"[HF] It removed all tonnage, harbor, pilotage, and
other like taxes imposed upon shipping by State and municipal authority
(except wharfage, pierage, and dockage); and imposed a duty of thirty
cents per ton on all ships, vessels, or steamers entered in the United
States.
The committee's measures were ably advocated, but they finally went down
in defeat.
* * * * *
In 1872 the Pacific Mail Steamship Company came forward with an offer to
add another monthly mail-steamship service to Japan and China, for an
additional subsidy of a half million dollars a year. At the same session
a project to establish a subsidized line to Australia was introduced;
another, for a subsidized line from New Orleans to Cuba. These failed,
while the scheme of the Pacific Mail won. A bill authorizing such
contract was enacted June 1, that year, after prolonged and warm
debates, and by close votes in House and Senate. Two years afterwards it
was discovered that bribery had been employed in securing the passage of
that act; the charge being that a million dollars had been spent by a
corrupt lobby in pushing the bill through.[HG] Upon these disclosures,
and because the company had failed to fulfil its conditions, Congress,
by act of March 3, 1875, abrogated the contract.
Pages:
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125