The total construction added to the Ameri can merchant marine during the 19 months of America's participation in the war comprised 875 vessels of 2,941,845 gross tons. In addition, the United States possessed at the end of the war 88 vessels of 562,005 gross tons which had been taken over from enemy nations. Con gress had made available for the work of the Shipping Board and the Emergency Fleet Cor poration about t,4,000,000,000 of national funds, to be expended in the purchase and building of ships, the extension or creation of shipyards, the operation of ships and the training of American officers and seamen. Inpart the rapidly increased fleet was manned from the Navy and the Naval Reserve.
Before the war, in 1914, good steel cargo steamers could have been built in America for about $65 per deadweight ton. Because of the war increase in materials and wages, the rela tive inefficiency of many of the new shipyards and their workmen due to inexperience, and the pressure of the war emergency, the Emergency Fleet Corporation was compelled to pay from $150 to $200 per deadweight ton, and even more, for the construction of steel cargo steam ers of the same general character. It was very clearly demonstrated that allowing foreign ship owners to carry our imports and exports for so many years had proved in the end not an economy but an extravagance.
On 27 March 1919 Chairman Edward N. Hurley of the United States Shipping Board formally proposed a plan for the future opera tion of the new government-owned American merchant fleet, which by 1921, including ships bought, built and contracted for, would amount to 2,000 vessels of about 10,000,000 tons gross register. Mr. Hurley urged that the ships should be sold at the world-price to private shipowping companies in which the government should be represented by one director, that 25 per cent of the purchase price should be paid down, and the remainder paid in instalment through a 10-year period — the government meanwhile to be protected by a mortgage which should have priority above all other liens.
Chairman Hurley further recommended a method by which a merchant marine develop ment fund could be provided for, to assist American shipping on routes where the serv ice might at first be unprofitable.
It is in the deep sea or registered tonnage that is embodied the real problem of our mer chant marine. The coastwise or enrolled and licensed shipping of the country, as distinguished from the foreign-going or registered shipping, has had a steady, constant growth under the national policy which from 1789 onward had reserved domestic carrying on ocean, lake or river between American ports to ships of the American flag and of American construction. In spite of the unparalleled railroad develop ment of the United States, American domestic shipping had grown from 68,607 tons in 1789 to 6,818,863 tons in 1914—incomparably the greatest coastwise shipping in the world, greater than the entire coastwise and overseas tonnage of the German Empire in 1914, or equivalent to threefold the entire tonnage of France or Norway and fourfold the tonnage of Japan before the war. The progress of this immense domestic shipping has been singularly uneventful, and more than one-third of its ton nage is to be found on the great northern lakes, where an enormous movement of iron ore, coal and grain has demanded carriers of the heaviest dimensions.
Many of the present coastwise steamers on the Atlantic and Pacific have been employed in naval auxiliary service as ammunition ships, fuel ships, general supply ships and transports, and the specific requirement is made in the Ocean Mail Law of 1,891 that all subsidized American steamers in the foreign trade shall be built on designs approved by the Navy De partment, and be turned over to the govern ment in war.
The new shipping law of 7 Sept. 1916 pro. vides that vessels built, purchased, leased or chartered under this legislation shall be so far as possible adapted °for use as naval auxilil aries or army transports or for other military or naval purposes?'