDIES AN EXAMPLE: MANY OF OUR FIELDS OF COMMERCE NEED A POST: BRAZIL, THE WEST-INDIES, AND PACIFIC SOUTH-AMERICA: MAILS TO THE CONTINENT OF EUROPE BY THE NUMEROUS CUNARD VESSELS: CORRESPONDENCE WITH AFRICA, CHINA, THE EAST-INDIES, THE MAURITIUS, AND AUSTRALIA: SLAVISH DEPENDENCE ON GREAT BRITAIN: DESIRABLE FOR OUR DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR SERVICE: FOR THE CONTROL OF OUR SQUADRONS: CASES OF SUFFERING: NECESSARY FOR DEFENSE: FOR CULTIVATING FRIENDLY RELATIONS AND OPENING TRADE: THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH WILL REQUIRE FASTER AND HEAVIER MAILS: OUR COMMERCE REQUIRES FAST STEAMERS FOR THE RAPID AND EASY TRANSIT OF PASSENGERS: MODES OF BENEFITING COMMERCE.
Having seen that the ocean steam mail service is largely developed in some countries, especially in Great Britain, and that the second and third commercial powers of the world, the United States and France, have not largely employed this important agent in their commerce, the inquiry naturally arises, whether fast ocean steam mails are desirable and necessary to the commercial prosperity of a people. Whether this question be considered in its relativeor its natural bearings, the reply is the same. Relatively considered, a large ocean steam mail service is indispensable to a people who are largely commercial, because the most noted commercial rivals of the world employ it, and thus either force them to its use, or the loss of their commerce, and the gradual transference of their shipping and trade into the hands of their rivals. Considered in its natural bearings, in its direct influences and effectsper se, it becomes even more evidently necessary, as the means of a ready and reliable knowledge of the condition, wants, and movements of all those with whom a commercial nation necessarily has business, or could or should create it.
The spirit of the age demands a more intimate acquaintance and communication than we have hitherto had with the outer world. Our knowledge of foreign lands has pointed out innumerable wants hitherto unknown, and suggested innumerable channels of their supply. Nations have learned to depend on each other as formerly neighbor depended on his neighbor for any little necessary or luxury of life. The luxurious spirit of the times requires the importation and exportation of an immense list of articles with which foreign countries were formerly unacquainted, but which have now become as indispensable as air, and light, and water. And if it is not necessary that these many articles shall be transported from land to land with the speed of the telegraph or the fleetness of the ocean steamer, it is at any rate necessary that the facts concerning them, their ample or scarce supply, their high or low price, their sale or purchase, their shipment or arrival, their loss, or seizure, or detention, should be made known with all of the combined speed of the telegraph, the lightning train, and the rapid ocean mail steamer. If we possess ourselves these facilities of rapid, regular, and reliable information to an extent that no other nation does, we will be the first to reach the foreign market with our supplies,the first to bring the foreign article into the markets of the world, and the proper recipients of the first and largest profits of the cream of the trade of every land.
If we neglect these precautions, and refuse to establish these facilities, because their cost is apparent in one small sum of expenditure, while their large returns in profits diffused among the whole people are not so palpably apparent to the common eye; if we leave to the genius and enterprise of the people that which private enterprise and human skill unaided can never accomplish; in a word, if we fail to keep up with the world around us, and to progresspari passuwith our wise, acute, and experienced commercial rivals, then, as a matter of course, the information which we receive from the foreign world must come through others, and those our rivals, and must be deprived of its value by the advantage which they have already taken of it. It is idle to suppose that any commercial nation on earth will not so arrange her foreign post as to exclude others than her own citizens as much as possible from its benefits. This is a paramount duty of the government to the citizen. It is therefore apparent that our commerce must of necessity greatly suffer when its conduct is at all dependent on foreigners and competitors, and that it is exceedingly desirable, for the avoidance of such a calamity, that we should have independent and ample foreign mail facilities of our own, wherever it is possible for our people to trade and obtain wealth.
It is clearly impossible that other nations should afford these facilities, or that our people should have confidence in them if attempted, or that they could be in any sense reliable in those many cases of exigency, national disputes, war, and accident, which usually afford us our best chances of speculation and profit. A dependence on foreigners for this supply of information, which never reaches us until it is emasculated of its virtues, is extremely hazardous. It fails just at the point where it is most desirable. Foreign nations, especially the commercial European nations, are constantly at war, and are constantly interrupting their packet service. The late Crimean and the present Indian wars are a good illustration. Our country, isolated from the contending nations, and fortified against continual ruptures by a policy of non-intervention, is peculiarly blessed with the privilege and ability to regularly and unintermittingly conduct her commerce and reap her profits, even more securely, while her rivals are temporarily devoting their attention to war. Such being the fact, it is wholly desirable and necessary to the end proposed that our steam post should on all such occasions regularly come and go, even amid the din of battle, and the conflict of our rivals, who for the time are powerless to oppose our peaceful and legitimate commerce, and are generally but too glad to avail its offerings.
