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Subject: John A. Johnson - 206-216
Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 09:31:03 -0800

Acknowledgment
The following selection is taken from "John A. Johnson - An Uncommon
American" by Agnes M. Larson and published by the Norwegian-American
Historical Association (NAHA) in 1969. The Volume is in print and
available from NAHA at http://www.naha.stolaf.edu where you will also
find the first 33 volumes of Studies and Records online as well as
Theodore C. Blegen's 2 volumes on Norwegian Migration to America. This
chapter is published with the kind permission of NAHA. The book this
selection is drawn from is under copyright and permission has been
granted for educational purposes and it is not to be used in any way for
commercial purposes.

CHAPTER VIII

Concerned Citizen and Leader

John A. Johnson was one of the uncommon men of his generation. Above and
beyond the various skills that made him an outstanding man of business
lay other qualities. Chief among them was his vigorous interest in things
academic and in the pressing political issues of his time. He gave his
energy to these interests in such measure as to mark him a leader in
public affairs.
As with many self-educated men, his mind was never idle. With a keen
power of observation and analysis, he could see beyond the immediate to
forecast trends and to evaluate evidence and decisions. Wide reading
enabled him to draw upon the past in a way that made him conscious of the
continuing process of change. Familiarity with the long history of
political and religious controversy that had wracked the world gave him a
clear-eyed view of the great issues of his century: slavery, civil war,
conditions of the laboring class, educational advancement, religious
tolerance, social reform. Throughout his lifetime, he grappled with these
compelling issues and left upon them the impress of his thinking and his
personality.
Johnson was also especially well equipped by natural endowment to play a
leader's role. His influence on contemporary affairs was enhanced by the
clarity and force with which he presented his ideas. To begin with, his
mind functioned pragmatically. He was a clear thinker, a forceful and
orderly writer. The logical organization of his thoughts, his vigor, and
his sincerity made him a convincing public speaker. No ghost writer was
needed: every word of his writings and speeches was his own.
Some of Johnson's public concerns grew out of his experiences as a
businessman, particularly those which involved marketing his firm's
products abroad. As he traveled in Europe, it troubled him that the
United States had slipped far behind in the race for trade in foreign
lands. He concluded that this inferiority stemmed from the fact that
America lacked a commercial fleet to carry its manufactures and grain
abroad. "The most progressive nation on earth," he maintained, "is
practically without any ocean shipping. It is a lamentable fact that the
Stars and Stripes are a total stranger on the sea and in foreign waters."
This judgment on the part of an American industrialist accurately
reflected the maritime situation toward the end of the nineteenth
century. Earlier it had been different. Before the Civil War and for a
decade afterward, the United States --- with her great forests of live
oak, white oak, and white pine --- continued her former pre-eminence as a
shipbuilding and seafaring nation. Her world-wide trade flourished. Major
competitors in Europe had no such natural resources to draw upon, and
America's supremacy in shipping seemed secure. That is, until England
began to construct iron ships powered by steam. In the 1880's came steel
ships. Lighter and with improved engines, these vessels could carry great
cargoes. Britain built up her merchant marine rapidly; the United States
shortsightedly lagged behind. Johnson now saw clearly the results of
these trends. From Copenhagen, near the end of 1887, he wrote stressing
the fact that English steamships had transported over 6,500,000 tons of
cargo that year, while those of American registry had carried only a
fraction over 500,000 tons. The ratio was 13 to 1. {1}
In the 1880's and 1890's, Britain had a distinct competitive advantage
over the United States in labor costs, both in shipbuilding and in
operations at sea. Translated into monetary terms, the expense of
constructing ocean-going vessels and manning them was more than 25 per
cent greater on this side of the Atlantic than in the British Isles.
