Merchant Marine Act of 1936

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Merchant Marine Act of 1936
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Long titleAn Act to further the development and maintenance of an adequate and well-balanced American merchant marine, to promote the commerce of the United States, to aid in the national defense, to repeal certain former legislation, and for other purposes.
Enacted bythe 74th United States Congress
Citations
Public law Pub. L. Tooltip Public Law (United States)  74–835
Statutes at Large 49  Stat.   1985
Legislative history

The Merchant Marine Act of 1936 is a United States federal law. Its purpose is "to further the development and maintenance of an adequate and well-balanced American merchant marine, to promote the commerce of the United States, to aid in the national defense, to repeal certain former legislation, and for other purposes."

Specifically, it established the United States Maritime Commission, and required a United States Merchant Marine that:

The Act restricted the number of aliens allowed to work on passenger ships, requiring that, by 1938, 90 percent of the crew members were U.S. citizens. Although about 4,000 Filipinos worked as merchant mariners on U.S. ships, most of these seamen were discharged in 1937 as a result of the law. [1] The Act also established federal subsidies for the construction and operation of merchant ships. Two years after the Act was passed, the U.S. Merchant Marine Cadet Corps, the forerunner to the United States Merchant Marine Academy, was established.

U.S. Representative Schyler O. Bland of Virginia was known as the "father of the Merchant Marine Act of 1936."

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United States shall have a merchant marine

(a) sufficient to carry its domestic water-borne commerce and a substantial portion of the water-borne export and import foreign commerce of the United States and to provide shipping service on all routes essential for maintaining the flow of such domestic and foreign water-borne commerce at all times

(b) capable of serving as a naval and military auxiliary in time of war or national emergency,

(c) owned and operated under the United States flag by citizens of the United States insofar as may be practicable, and

(d) composed of the best-equipped, safest, and most suitable types of vessels, constructed in the United States and manned with a trained and efficient citizen personnel. It is hereby declared to be the policy of the United States to foster the development and encourage the maintenance of such a merchant marine.

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References

  1. Carey McWilliams, Brothers Under the Skin (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1964), 237; Rick Baldoz, The Third Asiatic Invasion: Empire and Migration in Filipino America, 1898-1946 (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 274-75.