There are many instances of the desirableness and the necessity of the transmarine steam post on important lines of foreign communication where we have a large trade, and yet no postal means of conducting it. Our immense trade with Brazil and other portions of South-America, which if properly fostered would increase with magic rapidity, sends its news and its freight by the same vessel, or is compelled to use the necessarily selfishly arranged, and circuitous, and non-connecting lines of Great Britain. A letter destined for Brazil, four thousand miles distant, must needs go by England, Portugal, the Coast of Africa, Madeira, and the Cape de Verdes, a distance of eight thousand miles, in a British packet. One destined for the Pacific Coast of South-America must go to Panama and await the arrival of the English packet, with London letters more recently dated, before it can proceed on to Callao, Lima, or Valparaiso. Letters destined to the West-Indies can go to Havana only, by American steamers; but they must there await theBritish line which takes them to St. Thomas, and there be distributed and forwarded to the various islands, the Spanish Main, the Guianas, Venezuela, and New-Granada by some one of the ten different British steam packet lines running semi-monthly from that station.
So with half of our letters which go to the Continent of Europe: they must go by the Cunard line to England, and thence by English steamers to the British Channel, the Baltic, the White Sea, the Mediterranean, Egypt, Constantinople, or the Black Sea. Those to places along the coast of Africa and to the Cape of Good Hope are dependent on the same English packet transit. For our communication with China, India, Australia, the East-Indies generally, and the Islands of the Pacific, we are entirely and slavishly dependent, as usual, on Great Britain. Instead of sending our letters and passengers direct from Panamá or San Francisco to Honolulu, Hong Kong, Shanghae, Macáo, Calcutta, Ceylón, Bombáy, Madrás, Sydney, Melbourne, Batavia, the Mauritius, and the Gulf of Mozambique, by a short trunk line of our own steamers, and from its terminus only, by the British lines, they now go first to England, as a slavish matter of course, then across the Continent or through the Mediterranean to Egypt, thence by land to the Red Sea, and thence to China and the East-Indies; or from England by her steam lines around the Cape of Good Hope to Australia and the East-Indies; or by slow and uncertain sailing packets direct from our own country, either around Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope. It is evident to every reflecting man who has given the subject any attention, that all of these lines of communication would be very desirable, and very highly profitable to our people at large; and that the latter and that along the West Coast of South-America could be easily established by two new contracts for that purpose, or in some other way, to the great and lasting advantage of our countrymen.
The transmarine post is very desirable for the better conduct of our foreign diplomacy and the consular service. It is now almost impossible for our ministers and agents abroad to hold any thing like a regular correspondence with the State Department, unless it be those in Southern and Western Europe. I was told last year by our Minister in Rio de Janeiro that his dispatches from the Government at home seldom reached him under four months; and Mr. Gilmer, the Consul of the United States at Bahia, reports, in the "Consular Returns" now about to be published, that his dispatches never come to hand under four months, that they are frequently out six months, and that many are lost altogether. This is the experience and the reïterated complaint of nearly every foreignemployéeof the Government, who has any zeal in prosecuting his country's business, and may find it necessary to get instructions or advice from home. Many knowing the delays, uncertainty, and irregularity of correspondence, make no attempt whatever to communicate regularly with the Department. We frequently express great surprise that we have no intelligence from our ministers, special ambassadors, and agents; but do not reflect that in the majority of cases dispatches have to be sent by irresponsible and slow-sailing vessels, or by the steamers of Great Britain, which it may be safely asserted are in no particular hurry to deliver them to us. Three several letters sent by me at separate times through the British mail from Rio de Janeiro for New-York never reached their destination.
Nor is it better with our squadrons on foreign stations. They receive their orders in the same slow and irregular way, and find it almost as easy to send a vessel when they wish to communicate with the Navy Department, or await the movements of their dull old storeships, as to attempt any other means of intercourse. It may be safely said that they are not actually under the control of the Department, in many important cases, one time in ten. Whatever the dispute, it is left entirely at the will of the Commodore, or it remains unsettled altogether. Our recent accumulated Paraguayan difficulties is a case in point. American citizens were driven from the country, and their valuable property confiscated. They applied to the Commodore for relief, but could not obtain it. Our surveying vessel, engaged in a permitted scientific exploration, was fired into and had some of her men killed; and redress being demanded by the Captain from the Commodore, it was refused. The Commodore feared transcending his instructions: he could not communicate with the home authorities much under a year; and so the case rested, and yet rests. These wants, papable as they are in times of peace, become doubly pressing in time of war. Let a conflict commence with England, or France, on whom we depend for mails, or with their allies, and they could easily surprise and destroy every squadron which we have upon the high seas months before they would necessarily hear of a declaration of war, or know why they were captured. The very contemplation of such possibilities is intolerable, and should be sufficient of itself, setting aside all considerations of commerce and diplomacy, to arouse our nation to the adoption of the proper means for its safety and defense.
An effective steam postal marine is unquestionably most desirable and necessary for the defense of our country, and for the prosecution of any foreign war. Lord Canning, the British Post-Master General, recently said in a report to the House of Lords, that although all of the steam mail packets might not be able to carry an armament, or be required in the transport service in time of war, yet the mail facilities which they would then afford would be more important and necessary than at any other time. He had no idea that because engaged in a foreign war the postal service would be useless, but to the contrary, more than ever indispensable. Such proved to be the fact in the late contest in the Crimea, and such is to-day the case with regard to the troubles in India and China. Their postal vessels have proven a first necessity in both of these wars, not only for transport of the troops, but for speedy intelligence also. Without them, England could not have entered the Crimean contest, and the French forces would have been compelled to remain at home. Turkey would have been overawed, and Constantinople would have fallen before the Russian fleet. We are to-day, and always must be, liable to a foreign war. We have a great boiling cauldron running over with excitement all along our southern and south-western borders. Central America, Cuba, the West-Indies, and South-America are far more foreign countries to us than Europe or the Mediterranean to England. Cuba will no doubt be at some day our most important naval station and possession. Even the defense of our own coast would require an immense transport service; for Texas is nearly four thousand miles from Maine, and California is seven thousand from the Atlantic seaboard. No better proof can be given of the necessity of a large and extra naval transport service than the late Mexican war. But for our steamers it would have taken us years to concentrate an army on the shores of Mexico. It was a tedious process at the time; for our ocean mail packets were not then in use. We could now land a larger number of men there in one month than we then did in a whole year. But our transport facilities are not yet by any means adequate.
A large postal steam marine is desirable as a means of cultivating the sympathies and respect of foreign nations, by bringing them into closer friendly and commercial connection with us; and for creating among them that respect and consideration which the British statesmen so well know to be an easy means of conducting diplomacy, andan unfailing source of commercial advantages. It is not necessary that we shall impose upon foreign countries in these respects by false pretenses; but it is truly desirable, and it would be profitable to an extent little imagined, to let them know our real importance as a nation, and understand our pacific policy andbona fideintentions. These are important considerations when we wish to carry any point, establish any line of policy, remove any prejudice; and nothing will more readily produce them, and arouse attention to our articles of export, and induce a people to establish a regular business with us, than these ever-present, convenient, and imposing mail steamers. Nations as well as individuals estimate us by our appearances; and while it is not desirable that we shall appear more than we are, it is yet very important that foreign nations with which we have business shall know our real merits, and respect us for what we are intrinsically worth. There is evidently no means of our commercial triumph over other nations without a liberal and widely extended steam mail service; and as this triumph is of paramount importance to us, who have so many resources, so is the ocean steam mail as the only means of securing it. (See views of Gen. Rusk, inpapers appended.)
It has recently been suggested by parties who certainly have not thought very deeply on the subject, that the completion of the Atlantic Telegraph, which every body reasonably expects soon to be completed, will so inaugurate a new era in the transmission of intelligence, that one of its effects will be the supersession of fast ocean mails, and consequently of subsidized steamers. It is a first and palpable view of this question that much of the important intelligence between the two countries requiring speedy transmission will be sent through the telegraph, notwithstanding the necessarily high prices which will be charged for dispatches. These communications will be sententious,summary, and of great variety. The markets, prices, important political and other events, private personal and unelaborated intelligence will come over the wires just as they now come over existing land lines. The line will create extra facilities for operations on both sides, and cause more mutual business to be done. It will thus create the necessity for more correspondence than before, for particulars, elaboration, items, bills of lading, exchanges, duplicates, minute instructions, etc., to which there will be no end. The main transaction of any business being made more quickly, it will be essential for the papers to pass with greater dispatch. If there were twenty telegraphic wires working day and night, which never can be the case from their expensiveness, they could not do in a month the correspondence and business done by one steamer's mail. Beside this, those who got their dispatches first would have a decided advantage over those who would be compelled from the mass of business to wait several days. It is an advantage of the steam mails that all get their letters and papers at the same time; and that no one has thus the advantage of the other. It is hardly possible for one unacquainted with the postal business to conceive how large a mass of mail matter is deposited by each steamer; and it is only necessary to see this to realize that the Atlantic Telegraph will never materially interfere with the steamers except to require of them greater speed and heavier mails.
It is the experience on all of our land routes that the thousands of miles of telegraph, so far from superseding the mails, have made more mails necessary, have caused and required them to be much faster, have necessitated more correspondence, and induced people to live in more mutual dependence, to have more communication with one another, and to make the home or the business of a man less than formerly his closed castle, which none entered,and which no one had any occasion to enter. The American telegraph has now arrived at great perfection, and sends its electric throb to every corner of the Union, save California only. At the same time, the railroads of the country are taxed to their highest capacity. No period ever witnessed so many, so rapid, and so well-filled mails. It is evident that no telegraphic system can properly do detailed business. First, it is and must ever remain too costly. Second, it would require about as many lines as business men, to give them all equal chances, and no one the profitable precedence. Next, there is nothing positively accurate and fully reliable. No signatures can pass over the line. No transaction can be made final by it. No bank will pay, or ought to pay, money on public telegraphic drafts. And, as in the land service, so in the ocean. The telegraph across the ocean will simply create far more business for the mails, and make it desirable and indispensable that they shall be sent and received by the most rapid conveyance known to the times. Thus, it is evident that this new and as yet not fully established agent of international communication, so far from obviating our rapid transmarine service, will but the more effectually necessitate it.
