AMERICAN SCANDAL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22140, 20 June 1935, Page 11

AMERICAN SCANDAL

SHIPPING SUBSIDIES EVILS OF THIE SYSTEM A SENSATIONAL REPORT By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright WASHINGTON. June 18 The Ocean Mail Committee of the Senate in a report issued to-day alleges that the policy of granting shipping subsidies had led to a saturnalia by men who were bent upon robbing the taxpayers. The committee denounced the past operation of the merchant marine subsidies and demanded drastic terms for any future Government aid.

It was also alleged by the committee that some public officials had flagrantly betrayed their trust, and that Government officials had made a farce of the competitive bidding provision in the Jones-White Merchant Marine Act of 1928.

Frankly advocating Government ownership and operation of the merchant marine, the committee conceded that the alternative plaji to Government ownership was private operation, the latter to be subsidised where this proved necessary.

The report quoted instances in which it was alleged that companies had violated tho spirit of contracts to put the profits into their own tills instead of devoting them to building up the merchant marine. The committee declared that Mr. Stanley Dollar received from the Dollar Steamship Line and the Admiral Oriental Line 698,750 dollars as commission incidental to the purchase of ships from the Government at low prices. The Roosevelt Steamship Company, which took its name from Kermit Roosevelt in 1920, with an outstanding capital of 22.000 dollars, made profits under a lump sum agreement in the years 1931-33 inclusive amounting to 371,987 dollars.