Course Uncharted

The nearer the U.S. came to V-J day, the more pressing became one of the nation's most complex problems--what to do after the war with the gigantic war-built U.S. Merchant Marine? Much had been said about it, and little done.

The nation's modern maritime operations in peacetime have been notably unsuccessful. High point was the days of the great clipper ships like the Flying Cloud (1850), when bold Yankees prowled the seas in bold vessels. But since then --with a few notable exceptions--U.S. ships' owners have been famed neither for energy nor enterprise. Over the whole, the U.S. Government has laid a heavy, bureaucratic and inexperienced hand.

Today the U.S. owns 62% of the merchant tonnage of the world but still it does not rightly know how much of a merchant marine it wants to maintain after the war.

Onetime Deputy War Shipping Administrator Lewis W. Douglas recently recommended that the U.S. hold onto only some 6,600,000 gross tons (of 40,000,000 tons now on the seas). War Shipping Administrator Emory S. Land has counseled: hang onto twice that much.

Last week four Harvard Business School researchers* came out with some new soundings. In a 434-page report they indicated a broad channel, if not a definite course, for postwar shipping.

How Many--What Price? The report gave no solution to Government control through subsidy, even though the writers admitted that the arrangement had never been "effective." But they were convinced that the U.S. somehow should maintain a strong position in the shipping world. They would dispose of some war-built U.S. merchant ships, but not with the sweeping gesture of Lew Douglas, who wants to go back virtually to a prewar status.

The U.S. will own some 5,500 ships after the war. The Harvard group thought that the U.S. should keep and operate 9,185,000 gross tons. A little more than half of the tonnage they allotted to domestic business (coastwise tankers, etc.); a little less than half (4,135,000 gross tons) they would assign to carrying the nation's foreign trade.

They would get rid of the 5,500 ships in this fashion: 1,325 to U.S. operators; 1,050 to foreign operators (for cash only) ; 1,000 good ships as a "Balanced Reserve Fleet" to be kept in first-class condition but "sterilized" (frozen out of competition), some 2,100 ships of dubious value either kept in a "Residual Reserve" or scrapped. Most of this latter class, presumably, would be Liberty ships, which the Harvard group called uneconomical. (Shipping men consider them economical for hauling low-grade, no-hurry cargoes.)

The Harvard group's program was, in a way, an answer to nervous yells which had come across the Atlantic from Britain. At a meeting of British seamen, acid-tongued Laborite Emanuel Shinwell shouted defiantly last week: ". . . We can still hold up our heads. We can run our ships better. . . . America is not a great maritime nation." Week before, Sir Percy E. Bates, head of the Cunard White Star line, complained that the U.S. was getting set for shipping while British ships were ferrying U.S. troops home.

*Harvey Powers Bishop, onetime South African exports director at Standard Brands; James William Culliton, onetime director of the Massachusetts Postwar Readjustment Committee; James Milton Knox, once of Chase National Bank; Paul F. Lawler, research fellow.

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