Nor must it be forgotten that our commercial prosperity largely depends on the ready and comfortable transit of passengers. The passenger traffic has increased with astonishing rapidity during the last eighteen years. Our smaller merchants can go abroad when mail steamers are plenty, and make their own purchases and sales, without paying heavy commissions and high prices to middlemen; do their business on less capital; and thus benefit themselves and reduce the prices to our consumers. Compared with sailing vessels, these few mail steamers become the forerunners of trade and commerce, and create an immense service for the sail. They enable us to save large sums ofinterest or advances on merchandise consigned, and give to us quick returns from the products which we ship abroad. This has long been evident to Great Britain, and she has acted liberally on the suggestion. So desirable is the service for the general prosperity of her people, that she expends annually for her foreign steam mails nearly six millions of dollars, while they do not return to the treasury much above three. She regards the expenditure as she does that for the navy and the army, a necessity for the public preservation and prosperity.
As regards the lines that we now have, they are among the noblest in the world. For aggregate comfort, convenience, safety, speed, and cheapness, they are not equalled by the most famous British lines. More luxurious tables, more neatness, cleanliness, and roominess, more general comforts than have always been characteristic of our Havre, Liverpool, and California lines, can not be found in the world. The only objection to them is, that the service is not sufficient; that the trips are not frequent enough; and that the companies are not enabled to sustain a larger steam marine which would proportionally cheapen the service, and accommodate more persons and a much larger class of interests. Our experiences of the benefits of existing lines, limited as those lines are, present an unanswerable argument for the desirableness and necessity of a liberal steam postal system, and a large and judicious extension of the present service. (See views of Senate Committee, 1852,Paper E.)
THE COMMERCIAL CAPABILITIES OF OCEAN STEAM: STEAM MAILS ARRIVE AND DEPART AT ABSOLUTELY FIXED PERIODS: UNCERTAINTY IS HAZARDOUS AND COSTLY: SUBSIDIZED STEAMERS GIVE A NECESSARILY HIGH SPEED TO THE MAILS: MONEY CAN NOT AFFORD TO LIE UPON THE OCEAN FOR WEEKS: COMPARED WITH SAIL: STEAMERS TRANSPORT CERTAIN CLASSES OF FREIGHT: THE HAVRE AND THE CUNARD LINES: THE CUNARD PROPELLERS: STEAMERS CAN AFFORD TO TRANSPORT EXPRESS PACKAGES AND GOODS: GOODS TAKEN ONLY TO FILL UP: WHY PROPELLERS ARE CHEAPER IN SOME CASES: STEAM IN SOME CASES CHEAPER THAN THE WIND: AN ESTIMATE: THE PROPELLER FOR COASTING: STEAM ON ITS OWN RECEIPTS HAS NOT SUCCEEDED ON THE OCEAN: MARINE AND FLUVIAL NAVIGATION COMPARED: MOST FREIGHTS NOT TRANSPORTABLE BY STEAM ON ANY CONDITIONS: AUXILIARY FREIGHTING AND EMIGRANT PROPELLERS: LAWS OF TRANSPORT: RAPID MAILS AND LEISURE TRANSPORT OF FREIGHT THE LAW OF NATURE: THE PRICE OF COALS RAPIDLY INCREASING: ANTICIPATED IMPROVEMENTS AND CHEAPENING IN MARINE PROPULSION NOT REALIZED.
THE COMMERCIAL CAPABILITIES OF OCEAN STEAM: STEAM MAILS ARRIVE AND DEPART AT ABSOLUTELY FIXED PERIODS: UNCERTAINTY IS HAZARDOUS AND COSTLY: SUBSIDIZED STEAMERS GIVE A NECESSARILY HIGH SPEED TO THE MAILS: MONEY CAN NOT AFFORD TO LIE UPON THE OCEAN FOR WEEKS: COMPARED WITH SAIL: STEAMERS TRANSPORT CERTAIN CLASSES OF FREIGHT: THE HAVRE AND THE CUNARD LINES: THE CUNARD PROPELLERS: STEAMERS CAN AFFORD TO TRANSPORT EXPRESS PACKAGES AND GOODS: GOODS TAKEN ONLY TO FILL UP: WHY PROPELLERS ARE CHEAPER IN SOME CASES: STEAM IN SOME CASES CHEAPER THAN THE WIND: AN ESTIMATE: THE PROPELLER FOR COASTING: STEAM ON ITS OWN RECEIPTS HAS NOT SUCCEEDED ON THE OCEAN: MARINE AND FLUVIAL NAVIGATION COMPARED: MOST FREIGHTS NOT TRANSPORTABLE BY STEAM ON ANY CONDITIONS: AUXILIARY FREIGHTING AND EMIGRANT PROPELLERS: LAWS OF TRANSPORT: RAPID MAILS AND LEISURE TRANSPORT OF FREIGHT THE LAW OF NATURE: THE PRICE OF COALS RAPIDLY INCREASING: ANTICIPATED IMPROVEMENTS AND CHEAPENING IN MARINE PROPULSION NOT REALIZED.
Believing that no further arguments or facts are necessary to show that a rapid steam mail marine is desirable and essential to the successful government of the country, to our foreign commerce, and to the growth of individual interests and a general prosperity of the people, I shall now make some few inquiries concerning the Commercial Capabilities of steam, as the most effective agent for the rapid transit of the ocean, and the most expensive agent for the transport of goods. After this, it will be necessaryto examine into the Cost of Steam, as a subject closely allied to its general capabilities.
Whatever may be said of the wind as a cheap agent of locomotion, this much may be safely predicated of steam vessels for the mails; that their time of departure and arrival has an absolute fixity which is attainable by no other means, and which is highly conducive to the best interests of all those for whom commerce is conducted. No reasoning is necessary to show to the man of business, or even to the pleasure-seeker, the importance of approximate certainty as to the time when the mail leaves and when he can receive an answer to his dispatches. He may not be able to give clearly philosophic reasons for it; yet he feels the necessity in his business; and it certainly relieves him of many painful doubts, if nothing more. Uncertainty in commercial operations is always hazardous and costly to the great mass of the people, who as a general thing pay more for whatever they get, on the principle that we seldom take a venture in an uncertain thing unless it holds out inducements of large profit, or unless we get a high price for guarantying it. So in commercial correspondence, which constitutes the great bulk of the ocean mails. Let uncertainty prevail for but three or four days beyond the time when we should have news from abroad, and every body is in doubt, every body speculates, and in the end every body is injured.
Nor is this certainty in the time of arrival and departure of the mails more desirable than their speed. The common sense of the world has settled down upon the necessity of rapid mails; and all of the ingenuity of the age is now taxed to its very highest to secure more speed in the transmission of intelligence. Many interests demand it. Money, which represents labor, is continually lent and borrowed in bills of exchange, acceptances, deposits, and in actual cash sent across the seas. The length of time forpassing the bills and correspondence, or the specie itself, thus becomes an exceedingly important item to those who are to use them, and consequently to the ultimate consumer for whom they are conducting the commercial transaction. What community would to-day tolerate the idea of sending three millions of dollars per week, and five millions of credits between England and the United States on a sailing ship of whatever quality, with the probability of keeping it lying unproductive on the ocean for thirty days? Extend this to weekly shipments of the same amounts, and have at one time on the waters between the two countries twelve million dollars in specie and twenty in credits, tossing about the ocean, unproductive and unsafe, and entailing all of the evils incident to the uncertainty as to the time when it will arrive. But if this is not sufficient, extend the inquiry to South-America, and China, and India, and see how enormous and useless a waste of money and interest is incurred in the many millions which by sailing vessels and slow steamers is fruitlessly gilding the ocean for months. Money is too valuable and interest too high to keep so many millions of it locked up from the world. At two and three per cent a month, the nation, or, what is the same thing, its commercial and mercantile classes, as representing the producing, would soon become bankrupt.
The only avoidance of these evident evils is in a rapid transmission of the mails, specie, and passengers. And herein consists the chief value of the rapid ocean steamer. It is an important case which the Telegraph, with all of its benefits, can never reach. It can never transmit specie; neither the evidences of debt nor of property. The voluminous mails, with all of their tedious details, upon which such transactions depend, must go and come on steamers, and on steamers only. They have the certainty, which will satisfy men and prevent speculation, gambling, and imposition; they have the speed, which shortens credit,keeps specie alway in active use, and enables commercial men to know, meet, and supply the wants of the world before they become costly or crushing; and they give a rapid and comfortable transit to passengers, who can thus look after their business, and save much to themselves and to the producer and consumer. Compared with sailing vessels their efficiency is really wondrous. Foreign correspondence was formerly very limited, and the interchange of interests, feelings, and opinions was slow and tedious. Each nation depended solely on itself; and instead of the brotherhood now prevailing, communicated through the costly channels of war, by messages of the cannon, and in powerful, hostile fleets. But the foreign correspondence of the world is really enormous, and rapidly increasing, since the introduction of ocean steamers; and no one will say that they have had a small share in producing that fraternal international spirit which is now so widely manifested in Peace Congresses, Congresses of the Five Powers, explanations, concessions, and amicable adjustments of difficulties. The peaceful influences and the civilization of the times are but another comment on the capabilities of steam.
There are also certain classes of freights which steam is better calculated than sailing vessels to transport; certain rich and costly goods which would either damage or depreciate if not brought speedily into the market. There are many articles also, as gold and silver ware, jewelry, diamonds, bullion, etc., and some articles ofvertuas well as use, which are costly, and have to be insured at high values unless sent on steamers; and which consequently can pay a rather better price. As in the case of specie, they are too valuable to be kept long on the ocean; but in the general traffic of the world there is so little of this class of freight that steamers can place no reliance on it as a source of income. These freights have abounded most betweenFrance and England and the United States. This is the principal reason why the New-York and Havre line of mail steamers has run on so unprecedentedly small a subsidy; a sum not more than half adequate to the support of a mail line but for that class of freights. The Cunard line has also derived a large sum of its support from the same source. All such articles passing by that line come from England, Ireland, and Scotland, where they are manufactured; and being shipped by British merchants, are given, as a matter of duty, to their own steamers. Another reason for the Cunard line getting most of those more profitable freights is that a steamer leaves every week; every Saturday; and shippers sending packages weekly are not compelled every other week to hunt up a new line, and open a new set of accounts, as would be the case if they attempted to ship by the Collins semi-monthly line.
These freights have hitherto proven a profitable source of income to that line. As there is no manufacturing done in this country for Europe, the Cunarders and the Havre as well as the Collins and Vanderbilt lines, have no freights that pay the handling from the United States to Europe. And not only has the Cunard line, by starting from home, taken all of these profitable freights from the Collins, but it has run a weekly line of propellers from Havre and taken the freight over to Liverpool free of charge for its New-York and Boston steamers, and thereby shared the freights and greatly reduced the income of the Havre line. There being a great superabundance of propeller stock in Great Britain, which can be purchased frequently at less than half its cost, and these vessels running the short distance between Havre and Liverpool very cheaply, (Seepages 108-13,) the Cunarders have cut the Havre freights down from forty to fifteen dollars per ton, and sometimes for months together to ten dollars per ton. As a matter of course, this price would not pay the handling andcare of these costly articles; but at fifteen dollars it enabled the Cunard line to fill their ships and derive some profit; as most of them, with the exception of thePersia, run slowly, use less coal, and have more freight room. All of these freights are, however, small in quantity, and not much to be relied on from year to year, as will be seen below, in consequence of the action of propellers.
There is another class of business which mail steamers can do at remunerating prices; but which is exceedingly limited anywhere, and not at all known on some lines. This is in Express packages. They pay a high price; but seldom reach more than three or four tons under the most favorable circumstances. In the early stages of the California lines, when there was a rush of travel to the gold regions, and a hurried transit required for a thousand little necessaries of life, the New-York and Aspinwall and the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's lines transported a large express freight outward at every voyage, amounting sometimes to two hundred tons; but the golden days of such cargo have long gone by, and California is now supplied like the rest of the world by the cheaper and more deliberate transport of sailing vessels; and the steamers are left to their legitimate business of mails and passengers. Taking together all of the classes of freights which steamers having mail payment are capable of transporting, they amount at present to but an insignificant part of the income by which these steamers can be run. During the last six years these freights have reduced more than one hundred per cent; and goods which were then profitable to the steamer, are now taken only "to fill up." And the chief reason for this reduction arises not so much from competition between the steam-lines, which well knew that they could not transport these freights when reduced to the present low prices, but from the introduction of a large number of propellers, some of which were originally designedfor this species of trade, and many others which were built during the war in the Crimea for the transport of troops. These ships were never prosperous anywhere, and are in nearly all cases at the present found in second hands; the original proprietors having lost a large share of their investment. Thus, purchased cheaply, and running with simply an auxiliary steam power, and making the passages but little shorter than the sailing vessels, and not even so short as their best passages, they have but little more daily expense than the sailing vessels, with all of the deceptive advantages of being called steamers. They thus get these better freights and a large number of immigrants, which with small interest on prime cost enables them to live.
Paradoxical as it may seem, there are yet some cases, even upon the ocean, in which steam can transport freight cheaper than the winds of heaven. And this species of trade constitutes one of the best capabilities of steam power applied to navigation. It is not in the long voyage between Europe and America, or between the East and California, or yet in the far-off trade among the calms and pacific seas of the East-Indies and the Pacific Islands; it is not in the smooth, lake-like seas of the West-Indies, where there is no freight whose transport price will pay for putting it on and taking it off the steamer; nor in the trade of Brazil whence a bag of coffee can be transported five thousand miles to New-York nearly as cheaply as it can from New-York to Baltimore or to Charleston; but it is in the coasting trade of almost every country, where the voyage is short. In the trade between New-York and Baltimore, between Charleston and Savannah, between Boston and Portland, or between New-Orleans and Key West, or New-Orleans and Galveston, the small sailing vessels spend one half of their time in working in and out of the harbors. Sometimes they are two days awaiting winds, to get out of a harbor, two days in sailing, and two days again in making and entering their port of destination; whereas a steamer would make the whole passage in one day to a day and a half. Now, the distance actually to be run, and for which the steamer will be compelled to burn coal is not very great; but the trouble of working the vessel in and out, against adverse winds and currents, and amid storms and calms, is sometimes excessive, while the delay and cost are disheartening. They have also the trouble of warping into and out of the docks, which is not the case with steamers.
