inquire into and report at the next session of Congress the causes of
the great reduction of American tonnage engaged in the foreign carrying
trade, and the great depression of the navigation interests of the
country; and also to report what measures are necessary to increase our
ocean tonnage, revive our navigation interests, and regain for our
country the position it once had among the nations as a great maritime
power." Of this committee Representative John Lynch of Maine was made
chairman.

The committee gave a series of hearings mainly in Atlantic seaboard
cities, and submitted their report on February 17, 1870, accompanied by
two bills recommended for passage; the one, a bounty bill, the other,
relative to tonnage duties. With these measures the history of years of
effort to establish the principle of general ship-subsidies in the
American economic system properly begins.

The Lynch bounty bill, entitled "An act to revive the navigation and
commercial interests of the United States," made provision for the
remission of duties upon the raw materials entering into the
construction of sailing and steam-ships; for the taking in bond, free of
duty, of all stores used in vessels in sailing to foreign ports; and for
bounties, or subsidies, to American sailing and steam-ships engaged in
foreign commerce, already built as well as to be built: the aid being
extended to those already built because they had been sailed during the
Civil War and since "at great disadvantage."[HE] The amount of duties to
be remitted was to be equal to the amount per ton collected on the
materials required for certain defined classes of ships: on wooden
vessels, eight dollars a ton; on iron, twelve dollars a ton; on
composite vessels (vessels composed of iron frames and wooden
planking), twelve dollars a ton; on iron steamers, fifteen dollars a