s considerably greater than at Atlantic ports; ...
is required to maintain a very high speed; ... employs exclusively white
crews instead of the Asiatics utilized by many other Pacific companies."
Another provision, as a special encouragement for American shipowners to
enter the Philippine trade, added a subvention of thirty per cent above
the regular rate, or six and a half dollars a ton. The naval volunteer
retainers were extended to seamen of the Great Lakes and coastwise
trade.[HZ]

In the Senate the bill fared well as a whole. Like the original bill it
came back from the committee on commerce amended, though slightly, and
with a minority report against it: the minority again emphasizing their
"unqualified opposition to this renewed effort to donate to certain
favored interests moneys collected by the Government for public purposes
under its power of taxation."[IA] It was closely fought by the
opposition in debate, opened with Senator Gallinger's argument in its
behalf on January 8, 1906. But it successfully ran the gauntlet. Further
amended in several particulars, but unscathed in its essential parts, it
passed the Senate, February 14, by a vote of 38 to 27, five Republican
Senators and all the Democrats voting in the negative.[IB]

In the House its progress was less prosperous. It lay with the committee
on merchant marine and fisheries into the second session of this
Congress; and more hearings were given. Reframed after the enacting
clause, but practically the same in principle, it was reported back
January 19 (1907) by Mr. Grosvenor, accompanied by an explanatory
report of the majority of the committee;[IC] and bill and report were
referred to the whole House on the state of the Union. Later the views
of the minority were filed.[IC] On January 23 a message from President
Roosevelt in behalf of the measure was received. The president
particularly urged the "great desirability of enacting legislation to
help American shipping and American trade by encouraging the building
and running of lines of large and swift steamers to South America and
the Orient." As striking evidence of the "urgent need of our country's
making an effort to do something like its share of its own carrying
trade on the ocean," he directed attention to the address of Secretary
Root before the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress at Kansas City,
Mo., the previous November, giving the results of the secretary's
experiences on his recent South A