" This
sentiment was "just as earnest on the Great Lakes ... as on either
ocean."[HR]
The results of the investigation were embodied in an elaborate report,
comprising majority and minority reports of the commission, and the mass
of testimony taken at the hearings: the whole filling three large
pamphlet volumes, in all of nearly two thousand pages.[HS]
The majority reported a bill. This was presented as merely an extension
of the principles of the Postal Aid Act of 1891, involving "no new
departure from the established practice of the Government." Its ocean
mail sections were intended "simply to strengthen the existing act on
lines where it has happened to prove inadequate." The subsidies which it
granted were termed, inoffensively, "subventions," and its promoters
protested that these "subventions" were "not in any opprobrious sense a
subsidy or bounty." They were "not bounties outright, or mere commercial
subsidies such as many of our contemporaries give." They were "granted
frankly in compensation for public services rendered and to be
rendered."[HT]
The proposed measure, however, was more than an extension of the act of
1891. Its scope was indicated by its title: "To promote the national
defence, to create a force of naval volunteers, to establish American
ocean mail lines to foreign markets, to promote commerce, and to provide
revenue from tonnage.
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