Argentina is adopting a policy of giving subsidies to foreign steamship companies which extend her communications with foreign ports. As far back as 1865 a decree was issued offering a subsidy of twenty thousand dollars a year for a line between Argentina and the United States. But it was not taken. In 1911 the Government was prepared to pay a subsidy to a new steamship company promoted to furnish a regular service to South Africa.[FP] In 1911 there appeared the first steam vessel flying the American flag at Buenos Aires in twenty years.[FQ] Chile grants mail subsidies, which have no appreciable effect in the merchant marine.[FR] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote FO: Con. Gen. George E. Anderson, Rio de Janeiro, in Daily Con. Repts., no. 55, p. 719, Sept. 7, 1910.] [Footnote FP: Daily Con. Repts., March 18, 1911.] [Footnote FQ: Same, January 20, 1911.] [Footnote FR: Meeker.] CHAPTER XIII THE UNITED STATES While a navigation code founded in 1790 and 1792, and developed in 1816, 1817, and 1820, after the model of the then existing English code,[FS] has been retained in modified form through enactments in subsequent years, a system of general ship-subsidies, though repeatedly proposed, has never been adopted by the United States. From 1793 to 1866 bounties were given to fishing vessels and men employed in the bank and other deep-sea fisheries,[FT] but no subsidies to the merchant marine were granted till 1845, and these were only postal subsidies--payments in excess of an equivalent for services to be rendered in ocean mail-carriage. The law enacted that year had for its declared purpose the encouragement of American ocean steamship-building and running. With this act, therefore, the real history of Government aid to domestic shipping in this country begins. At the time of the adoption of this policy America was still leading the world in ocean sailing-ships with her splendid fleets of fast-sailing packets and "clippers", while England had taken the lead in steamships. The law of 1845 was the culmination of a move begun in Congress in 1841, the year after the first Cunarder had crossed from Liverpool to Halifax and Boston. Its aim was to parry England's bold stroke for maritime supremacy with her State-aided steamship lines, and directly to "protect our merchant shipping from this new and strange menace."[FU] The first move of 1841 was for an appropriation of a million dollars annually for foreign-mails carriage in American-owned ships.[FU]