Merchant Marine Act of 1920 - America's First National Maritime Strategy

What's Going on With Shipping?
December 26, 2021
This paper was presented to the McMullen Naval History Symposium on September 24, 2001 by myself - Sal Mercogliano, Chair of the Department of History, Criminal Justice and Political Science at Campbell University - at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
The conference is held every odd year and sponsored by the Naval Academy's History Department and brings together naval and maritime historians from around the world.
This paper, addressed the background and passage of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, commonly referred to as the Jones Act due to one of its authors, Senator Wesley Jones. However, as the paper discusses, there were several others who had a hand in its passage and while today the Jones Act commonly refers to only one section of the law that deal with coastal trade; the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 was a comprehensive bill that aimed to correct issues that exposed the United States economy and military to foreign powers during the First World War. It was the nation's fist comprehensive maritime strategy.
If you enjoyed the video, check out others in the American Merchant Marine playlist on this channel:
• American Merchant Marine
If you want to read some related articles, than you can follow these links:
The Shipping Act of 1916 and Emergency Fleet Corporation:
America Builds, Requisitions, and Seizes a Merchant Fleet Second to None
www.cnrs-scrn....
“We Built Her to Bring Them Over There”
The Cruiser and Transport Force in the Great War
seahistory.org...
A Century of the Jones Act
seahistory.org...

[@danwiggins5580]

Great video, Sal! Its so important to remember our past and how we got to where we are with respect to our maritime fleet and shortfalls.

[@wgowshipping]

Absolutely!

[@Justin-rv7oy]

Awesome video!! 👌 It would very cool if you cover historic and evergreen topics like these along with your current events.

[@monicapttrsn]

Very interesting history. As we deal with the shipping crisis, it is important to understand some history here.

[@TalladegaTom]

I enjoy your content greatly ... but for a second there I thought you were going to talk about the Barbary pirates and the first naval action(s) taken by America to protect our early merchant vessels.

[@wgowshipping]

Tom...I can go on about that forever if you want!

[@TalladegaTom]

@@wgowshipping Heck yeah, please do. I'm sure you would do an excellent job covering that! It is a little known and poorly understood bit of American merchant history.

[@Franklin-pc3xd]

Great presentation, Sal, as usual, but please do a follow-up and tell us if Matson is going back up to $90 anytime soon. I need to know because I sold some Jan $85 strike covered calls and, if Matson is going to fly back up I'll close those for the current gain and ensure I'll keep my underlying shares. Go Matson!

[@christianwitness]

sell everything, buy gold silver

[@Franklin-pc3xd]

@@christianwitness - have too much gold already

[@Sageoutcasttownhalls]

Good video

[@indylovelace]

Good for you, Sal. As a fairly new channel, you are branching out and trying different things to see what generates viewership. I enjoyed this history video on shipping. I follow another channel on aviation which dives into the construction of different types of aircraft, crash investigation, life onboard as a pilot, etc if this help with other possible topics and ideas. I also think videos on our US Locks system might be interesting.

[@markrufener4172]

Thank you for the lesson. I really enjoyed it 😊

[@christianwitness]

Good lecture, thank you!

[@allenschmitz9644]

Great content for lessons a 100' years later for today yes post ww1 was a whole new 20th century new deal.

[@pierheadjump]

😎 Thanks Sal ⚓️

[@geezer652]

Thank you Sal for the "damn, I didn't know that" moments. But that motor mouth in the background was really distracting.

[@wgowshipping]

Sorry...the presentation was during classes at the US Naval Academy and noise spilled over from the hallway.