Johnson realized with dismay that England's remarkably rapid ascendancy
in industry and trade had made her in a single generation the greatest
maritime nation of the century --- a distinction he coveted for his own
country. There was, however, no denying the facts. Many years later a
London historian wrote of his country's position in this period: "[She
was] the forge of the world, the world's carrier, the world's
shipbuilder, the world's banker, and the world's workshop." From London
and Liverpool her ships radiated to all parts of the British Empire,
uniting it as the transcontinental railroads bound together the distant
American states. {2}
Although he believed England to be the most serious competitor of the
United States, Johnson knew that other countries --- Germany, France,
Italy, Japan, and Brazil --- also posed a grave threat to the growth of
American trade in foreign waters. At the time, United States shipping
ranked a poor fourth behind England, France, and Germany, the leading
Atlantic powers. On a trip to South America, Johnson gathered statistics
in Rio de Janeiro to substantiate his country's low rating. For the year
1893, the great Brazilian port had been visited by 629 British ships.
France had sent 161 vessels and Germany 140 into Rio's harbor. During the
same period, only 60 ships carrying the American flag had anchored there.
{3}
In his vigorous articles on shipping and foreign trade, Johnson referred
to what he believed to be the only effective remedy: "the well worn
method of subsidies." In using these words, he was on sound historical
ground, for Venice and Spain at the close of the fifteenth century and
England under the first Elizabeth had built their powerful fleets with
direct aid to commercial shipping. Now in the late nineteenth century,
the governments of Britain and the other major maritime powers were all
giving financial grants to shipping interests performing special services
benefiting the nation as a whole. Contract subsidies provided so great an
advantage that non-subsidized vessels could not compete successfully. It
seems clear from his writings that Johnson had in mind for the United
States merchant marine the contract type of subsidy. {4}
Looking abroad, Johnson quickly became aware that in the major European
countries subsidizing a merchant marine was closely linked with military
defense. He could see that ships were a vital necessity in wartime, and
his thoughts moved inevitably to the shortsightedness of the American
government in this important area. In his pleas for an aroused public
opinion in his own country, he presented forcefully the argument that in
time of war there must exist a close relationship between a commercial
fleet and the United States navy. Using England as a prime example, he
urged that plans must be made at once to create a strong merchant marine,
ready if war came to become an essential part of the country's line of
defense on the sea. {5}
As our later history proved, Johnson's case for a subsidized merchant
marine was a strong one. Trained commercial seamen, he explained, could
be ready "at the tap of the drum" to enter service in the navy. Merchant
ships could be built under government specifications, with possible use
in mind as transports in case of war. Johnson realized that to subsidize
a fleet of commercial ships would require heavy expenditures, but he
opposed any "niggardly, half-way policy." The government might find that
such a fleet would at first operate at a loss; he pointed out that in
time, however, the reduced cost of freight --- on both what was bought
and what was sold in transoceanic trade --- would clearly result in an
over-all compensating gain. The sale of American products abroad would
increase greatly in volume, and the total national income would grow in
direct proportion. {6}
The leadership that John A. Johnson took on the merchant marine issue
attracted considerable national attention. On October 27, 1889, the
Minneapolis Tribune complimented him on his stand. In an editorial, the
paper pointed out that he was a successful Midwestern manufacturer whose
agricultural implements were important commodities in our country's
foreign trade. As a result of his connections overseas, Johnson was well
qualified, by his personal experience and by his careful study of world
economic conditions, to discuss the position of the United States in
shipping and in international business. The Minnesota newspaper concluded
by declaring that the views of such an authority must carry unusual
weight. {7}
By fortunate coincidence, other factors helped to advance American
shipbuilding at the very time that Johnson was urging the government to
act. The second half of the nineteenth century saw the opening of iron
mines in Minnesota, the development of economical shipping on the Great
Lakes, and the consequent upsurge in the production of iron and steel in
the great foundries of the East. New inventions facilitated the use first
of iron, then of steel, in the building of more and larger ocean-going
vessels. The time was at last ripe, and the United States government
moved --- as Johnson had hoped it would --- to enact legislation
supporting a merchant fleet. In 1891, Congress passed the Merchant Marine
Act. "Under this law," a maritime historian pointed out in a later era,
"the first effort to develop a system of American contract lines was
made." It is interesting to note that a few years after Johnson's ideas
had been published, Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan of the United States navy
published his classic book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, in
which he declared that in time of war it was imperative that an
industrial state keep its lines of seaborne trade open by the use of
armed naval power. {8}
The maritime legislation of the 1890's was a necessary beginning, but at
best it was dangerously late. Subsequently, in two world wars, the United
States was forced to rush the building of ships on round-the-clock
schedules and at excessive costs. The failure to take effective and
adequate measures at the time when Johnson first sounded an alarm proved
to be a mistake that would take years to correct. His early views were
later incorporated in national policy, as indicated in the granting of
subsidies for building oil tankers adapted to military use just before
World War II. During the drastic emergencies of that conflict, the
government took over the oil carriers and used them to perform a vital
service in refueling the fighting ships of the United States navy. {9}
For both patriotic and personal reasons, Johnson also interested himself
in developing foreign markets. In 1889, the Pan-American Congress,
meeting in Washington, D.C., made an attempt to arouse the interest of
American businessmen in trade with Latin American countries. This was a
beginning, but it took the panic of 1893 to drive home the lesson that
foreign trade provided the key to American economic revival. With this
trend of thinking, Johnson found himself in complete accord. He could see
clearly that the United States was geared to produce more goods than it
could consume, and that the time had come for the country to establish
closer relations with other parts of the globe. From his experience with
his own business, he realized that American manufacturers must reach out
to the expanding markets of the world. To the development of this
program, he was to devote much of his time and energy during the last
decade of his life.
Both the government and organized industry in the United States
increasingly focused their interest on South America in the 1890's --- a
trend which Johnson sponsored in every way he could. American
representatives to Latin American countries had been agitating for some
time for improved commercial relations between the two halves of the
western hemisphere. G. W. Fishback, secretary of the United States
legation in Buenos Aires, and William I. Buchanan, minister to Argentina,
had been strongly promoting a plan for leading businessmen of both North
and South America to meet and to study ways of increasing
intercontinental trade. As a result of the groundwork laid by these two
men, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay invited the United States to send
representative manufacturers south to confer with industrialists in the
three eastern South American countries. {10}
The time was right for such an interchange of ideas and opinions.
Accepting the invitation eagerly, the National Association of
Manufacturers, established in 1895, moved at once to organize a trade
delegation. At its first convention, it made plans for a "Commercial Tour
to South America," and set out to select a group representative of the
leading manufacturing industries of the United States. In logical
sequence, the well-organized National Association of Agricultural
Implement and Vehicle Manufacturers was asked to select a member to go on
the southern mission and it forthwith chose Johnson. His responsibilities
were indicated in a formal statement: "[Our purpose is not only] to
establish more intimate trade relations between the United States and the
more important South American nations but also to convey to the people of
the United States through the members of this party a more thorough and
practicable knowledge of the resources of the countries visited, and to
indicate the means by which the trade between the nations visited and our
country can be enlarged and extended.
It would be hard to imagine a more suitable American industrialist for
this particular assignment than John A. Johnson. In 1896, at the age of
sixty-four, he was the veteran president of two well-known and
established manufacturing companies, both at the time competing
successfully in foreign markets, especially in Europe. To this record was
to be added the reputation he enjoyed as an observer, writer, and speaker
in his chosen field. One other asset was clear to all who knew him: he
understood and believed in the goals of the venture he was to engage in.
The twelve-man delegation was to sail from New York City on July 1, 1896,
on a three-months' tour. Before the departure, the president of the
National Association of Manufacturers was host at a banquet at the
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, attended, among others, by the mayors of New York,
Brooklyn, and Philadelphia. From Washington, South American diplomats ---
the ministers of Argentina and Brazil and the consul general of Uruguay
--- had also come to add an international flavor to the affair. Among the
speakers was John A. Johnson, representing the farm machinery segment of
American manufacturing. {11}
The next day, guided by G. W. Fishback, who had come up from Buenos Aires
to direct the party, the Americans boarded the "St. Paul" bound for
London. United States warships fired a salute as the "Continental Tour"
got under way through the Narrows of New York harbor. After a week-long
crossing and two days in England, the group re-embarked on the "Danube"
of the Royal Mail Line. On the return trip across the Atlantic by the
southern route, the ship traveled through the Bay of Biscay to Lisbon,
and thence by way of the Cape Verde Islands to the South American
continent. {12}
The journey over the South Atlantic took approximately three weeks. On
July 21 the "Danube" crossed the equator, and on the first day of August
it entered the port of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where an enthusiastic
reception awaited the visitors. Here in the city which Johnson called the
"Palace of the South," the United States delegation established its base
of operations. Argentina, Johnson noted as he visited the hinterland, was
a country of tremendous extent. The pampas stretched farther than the eye
could reach in every direction. This was a great wheat and cattle area,
like the American West Johnson knew so well. Its capacity as a meat
producing region caused the observer to speculate that the United States
--- if it was to compete in world markets --- must increase and upgrade
its meat production. Unlike North America, Argentina lacked lumber,
metals, and coal, and it had little heavy industry. As the result of his
observations, the North American visitor saw excellent opportunities for
marketing manufactured products, which the South American country could
use in quantity.
After a time, the delegation moved on to Montevideo, the capital of
Uruguay, and thence to Brazil. Well received everywhere, the American
industrialists visited a large number of city factories and penetrated
far into the interior to study the natural resources of each country.
With a keen eye on conditions in each area, Johnson took special notes
concerning problems manufacturers of his country would face in pushing
their trade efforts into these remote southern regions. He was
particularly interested in the question of local and foreign competition
and with making a reasoned judgment about what specific products were
needed in South America and would find a substantial market there.
Developing his extensive notes, Johnson, while still in the south, sent
the Farm Implement News in Chicago a digest of his findings in Argentina
and Brazil. On October 15, 1896, the trade journal carried an
eight-column article in which he discussed what he had learned to date in
South America. Later he drew upon his daily jottings for a small book
published on December 15, 1896, under the title South America: Its
Resources and Possibilities. In the first part of the booklet, Johnson
described the economic outlook of the countries he had seen. Going
further, he proposed plans for more extended commercial relations with
the nations of the southern hemisphere.
The problem of direct competition with Argentina and Brazil in world
markets occupied the second part of Johnson's study. One could see, he
wrote, that these countries were producing in large quantities the
agricultural products --- beef and wheat --- that were the backbone of
the farming industry of the United States. The message to northern
agriculturalists, millers, and meat packers was clear: they must study
and work to improve their marketing position. Concerning all manufactured
goods from North American plants, one could say that there was a great
opportunity in the south. Favorable markets and extensive sales awaited
only the initiative of alert and able manufacturers in the north.
There was competition, too, from across the Atlantic, Johnson reported.
All the maritime nations of Europe were carrying on substantial business
with Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. Even Belgium sold more goods to
these countries than did the United States. All had established banks in
the leading South American cities --- private enterprises of great
assistance in fostering international trade. He suggested that American
bankers investigate opportunities to the south, going far enough to imply
that they had heretofore been too conservative to explore the challenging
possibilities. Of the three countries he had visited, he found that the
smallest had the most solid banking system. "The plucky little republic
of Uruguay," he pointed out, "has been wise enough to establish and
adhere to a specie basis, a gold basis at that, and she will doubtless
have her reward." Northern nations might learn some banking lessons in
the southern hemisphere.
Johnson was critical of the diplomatic service of the United States in
South American countries. He urged the appointment of really qualified
men and an end to merely political preferment. Representatives of our
country to foreign nations, he maintained, should know the language,
habits, laws, and customs of the peoples to whom they were assigned.
Personal qualities of a high order --- such as integrity of purpose,
balanced judgment, and a broad knowledge of the purposes, ideals, and
resources of the United States --- were required of official
representatives appointed by our state department. Again the implication
was clear: Johnson had been disappointed in the caliber of diplomats he
had met in South America. He was willing to extend the point a step
further in his own field: If American industrial companies really wished
to flourish in the Latin American countries, they, too, must send south
only really qualified men of the highest type.
