The Project Gutenberg EBook of Free Ships: The Restoration of the American
Carrying Trade, by John Codman

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Title: Free Ships: The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade

Author: John Codman

Release Date: May 6, 2009 [EBook #28704]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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FREE SHIPS.

THE RESTORATION

OF

THE AMERICAN CARRYING TRADE

BY

JOHN CODMAN.

NEW YORK

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

182 FIFTH AVENUE

1878

FREE SHIPS.

The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade.

It may seem surprising that an American House of Representatives
should have been so ignorant of the meaning of a common word as to
apply the term "commerce" to the carrying trade, when in the session
of 1869 it commissioned Hon. John Lynch, of Maine, and his associated
committee "to investigate the cause of the decadence of American
commerce," and to suggest a remedy by which it might be restored.

But, it was not more strange than that this committee really appointed
to look into the carrying trade to which the misnomer commerce was so
inadvertently applied, should have entirely ignored its duty by
constituting itself into an eleemosynary body for the bestowal of
national charity upon shipbuilders. Its Report fell dead upon the
floor of the House, and was so ridiculed in the Senate that when a
motion was made to lay the bill for printing it upon the table,
Mr. Davis, of Kentucky, suggested, as an amendment, that it be kicked
under it. Nevertheless, the huge volume of irrelevant testimony was
published for the benefit of two great home industries--paper making
and printing.

The theory of this committee was that the Rebellion had destroyed
another industry nearly as remote from the proper subject of inquiry
as either of these. These gentlemen concluded that shipbuilding was
becoming extinct, because the Confederate cruisers had d