THEODORE R. McKELDIN, GOVERNOR                  1243

Brunswick, New Jersey, the New Jersey State Police, New Bruns-
wick, New Jersey, and to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission,
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

No. 5
(Senate Joint Resolution 8)

Joint Resolution requesting the Congress of the United States to
enact legislation designed on a long-term basis to build up and
maintain a modern Merchant Marine for the United States.

The Members of the General Assembly of Maryland have noted
with great concern the steady decline and deterioration of our
merchant marine fleet.

There presently exists in Maryland a severe condition of unemploy-
ment among those people who were employed in the ship building
and ship repair facilities of our State and particularly in Baltimore
City. The dry docks and ways are almost completely devoid of busi-
ness. foreign shipping carries a large percentage of American
cargoes. The resulting unemployment in these fields of endeavor, in
spite of a general prosperity, has caused acute distress in thousands
of families and has cast a heavy burden upon the taxpayers of
Maryland.

Our country, in a large measure, owes its present position of
world greatness to its merchant marine fleet. Without this fleet, the
victories won in World War II would not have been possible.

Furthermore, in the present day of semi-peace, with millions of
enslaved people ready to use armed might to further the ambitions
of their masters, with neither statesman nor legislator knowing from
one moment to the next when the dreadful cataclysm of atomic
warfare might begin, only those nations prepared and equipped, to
the fullest extent, to defend and devastatingly retaliate, will have
a chance to survive as a free nation. Without a proper merchant
marine fleet, defense and retaliation will not be possible.

In the next conflict, there will be no time to build a merchant
fleet. It must be done now; therefore be it

Resolved by the General Assembly of Maryland, That the Congress
of the United States be requested to enact such legislation as will
assure our country a merchant marine fleet that will be ready and
able to protect the nation in peacetime and, if war should come, to
again carry the materials of warfare so as to ultimately crush and
destroy the aggressor; and be it further

Resolved, That the Secretary of State be directed to send copies of
this Joint Resolution, under the Great Seal of the State of Maryland,

EXPLANATION: Italics indicate new matter added to existing law.
[Brackets] indicate matter stricken from existing law.
CAPITALS indicate amendments to bill.
Strike out indicates matter stricken out of bill.