Thus, it frequently takes a week for a sailing vessel to do the work that a steamer will readily do in twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Say that it takes the sail four times as long as the steamer to accomplish a given voyage. To do as much business as the steamer would do in the same time, would require four sailing vessels; four times as many men as one sail requires, or probably twice as many hands in the aggregate as the steamer would have; and would incur at least twice the expense of the steamer in feeding them. Now, there is also a much larger aggregate sum invested in these four sail, and the owners pay a much larger sum of interest on their prime investment. Or, in other words, the steamer with but a few more men, but little greater expense in living, a small coal-bill, an engineer and firemen, and a prime outlay of not more than double the capital, will carry four times the freight and passengers, without incurring probably so much as three times the expense of one of the sail. After the prime cost the most important item of expenditure in one of these small steamers is the coal; but the distance run being so short, and getting into and out of the harbor and docks being so easy, the vessel does large execution at little expense. The two most essential benefits, however, of her short voyage are, that she is not compelled to carry much fuel, and consequently occupies nearly all of her space with freight; and that the prices of freight on these short voyages are much larger inproportion than they are on long voyages. Sailing vessels charge very little more for a thousand miles than they do for five hundred; but a steamer may have to charge nearly three times as much; especially if she run fast, consume much fuel, and occupy her cargo-room with coal. There are distances at which steamers, however large, can not carry a pound of freight; but occupy all their available space with the power that drives them. In these long voyages sail becomes much cheaper.
It is by no means essential that these small coasting vessels shall be propellers; for to acquire the same speed they expend the same power and have the disadvantage of being deeper in the water, and not being able to go into all harbors with much freight. They have also the advantage of carrying more sail, and being generally better able to stand coast storms than a side-wheel of light draught of water. They are not quite so expensive in prime construction, but generally require more repairs, and must be on the docks much oftener. They are, however, much better suited than side-wheel vessels to voyages where a medium speed is required, and where the steam can be used at pleasure simply as an auxiliary power. In such cases there is a profitable economy of fuel. But speed has generally been deemed essential in this country, and the side-wheel is everywhere used. But entirely the contrary is the case in Great Britain and France. There the coasting business is conducted by screws almost altogether; and the speed does not transcend the limit of economy and commercial capability. They distinguish between the extremely fast carriage of mails and passengers on the one hand, and freights on the other; and although they wish the speed and certainty of steam, yet it is not the costly speed. When they know that a given quantity of fuel will carry freight eight knots per hour, they would consider it wasteful and foolish to consume twice that quantity of fuel justto carry it ten knots; and more especially so, when, in addition to the extra quantity of fuel, they would lose just its bulk in paying freight room. England is thus employing most of her vast fleet of coasting ocean steamers in her own trade, or in the foreign trade lying within a few hundred miles of her ports. And the voyages being short, her coals being cheap and convenient, frequently not above three dollars per ton to the coasters, and in addition to this, the prime cost of these vessels being smaller than in this country, as both iron and labor are cheaper, she has found them very profitable at home, and is insinuating them into all the short routes wherever she can get a foothold. It was not until she attempted the same species of self-supporting steam navigation with distant countries, that her propeller system failed her and involved her citizens in loss. Meanwhile it is more than probable that within the next fifteen years we shall find five hundred propellers scattered along the coasts of the United States.
Notwithstanding the eminent capabilities of steam when applied to coast navigation, or to the fluvial navigation of the interior, it has failed to make the same triumphs in the carriage of freights and passengers upon the ocean. And it is not alone because the voyage is long and the freights low in price. Steamers carry freights up the Mississippi river two thousand miles from New-Orleans, and find it profitable. Some run even as high as three thousand miles up that river and the Missouri; a voyage nearly as long as to Europe, and make money by it. But the circumstances are very different. They do not leave the dock at New-Orleans with even more than enough fuel on board for the whole trip, as the ocean steamers do. If they did they could carry no freight. But they stop every twelve to eighteen hours and take on wood just as they need it, fifty to a hundred cords at a time; and instead of occupying all of their available room with wood, they have thesteamer full of cargo, and have on board only fifty or sixty tons of fuel at a time, and only half that weight on an average. None of the best steamers on those rivers could take enough wood on board for the whole three thousand miles, even though they should not have a ton of freight. And compared with ocean steamers of the same engine power, they do not cost half of the money, I might say generally, not one third of the money. There is no reason, then, why these steamers should not carry large quantities of freight and make large sums of money by it. They have the great elements, fuel, freight capacity, and prime cost in their favor.
