Watery Grave?

Many a U.S. shipper these days is like a captain nervously watching his barometer drop to hurricane level. Shippers know that at war's end the U.S. may have quadrupled its prewar fleet to a thumping 50,000,000 deadweight tons, most of it Government-owned, enough to founder private shippers if unwisely used. What will happen to this vast tonnage?

Last week the potent American Merchant Marine Institute, which represents 61 shipping companies operating 14,000,000 tons of ships, made its first attempt to answer the question. Chief points:

> Ultimate transfer of all Government-owned merchant ships to private hands with "preference given to those owners and operators who maintained American flag services prior to the war."

> Axis nations must be barred from trade routes formerly served by them. (Routes of importance to the U.S. "should be serviced by American vessels.") New foreign trade routes must be established and U.S. bottoms must carry a greater share of U.S. foreign trade.

> Creation of a pool of at least 5,000,000 deadweight tons to be laid up, possibly in the Great Lakes, and held for future emergencies but not "at any time operated in competition with private shipping."

Clipper Ship Days. Said tall, round-faced Frank J. Taylor, ex-Manhattan comptroller and now president of the A.M.M.L: "With our great war-developed plant capacity converted to peacetime needs there will be a surplus of manufactured goods which must be distributed to other parts of the world. It is here that the American Merchant Marine can make its greatest contribution to the postwar economy. It should resume the place it occupied in the old clipper ship days [when nine-tenths of U.S. foreign trade was carried in U.S. bottoms]."

Promptly, exporters lambasted the A.M.M.L plan, dubbed it "a grandiose idea of what constitutes an adequate fleet" and "a bible of shipping platitudes." They questioned the vision of a vastly expanded U.S. foreign trade carried almost wholly in U.S. bottoms by citing these facts:

Many a foreign nation (Great Britain, Norway, and The Netherlands) in peacetime earns a good chunk of the money with which it buys U.S. goods by its worldwide shipping services. Thus, the U.S. cannot greatly expand exports to these countries if it deprives them of an important means of paying for them. Unless a way can be found out of this dilemma, the U.S. will find itself with a pool of idle merchant ships far beyond the modest 5,000,000 tons set out by A.M.M.I.

Another postwar argument had begun.

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