COPY
A 4499/850/45.
ENCLOSURE IN MANILA DESPATCH No, 13
TO WASHINGTON.
DATED MAY 17, 1920.
464
SATURDAY, MAY 15, 1920.
PERIL IN THIS BILL.
The Cablenews-American believes that the insular
government should immediately cable to the Bureau of
Insular Affairs at Washington and protest vigorously
against that part of the bill now before congress
providing for a permanent merchant marine, which extende
the coastwise laws of the United States to the Philip-
pines.
When the bill was being discussed in the senate the
other day, that grizzled old Forseman, Senator Knute
Nelson, of Minnesota, protested against the clause, and
remarked that if the laws governing the coastwise shipping
of the United States, which provide that only vessels under
the American flag can engage in that trade, were applied to
the Philippines, it would put the shippers of this country
in a straight jacket, and would mean that none of the
products of the islands could go to the United States, nor
could American goods he sent here, except in American
bottoms.
The law as it applies to legitimate American coastwi se
trade is just, but it should never be made to apply to these
islands. In the past, when there was nothing even remotely
resembling an American merchant marine, and the shippers
out here had to use British and Japanese ships or the few
Pacific Nail steamers, there was no thought of applying the
coastwise laws to the Philippines, But now that the Shipping
Board/
: