This Nation has been forced to ship significant portions of both defense and commercial ocean commerce in foreign-flag vessels as a result of demands made on U.S. flags in Southeast Asia. Foreignflag vessels are offered at excessive charter hire owing to the demand for tonnage to transport supplies to Vietnam. Dependence on foreign flags can lead to disaster where such ships refuse to carry certain cargo or to call at designated ports. Foreign-flag vessels also carry 96 percent of the strategic material needed by the United States which must be imported.

In a sense, the merchant marine is a political as well as an economic instrument and an adjunct of defense. Each role must be given adequate attention in determining national maritime policy and administering maritime affairs.

Past experience with maritime affairs in the hands of the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Defense, the Department of State, or other Federal agencies, has not been such as to recommend placing them in the hands of the Department of Commerce. Under such arrangements the Nation has been deprived of the contribution which the merchant marine could make to commerce and national security.

The Maritime Administration (Marad) now has no independent power or authority and must compete with the other programs administered by the Department of Commerce. During the years the Maritime Administration has been submerged in the Commerce Department the position of the merchant marine has declined at an accelerated rate. An independent agency could focus attention on the need to revitalize the merchant fleets pursuant to the objectives of the Merchant Marine Act. An independent Marad might at least have been able to prevent the block obsolescence of the merchant fleet.

you know, Mr. Chairman, hearings conducted by this committee regarding the merchant fleet and the Vietnam war reinforce the conviction that unless Marad is made an independent agency, drift and decay will continue in the maritime position of the United States. Under an independent agency, maritime affairs would receive the needed and deserved attention, just as do affairs of atomic energy, space, etc. So far as Federal agencies concerned with transportation matters are concerned, the Merchant Marine is the only major transportation agency to gain independent status, only to lose it shortly

thereafter.

In the face of obvious needs of the economy and national security, the U.S. merchant fleets must not be allowed to sink to possible oblivion. What advantage will be gained by being first in the race to the moon if we lose the high seas to our competitors? Thank you. The CHAIRMAN. Are there any questions? Thank you, Mr. Delaney, for a very helpful statement.

Our next witness is Mr. Frank Thompson, Jr., of New Jersey. We

are happy to hear your testimony.

STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK THOMPSON, JR., A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. Chairman, as one who, for many years, has been profoundly concerned with the problems of our merchant marine,

I am delighted that this present round of hearings on the creation of an independent Federal Maritime Administration is now in progress. You who sit on this committee, and who daily come in contact with the many problems which have beset our maritime industry over the years, are all too well aware of what has been happening in this area. It is a record of disturbing neglect by administration after adminis tration-neglect, I am convinced, that has stemmed from a lack of understanding of the peculiar nature of the commercial fleet as an arm of national defense.

I believe that succeeding administrations have misread the maritime picture and that the public has, for so long, been blissfully unaware of the true and sorry state of our merchant marine-precisely because our Maritime Administration has lacked independence, and therefore has been unable to turn the spotlight of official and public attention on these problems.

This committee knows the record well. I hope that the public too will look at the record. For if it does, it will perceive what has hap pened, and where the fault lies.

Since the beginning of this century, the lot of the American merchant marine has been one of feast and famine. During the sunny days of peacetime, the U.S. maritime industry has starved for lack of attention. During the fat days, our Nation has been unwilling to spend the funds necessary to build up our merchant fleet for service in lean and dangerous times.

When war clouds gather, then and only then does our Nation recognize the importance of our merchant fleet to our security. Then and only then, are we willing to spend the sums of money which have become necessary, due to previous neglect, to build up our merchant fleet for crisis service. And then, when the outlook is bleak, those who so long neglected our maritime needs bewail the antiquated and inefficient state of our fleet.

When the end of the crisis appears, what happens then? Our Nation returns to its posture of maritime neglect.

At the end of World War II we had the largest maritime fleet in the world: a vast fleet of over 5,000 merchant ships. Most of these vessels were new-built during the war-and most of them, despite hard and continuous service during the war, were good for many more years of peacetime duty.

What did our Nation do with this tremendous fleet of 1946? We squandered it. Many of these ships we gave away under the Ship Sales Act. Thousands of war-built Victory and Liberty ships were sold off at low cost to rebuild the war-torn merchant fleets of our Allies and our former enemies. Some of these ships were bought by American companies and registered under "runaway flags," returning to American ports to take trade away from American-flag vessels. And what of the remainder of this once vast fleet? What did we do with those vessels still under the American ensign? We neglected them.

In the early 1950's the Maritime Administration warned that unless the United States began a long-term program steadily to replenish its merchant fleet, the majority of that fleet-the war-built vesselwould be worn out, overaged, obsolete by the 1960's. The Nation is

nored that warning; the prophecy of the early 1950's came true, and thus we find ourselves in the present sorry situation. What is that situation?

Today we have not 5,000, but less than 1,000 privately owned merchant ships to meet our commercial and defense needs. Worse yet, more than 80 percent of our vessels are well over 20 years old. Consider this latter statistic in view of the fact that many foreign operators scrap their ships when they exceed only 10 years of age, because by then the ships are economically inefficient and uncompetitive.

Four of every five of our merchant ships, I repeat, are over 20 years old; four of every five Soviet merchant ships, I note with dismay, are less than 10 years old. And what are we doing to remedy this disturbing disparity? Last year we built 13 new ships totaling 146,000 gross tons; this year we will build approximately the same. Last year the Soviet Union built ships totaling 670,000 gross tons, and it is scheduled to build the same amount this year and each year until 1970. Is this where we want the United States to stand? Is this the sort of inferior performance that we want to characterize the United States? I think not.

Today we find ourselves barely able to deal with our supply needs for the war in Vietnam. Our ships and their seamen are working night and day to keep the sea lifeline open.

The closing of the Suez Canal will put an additional strain on American merchant shipping capacities. Again, the United States finds itself in a shipping crisis without the merchant vessels it needs. Again, we are reaping the problems created by our years of maritime neglect. Only once in our Nation's history have we planned and built in peacetime to meet our crisis maritime needs. That was when we had an independent Maritime Administration.

In 1936, Congress recognized the maritime needs of the United States and in the Merchant Marine Act created a maritime agency with independent status. In the few short years before World War II this independent agency laid the groundwork which enabled us not only to meet our own wartime shipping needs, but also to provide transport bottoms to replace our vessels and those of our Allies which had been torpedoed by enemy submarines.

This independent agency planned the development of the Victory and Liberty ships which were the workhorses of wartime ocean transport and which still comprise the major portion of our National Defense Reserve Fleet. Planning by this independent agency made possible the large-scale mobilization of our shipyards and training of shipbuilding manpower to meet our wartime needs.

After the war, when peacetime neglect returned, this independent maritime agency was destroyed. Administration of maritime was submerged within the Department of Commerce. The American maritime industry was again put on a peacetime starvation budget. The prestige of the American ensign on the oceans of the world declined, as did the portion of U. S. trade and commerce carried on American-flag ships.

Today, we in Congress have an opportunity to rectify our Nation's past mistakes and neglect of its vital merchant fleet. I believe we must recognize that we have reached a crucial crossroads in mari

time affairs. Either we decide now to revitalize our merchant marine or we condone its erosion. Revitalize it we can, and revitalize it we must.

Let us show that we have learned the hard lessons of the past.

Let us reestablish an independent Maritime Administration with adequate powers and funds to meet our current maritime crises and plan for future needs.

Let us return to the requirements of the Merchant Marine Act of 1936 which created such an independent agency to assure that our Nation would have sufficient American-built, American-owned, and American-manned vessels to carry our flag on the oceans of the

world.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Thompson. Are there any ques tions? Thank you for giving us your statement this morning. Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Our next witness is Hon. Joseph Addabbo of New York, who has submitted a bill H.R. 5974. Mr. Addabbo, it is a pleasure to hear from you.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH ADDABBO, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK

Mr. ADDABBO. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, it is a pleasure to testify in support of my bill and other bills calling for an independent Maritime Administration. Perhaps nothing else is so essential to the revitalization of the American shipping industry-an industry, I might add, which is of crucial importance to my district and the country as a whole.

For 17 years, the Maritime Administration has been incorporated within a department which seemingly has been willing to accept the decline of the American shipping industry as an economic fact of life. Woefully little has been done to revive it. During this same period. America has enjoyed unprecedented economic growth and she has found new buyers and sellers on every corner of the globe. It is a strange policy, indeed, which would allow foreign transports to capitalize on our burgeoning trade at the expense of our own merchant

marine.

But that is the case as borne out by these facts:

Today American-flag vessels carry only 8.2 percent of our exports and even less of our imports. There is not, in fact, even though American shipping available to carry the mandatory 50 percent of Government-sponsored exports of agricultural surpluses.

Today our fleet is outranked in number of ships by five nations. In deadweight tonnage it is outranked by four. A fifth nationRussia-recognizing the economic, political, and military implica tions of a strong merchant marine, will overtake us in total tonnage within 2 years.

Today the average age of American merchant ships is about 15 years. Many of these vessels are on their last leg and will soon be scrapped. There are no plans to replace them. At the end of World War II, this country had 5,500 privately owned merchant ships. Pres ently, there are fewer than 900.

Today's American merchant marines are losing jobs at an astonishing rate. On our Great Lakes alone the number of available seamen's jobs has declined from 14,000 in 1957 to about 9,000 in 1966.

The plight of the American merchant marine is clear and it is distressing.

Yet, having observed its scandalous decline under one Cabinet Department, we are asked to incorporate and submerge it in another. Furthermore, we are asked to place the merchant marine under the authority of the Secretary of Transportation, whose announced maritime policies seem no more enlightened than those of the Commerce Department. Such a move just doesn't make sense.

If one reviews the facts, it is not difficult to diagnose the maladies besetting the American maritime industry. But, in my view, it will take a strong independent Maritime Administration to treat them properly. I urge the members of this committee to approve the bill which I have cosponsored, creating such an agency.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any questions? Thank you very much. We appreciate your being here with us this morning and giving us

your time.

We will hear now from our colleague, Mr. William D. Ford of Michigan, the author of H.R. 10033. Mr. Ford.

STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM D. FORD, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN

Mr. FORD. Mr. Chairman: I speak today in favor of H.R. 159, and my own companion bill, H.R. 10033, to amend title II of the Merchant Marine Act, 1936, to create an independent Federal Maritime Administration.

The American merchant marine has played a vital role in making the United States a world power, and it is playing a vital role today in helping us maintain this status. The war in Vietnam, and more recently, the events in the Middle East, have demonstrated the importance of a strong and capable merchant marine.

Creating of an independent Maritime Administration is a longoverdue recognition of American-flag ships, and the dedicated mariners who guide them to ports throughout the world.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any questions? Thank you for appearing before us today.

Our next witness is Hon. John H. Dent.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN H. DENT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA

Mr. DENT. Mr. Chairman, I believe that these hearings mark an important milestone in the affairs of our Nation's maritime posture. Not since the enactment of the Merchant Marine Act of 1936 has there ben so concerted an effort to put our merchant marine to rights as the effort in which we are now engaged-to create an independent Federal Maritime Administration.

I know, Mr. Chairman, that there are continuing pressures on all of us in Congress to back away from our advocacy of maritime inde