There is a pool of the steamers between America and Europe called the North Atlantic Steamship Association. At its meeting in December, 1892, this association discussed plans for reducing the number of trips, increasing passenger rates, withdrawing excursion rates to the World's Fair, and discontinuing the steerage traffic. This was duly followed by the announcement in March, 1893, for which it was presumably a preparation, that steerage traffic was renewed, but at an increase of rates. Passenger rates of the higher class have also been raised. Agreements to restrict the number of ships; pools to put up rates; steamship wars to destroy competitors; the use of "pull" to procure from the admiralty, sanitary, naval, immigration, and other governmental bureaus, here and abroad, regulations ostensibly for public convenience, really to make business, as nearly as can be, impossible for others; lobbies to buy legislation for private interests--all these may be expected to replace the magnificent and manly rivalries of the days when the unbribed flag floated on its own breath in every sea. Under the policy of subsidy--the policy of aristocracy, exclusion, scarcity, corruption, war, and loss of liberty--the contest for maritime and commercial supremacy becomes a contest between the subsidy lobbies in Washington and at Westminster, Paris, and Berlin. If the duke who is at the head of one of the great English steamship lines obtains an increase of subsidy, the maritime dukes in America will call on Congress not to shame itself by doing less for Americans than Parliament has done for Englishmen. If all the English and American lines pass under one ducal yoke--following the internationalization of other syndicated businesses of Great Britain and America--one hidden hand will manage for one purse the make-believe duel between Parliament and Congress, while the uninitiated people glare across the ocean at each other, and each inspired press calls on its government not to allow its commercial supremacy to be destroyed by vulgar and unpatriotic economy. In advocacy of subsidy--breeder of sea-dogs, naval contractors, of war, and of treasury-suckled syndicates to fan its flames--the Secretary of the Navy wrote to the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce in this case, "A fleet of such cruisers would sweep an enemy's commerce from the ocean." All through the press, from New York to Texas and the Pacific coast, every possible change of phrase is rung to fire the American heart with "jingo" exhortations to subsidize private steamers so as to increase our fighting kennel.