by way of Europe, crossing the Atlantic twice. It is
impossible that trade should prosper or intercourse increase or mutual
knowledge grow to any great degree under such circumstances. The
communication is worse now than it was twenty-five years ago. So long as
it is left in the hands of our foreign competitors in business, we
cannot reasonably look for any improvement. It is only reasonable to
expect that European steamship lines shall be so managed as to promote
European trade in South America, rather than to promote the trade of the
United States in South America.

This woeful deficiency in the means to carry on and enlarge our South
American trade is but a part of the general decline and feebleness of
the American merchant marine, which has reduced us from carrying over
ninety per cent of our export trade in our own ships to the carriage of
nine per cent of that trade in our own ships and dependence upon foreign
shipowners for the carriage of ninety-one per cent. The true remedy and
the only remedy is the establishment of American lines of steamships
between the United States and the great ports of South America, adequate
to render fully as good service as is now afforded by the European lines
between those ports and Europe. The substantial underlying fact was well
stated in the resolution of this Trans-Mississippi Congress three years
ago:

That every ship is a missionary of trade; that steamship
lines work for their own countries just as railroad lines
work for their terminal points, and that it is as absurd for
the United States to depend upon foreign ships to distribute
its products as it would be for a department store to depend
upon the wagons of a competing house to deliver its goods.

How can this defect be remedied? The answer to this question must be
found by ascertaining the cause of the decline of our merchant marine.
Why is it that Americans have substantially retired from the foreign
transport service? We are a nation of maritime traditions and facility;
we are a nation of constructive capacity, competent to build ships; we
are eminent, if not preeminent, in the construction of machinery; we
have abundant capital seeking investment; we have courage and enterprise
shrinking from no competition in any field which we choose to enter.
Why, then, have we retired from this field in which we were once
conspicuously successful?

I think the answer is twofold.

1. The