There is a large class of freights which are not transportable by steam on long ocean voyages under any conditions. We will grant that under the most favorable circumstances, where rich and costly articles are transported in small bulk, that propellers running at a low rate of speed, or just fast enough to anticipate sailing vessels, will make a living. But change the class of these freights into the great average class of those filling the thousands of sailing vessels, and deprive these screw vessels of an immense emigrant passenger traffic, and they would not pay their running expenses by fifty per cent. This style of freights, sailing vessels in their great competition have reduced to the lowest paying figure. The margin left for profit is so small that our ship-owners constantly complain that unless there are changes they must go into other business; and many of them say this honestly, as is shown by the hundreds of ships which of late years we can always find lying up, awaiting improvement in business. Now, let even the slowest and cheapest running screw vessel attempt to carry the same freights, to say nothing of fast side-wheel mail vessels, and we shall see against what odds the screw or other steamer has to contend. In the first place, her engines, boilers, coal, etc., occupy at least forty per cent ofher total registered tonnage. Grant that the additional expense of a steamer over a sail, that is, wages for engineers, firemen, coal passers, etc., and finding the same in food and rooms, costs even no more than the loss of an additional ten per cent of her freight room. In other words, considering her steam machinery, fuel, extra expenses, etc., to be equal to half of her freight room, it is evident that she would carry only half as much freight as a sailing vessel of the same size, and that she would get but half as much money for it.
It is thus clear, I think, that there is a certain class of ocean freights which steam can not transport under any conditions so long as there are sailing vessels on the ocean; and in that class are comprehended all the great standard and staple articles of the world, constituting in sum seventeen twentieths of all the freight passing upon the ocean. This being so, it is utterly idle to suppose that steam in any form can take the place of sail upon the ocean, even though the present prices for the carriage of standard articles should increase three hundred per cent.
There are many considerations which affect this question. The ordinary average passages of the ocean on long voyages are now very rapid; and some of the clippers have attained a speed which no freighting steamer may ever be expected to do on the high seas. They do not maintain this high speed as an average, but it is sufficiently high for all of the ordinary purposes of transport in the standard articles of commerce, and where the business of the clipper is done by a fast mail steamer. There is no positive necessity for the speedy transport that some have attempted to give to articles, whose presence in the markets, as the ordinary supplies of life, to-day, next month, or a month later, is a matter of total indifference to every one except the ship-owner himself. It but little concerns the public whether a cargo of cotton, or beef orpork, or corn is one month or forty-five days between the United States and England, so that it is safe in the end. It is an annual production that must have an annual transit, and however unnecessarily fast we may become, we can not send more than one crop in the year. The world frequently becomes too fast in every thing; and crises, panics, and bankruptcies follow as legitimate consequences. When a fictitious value is given to every thing, and every globule of air which one has breathed comes puffing out, a splendid bubble, a magnificent speculation, and when men have to go so fast that they need a telegraph to ride them through the world lest they get behind the heated times, no wonder that the shipper can not sit quietly down in his office and wait thirty days for a load of corn to reach England, or a load of iron to appear in the harbor in return. And it does not matter to him that it may not be used there in six months. He wishes to finish the "operation," to close up the "transaction" before he goes up town in the evening.
There is a rational distinction between the necessary and the unnecessary which we must learn to make, and a limit which safety assigns to every operation. There are some things which must be done rapidly, and others which may be done at leisure. Between the freight cargo, and the correspondence which controls it there is a great difference. Rapid transport of letters, intelligence, and passengers, and leisure transport of freight, is the law of nature, and to attempt to reverse it is but to attempt that which will never be successfully done, simply because wholly unnecessary in any permanent economic sense. And not only is higher speed than that of clippers unnecessary in ordinary freight transport, but it is clearly impossible in any normal condition of trade. Circumstances may, and doubtless often will exist, which will require some sluggish article to be transported a long distance in a short time, as in the case of the famine in Ireland, and which may insure rates atwhich steam vessels can take small quantities of such freights; but such occasions will ever be accidental, and the support of vessels depending on them the questionable support of expedients, and capricious in the extreme. It will ever be just as impossible to hurry gross freights across the ocean in a healthy state of commerce as it will to prevent rapid mails, or forego the comforts of quick passenger transit.
To say nothing of a vessel which is half filled with its own power, attempting to compete, in the ordinary freights of the world, with one which fills every square foot with paying cargo, it is equally important that we should look at the question of fuel. The coals of the world are not so plentiful or so cheap that we should consume whole pits in a year in unnecessary and unproductive service. They are already beginning to fail in many parts of the world, or to the same effect, are mined and brought to market at such increasing cost, and applied to so many new purposes day by day, that in a few years the price will place them entirely beyond the reach of commercial purposes upon the ocean. It is contended, however, that the science of engineering is also rapidly advancing, and that we shall soon have some discovery by which we can have heat without fuel, and power without heat. But I have heard of those imaginary engineering hopes so long that I begin to believe them vague, and that we shall yet for a few generations measure the power applied by the number of pounds of coal consumed. From past experiences and present indications we can predicate nothing with more certainty of fuel than that it will indefinitely increase in price. I am satisfied, therefore, that with all of the capabilities of steam it can never be applied to general ocean transportation; first, because undesirable; and second, because impossible even if desirable. But to show more clearly that it is impossible, I will now make some inquiries concerning the cost of ocean steam, which is the cardinal point of interest in marine propulsion.