Y DISAGREEABLE
PASSENGER VESSELS: IF PROPELLERS RUN MORE CHEAPLY IT IS BECAUSE
THEY ARE SLOWER: COMPARED WITH SAIL: UNPROFITABLE STOCK: CROSKEY'S
LINE: PROPELLERS LIVE ON CHANCES AND CHARTERS: IRON AS A MATERIAL:
SENDING THE MAILS BY SLOW PROPELLERS WOULD BE AN UNFAIR
DISCRIMINATION AGAINST SAILING VESSELS: INDIVIDUAL ENTERPRISE CAN
NOT SUPPLY MAIL FACILITIES: THEREFORE IT IS THE DUTY OF THE
GOVERNMENT.

I have endeavored to prove in the foregoing Section that ocean mail
steamers can not live on their own receipts. The question now arises,
how can we secure speed for the mails and passengers upon the ocean?
With so many expenses and so small an income the fast ocean steamer
can not become profitable to even the most thoroughly organized and
best administered companies. Much less can it be successfully run by
individuals and individual enterprise, which has never so many
reliable resources at command as a strong, chartered company. It is
true that there are a few prominent transatlantic routes where
steamers can run as auxiliary propellers; but the number of them is
small, and the speed attained will by no means prove sufficient for
postal purposes. The transmarine postal service has been a source of
constant annoyance to almost every commercial nation. The overland
mails have generally been self-supporting, and it has been a favorite
idea that those on the sea should be so also; although there is no
just reason why either should be necessarily so any more than in the
cases of the Navy and the Army; branches of the service which entail
large expenses on the Government, and yet without a moiety of the
benefits which directly flow from the postal service to all classes of
community. No nation except Great Britain has come up to the issue and
faced this question boldly. Almost every other country, not excepting
our own, has been hanging back on the subject of the transmarine post,
"waiting, like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up," in the
improvements of ocean steam navigation, which might obviate the
necessity of paying for the ocean transit. But every hope has been
disappointed; and instead of realizing these wishes the case has been
growing worse year by year, until we are at last compelled to move in
the matter, or lose our commerce, our ocean _prestige_, and sink down
contented with a second or third-rate position among commercial
nations, and acknowledge ourselves tributary to the fa