In the concluding paragraph of his South America, Johnson paid a tribute
to his own country. He had returned from the South American tour, he
declared, better satisfied with the United States --- its laws, its
government, its institutions, its people. He made special mention of the
American system of jurisprudence: "We know not what boon the fathers
brought with them in the English Common Law. I myself can appreciate the
importance of our free press, the palladium of our liberties and the
support of an enlightened public opinion, that alone makes a just and
stable government possible. We are marvelously favored with a good
country. There is none like it on earth."
After the completion of the commercial mission at the end of October,
1896, Johnson continued in public addresses to urge that trade with Latin
America be encouraged in every feasible way. At the annual meeting of his
own organization, the National Association of Agricultural Implement and
Vehicle Manufacturers, in Nashville, Tennessee, in November of the same
year, one evening was given over to a report on what he had seen and
learned in his visit below the equator. The chairman of the meeting in
his introduction of the speaker of the occasion, revealed the high esteem
in which his colleagues held their official representative. "Mr. Johnson
is the Nestor of our Association," he said, "and without disparagement to
any other member of the distinguished body, it may be said that he is one
of its most intelligent and observant members." At the conclusion of
Johnson's address, he was "enthusiastically applauded. {13}
The South American sojourn gave Johnson an opportunity to widen his
acquaintance among American manufacturers in fields outside his own.
Particularly on the long sea voyages, he made new personal friends, whom
he described interestingly in his letters to his sons, Fred, Carl, and
Hobart. One such member of the delegation, who manufactured steam engines
and cotton gins, was "a congenial spirit, a man of good principles and
decided natural ability. He is a self-made man who began with nothing but
who has built his business by ability and energy." Of other delegates, he
observed that one lacked "breadth of observation," and another who showed
no interest in reading was "not very penetrative." Outstanding in the
group, in his estimation, was J. M. Studebaker, vice-president of
Studebaker Brothers, makers of carriages and wagons in South Bend,
Indiana. "He is a man of strong business sense," Johnson observed, "not
well educated, but [he] details his experiences quite well and knows
every detail in his great business. The Studebaker brothers are all good
workers. . . . Studebaker is quite communicative," he concluded, "and I
hope to learn considerable about his methods, have learned considerable
already."
Beyond his involvement in matters of trade and shipping, Johnson's
interests had always moved naturally into the realm of foreign affairs.
His reading had given him insight into the historical contributions and
diplomacy of the larger European nations. He greatly admired England, and
in all his writings he appears as a true Anglophile. He visited that
country whenever he could --- which was frequently in his later years,
when the Gisholt Machine Company had developed a substantial market
there. It pleased him to make these trips abroad, in which he mingled
business, family reunions, and an opportunity to indulge his love for
historical and cultural observation.
In 1897, he made such a sentimental journey. That year John B. Cassoday,
chief justice of the Wisconsin supreme court, whose daughter Carl A.
Johnson had married, was in London. With him, Johnson visited the Inns of
Court, a memorable experience which he described in a letter to a
newspaper in his home community. "These Inns," he explained, "may be said
to be the cradle of English statesmanship, English law and English
greatness. [The four inns] were really law schools from which every
English barrister must get his diploma." The common law, as developed in
England through the centuries, he held to be "the greatest bulwark of the
innocent subject and citizen and of the rights of property ever devised
by man." Unusual knowledge of English history for an American of his time
illuminated Johnson's letter. He referred to the wisdom of Queen
Elizabeth in consulting with her "faithful commons"; he contrasted her
with Charles I, who probably lost his head because he lacked her
judgment. In closing, he reminded Americans back home how much the
constitution of the United States and the constitutions of the individual
states --- Wisconsin included --- owed to English sources. {14}
Johnson also went to the British Museum and found it of consuming
interest. "It is the greatest in the world," he maintained. He was
fascinated to see there, among the other historical documents, the Magna
Carta with King John's seal. In surveying English history, he most
admired that country's contributions in world diplomacy. An honest
critic, however, he recorded England's mistakes in foreign relations,
citing two in particular: the harsh treatment of the American colonies
which brought on the American Revolution --- and the behavior of the
British government at the time of the Opium War in China. Despite these
lapses, Johnson believed that on balance England's virtues far outweighed
her faults.
