In 1897, Mr. Cramp, being prevented by other business from attending a hearing before the Committee on the Merchant Marine on the day set for his appearance, addressed to it a letter, in which, after briefly reviewing the conditions and causes already set forth, he said: “The interests of ship-owning and ship-building are identical, because no nation can successfully own ships that cannot successfully build them. “No nation can either own or build ships when, unprotected and unencouraged, if it is brought in competition with other nations that are protected and encouraged. “This is the existing condition of the ship-owning and ship-building interests of the United States. “The resulting fact is that the enormous revenue represented by the freight and passenger tolls on our commerce and travel is constantly drained out of this country into British, German, and French pockets, in the order named, but mainly British; while the vast industrial increment represented by the necessary ship-building inures almost wholly to Great Britain. “For this drain there is no recompense. It is sheer loss. It is the principal cause of our existing financial condition. “So long as this drain continues, no tariff and no monetary policy can restore the national prosperity. “Until we make some provision to keep at home some part at least of the three hundred and odd millions annually sucked out of this country by foreign ship-owners and ship-builders, no other legislation can bring good times back again. “It is a constant stream of gold always flowing out. “The foreign ship-owner who carries our over-sea commerce makes us pay the freight both ways. “For our exports we get the foreign market price less the freight. “For our imports we pay the foreign market price plus the freight. “No fine-spun theory of any cloistered or collegiate doctrinaire can wipe out these facts. “The fact that so long as the freight is paid to a foreign ship-owner, so long will it be a foreign profit on a foreign product, is fundamental and unanswerable. “The English steamship is a foreign product, and its earnings, which we pay, are a foreign profit. “No sane man will argue that a foreign profit on a foreign product can be of domestic benefit. “Add to this the fact, equally important, that the carrier of commerce controls its exchanges, and the condition of commercial, financial, and industrial subjugation is complete. Such is our condition to-day. “Great Britain has many outlying colonies and dependencies. “The greatest two are India and the United States. “She holds India by force of arms, whereby her control of that country costs her something. She has to pay something for her financial and commercial drainage of India.