[@Thomas-wn7cl]

I would disagree with one point in this lecture clip: the USA did not enter WWI over the sinking of 10 merchant ships. This, combined with the Zimmerman Note or the sinking of the Lusitania, were not the reasons the USA entered WWI. The Congressional Nye Committee concluded in the 1930s " that between 1915 and January 1917, the United States lent Germany $27 million. In the same period, it lent to Britain and its allies $2.3 billion... Because of these facts Senator Nye, many war critics, and members of the American public concluded that the US entered the war for reasons of profit, not policy - because it was in the interest of American finance banks and investors for the Allies not to lose so that they would be able to pay interest and principal on their loans." Aside from generally agreeing with Nye's premise, Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler showcased the war profiteering motive in his book "War Is A Racket". Butler described the business of war profiteering as "something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes". He goes on, in minute detail, to note the fortunes that were made during the war that read like a corporate profit statement. Lastly, the 10 American merchant ships that were sunk were running the publicly promulgated German blockade of Britain. However, "The British, with their overwhelming sea power, established a naval blockade of Germany immediately on the outbreak of war in August 1914, by issuing a comprehensive list of contraband that all but prohibited American trade with the Central Powers and in early November 1914 by declaring the North Sea to be a war zone, with any ships entering the North Sea doing so at their own risk. The blockade was unusually restrictive in that even foodstuffs were considered "contraband of war". This blockade led to the death of 500,000 to 1,000,000 German civilians from malnutrition or starvation. The Americans complied with the British blockade, but not the German one. This was because the USA had already backed a side early on. Actions tend to speak louder than words. The Zimmerman Note, the Lusitania, and the 10 sunken merchant ships were used as progaganda to sell the war to the American public. Guarding and extending the profits of rentiers, financiers, and big business are a pretty crumby way of selling a war that would cost over 100,000 American lives. Instead, the war to protect and expand profits became the war to protect and expand "democracy" and trade. I would invite people who disagree with what I have written to look up the key works and commissions mentioned above, and seek out more information aside from what I mentioned. This was a commonly held belief in America in the 1930s, and there are surely more documents cronicaling and supporting it. In 1917, the Entente Allies were losing on all fronts, and if they lost they would not pay back American financiers and big business that had loaned them staggering sums of money and credit for that era. So America was posed with a choice: lose everything and have their economy mauled, or double down, decland war, and make even more money. The Zimmerman Note, the Lusitania, 10 sunken merchant ships, and "making the world safe for democracy" were as much tools of propaganda as the boiler exploding on the USS Maine, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or making Afghanistan a democracy. The traditionally attributed triggers of US military involvement in WWI should no longer be considered legitimate history aside from tragic events that were then propagandized to justify involvement in a war.

[@wgowshipping]

Thomas...I agree that one of the underlying issues was the amount of loans made to the Allies in the war. The postwar Nye Commission - The Merchants of Death - were focused on this, resulting in American Neutrality laws before WWII. What I was discussing was the immediate cause for American declaration of war in April 1917, based on Wilson's speech to Congress. You absolutely correct that there were dual blockades with the British stopping US vessels from trading with Germany and limiting interaction with neutrals. However, in a 20 minute talk, I had to focus my discussion. But excellent points.

[@Thomas-wn7cl]

@@wgowshipping Thanks Sal. I know the above comment was not the point of your lecture, which was great by the way. The USA relies on it's reserve currency status to pay it's bill. One day we will lose this status. The best idea that I have come across was from the chief officer of Saxo Bank Skeen Jakobsen. He basically said to take all the monopoly money and invest in infrastructure and industrial capacity while it still had value. That way when we lose this status, we will still have an intact physical economy that can at least provide for our domestic needs. If we stay the course we are on, then we likely end up like some version of Venezuela.

[@robertferrand4906]

@@Thomas-wn7cl Keen observations. We will keep Sal on his toes, for sure.

[@SubTroppo]

All this begs the question; why should any nation have a large military fleet if it has sold its merchant marine? The current pandemic/endemic exposes any nation that doesn't have an industrial policy to mitigate the vagaries of foreign supply. The British Sterling dominance of the 19th century was seemingly built on its merchant marine, which was protected by the Royal Navy. In a similar way, when the US merchant marine was developed, US dollar hegemony developed and international contracts are written in the mighty Greenback, but for how much longer, now that the balance of trade has changed so radically?

[@indylovelace]

Careful on the use of acronyms. Many of us are not maritime knowledgeable. CNO? Chief Naval Officer?

[@wgowshipping]

Chief of Naval Operations.

[@garrycollins3415]

I'm interested. Can you recommend a book? I'm seriously ADD so it's got to be interesting.

[@wgowshipping]

Gary, I included a set of my articles in the show notes.

[@sstrykert]

😎