Most Americans favored the inhabitants of the South African Transvaal and
Orange Free State in the Boer War involving Great Britain at the turn of
the century. Not so Johnson. The decisive campaigns of the struggle
included the last two years of his life, at the time his ties with
England were the closest. Aware that his countrymen in the United States
were calling him a pro-Britisher, he defended his position with an appeal
to history and a reference to the international contest for world
dominion. He knew what the Dutch had done in the cause of human freedom
in the wars with Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries --- and
he admired their fight for the recognition of their country as a separate
nation. Now, however, the Boers fighting the British in Africa did not
seem to him to be the liberty-loving Dutchmen who had battled so bravely
for the Netherlands against Philip II, the Duke of Alva, and their
Spanish legions.
There can be little doubt that the issue of slavery influenced Johnson to
favor England in the war in South Africa. The British parliament had
abolished slavery throughout the Empire in 1833, and had offered to pay
the Dutch settlers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State for their
losses in setting their slaves free. But the Boers, long accustomed to
enslaving black Africans, resisted the emancipation act. Friction
continued through the century, which saw the American Civil War fought
over much the same issue. Johnson's strong lifetime feeling that slaves
everywhere must be freed overshadowed other considerations, including
sympathy for the underdog Boer farmers in their uneven struggle with the
mighty British Empire.

<1> John A. Johnson to the editor of the Madison Daily Democrat, November
7, 1887. The newspaper published the letter and reprinted it as a
pamphlet entitled Our Navy and Commerce (Madison, 1887). The letter was
later published as a pamphlet by the Society for the Advancement of
American Shipping under the title The Absence of the American Flag in
Foreign Waters.
<2> John G. B. Hutchins, The American Maritime Industries and Public
Policy, 1789-1914, 520, 579 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1941); L. C. A.
Knowles, The Industrial and Commercial Revolutions in Great Britain
during the Nineteenth Century, 162-167, 298-305 (London, 1926). The
quotation is from Knowles.
<3> "Foreign Trade in Brazil in 1893," in A Three Months Trip to
Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, 1896 (National Association of Manufacturers
of the United States, Philadelphia, 1896). Johnson compiled an impressive
collection of data concerning foreign trade entering the major ports of
eastern South America.
<4> Johnson, Our Navy and Commerce, 7. In this pamphlet, Johnson wrote as
an American citizen engaged in business abroad: "Why can we not carry out
at least a portion of our own products to market? . . . We look on and
see the trade that naturally and fairly belongs to us go elsewhere. It is
not only necessary to produce; the surplus products must find a market."
See also Hutchins, The American Maritime Industries, 48.
<5> John A. Johnson, "Ocean Shipping," in the Minneapolis Tribune,
October 27, 1889.
<6> Johnson, "Ocean Shipping," in the Minneapolis Tribune, October 27,
1889.
<7> Other articles by John A. Johnson on the development of a merchant
fleet were circulated throughout the United States in newspapers and by
the Society for the Advancement of American Shipping.
<8> Hutchins, The American Maritime Industries, 438, 459, 533.
<9> The United States government granted shipbuilding subsidies under the
Merchant Marine Act of 1936. See Hutchins, The American Maritime
Industries, 522.
<10> Nelson M. Blake, "Background of Cleveland's Venezuelan Policy," in
the North American Review, 47: 259-277 (January, 1942).
<11> New York World, June 29, 1896, in a story forecasting the event.
<12> A Three Months Trip to Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, 1896. At the
time, no passenger steamers connected New York with ports in South
America.
<13> Daily Sun (Nashville, Tennessee), November 18, 1896.
<14> Johnson, in the Madison Democrat, August 10, 1897. The letter was
written on July 10, 1897, in Carlsbad, Germany,
<15> Johnson is the author of an undated, unpublished typescript nine
pages in length, in which he set down his position on the Boer War. He
died before the war ended, but, though seriously ill, he continued
writing during the winter of 1900-1901. It is probable that he wrote the
paper early in 1901, at a time when it was certain that England would win
the war. A copy of this article is in the Johnson Papers and an excerpt,
giving his views on Great Britain versus Russia, is in the Appendix, p.
292.

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