May 1. 1914] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



413 



Shall We Lose the Panama Trade ? 



THE most wonderful sight in New York City is not its 

 sky-piercing buildings, its panorama of harbor and 

 shipping or its many hundred miles of house-lined 

 streets. It is the vast, sweeping tide of humanity which, be- 

 tween four and six o'clock, is seen moving up Park Row and 

 across City Hall ParK toward the entrance of Brooklyn 

 bridge. In every direction, as far as the eye can reach, peo- 

 ple are moving toward one common point. Here they come, 

 thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, each 



listless indifference upon another undertaking, as great in a 

 world-sense as the Brooklyn bridge is locally. Three hundred 

 and ninety-three years have heard of the project of a canal 

 across the isthmus, joining the land-masses of North and 

 South .-\mcrica. A few more months and the commerce of the 

 world will flow through the long-delayed opening in the bar 

 which has existed within knowledge of man. In the first 

 months there will pass through the locks of the canal a ton- 

 nage greater than the entire flotilla of the world when Charles 



Courtesy of Tropical Exploitation Syndicate, Limited, London. 



intent upon his own errand, little mindful of the tremendous 

 aggregate of which he is a part. Some are strangers, passing 

 for the first time. Others, who have crossed many times, are 

 passing for the last time — going to their homes to die. But 

 their places will be taken by still others and tomorrow the 

 throng will be mightier than today, as that of today is greater 

 than that of yesterday. 



Yet within the memory of men not old that place of throng- 

 ing myriads was a street of quiet, second-class hotels, de- 

 corous newspapers and sleepy shops. Then the Brooklyn 

 bridge was built and the traffic of the sundered communities 

 passed through the erstwhile quiet streets. The men who saw 

 the building of Brooklyn bridge could not imagine the crowds 

 which now converge at the bridge's entrance because such a 

 conception was beyond the imagination of man. But some 

 could see more clearly than others and were able to declare 

 that the traffic would increase until the capacity of the bridge 

 would be inadequate for its work; while the great majority 

 of New Yorkers regarded the undertaking with indifference 

 or cheap cynicism. 



.Another generation has grown up and looks with tlie same 



P.\.\AM.\ Pictorial Chart. 



Showing how the opening of the Panama 

 Canal will make a quick, direct route possible 

 between the tropical territories of the Pacific 

 and Atlantic ports of the United States and of 

 Europe. 



the I'ifth first considered piercing the isthmus, yet this will 

 he a mere trickle compared with the mighty currents which 

 will How with ever-increasing volume until the capacity of 

 the canal is overtaxed. The crowd of vessels moving upon 

 Panama will be like the crowds of people converging at 

 Brooklyn bridge. And they will carry not only vast quantities 

 of goods, but they will carry men — merchants with alert 

 brains and wide-open eyes and with money in their pockets 

 and more in their tills at home. They are going there to buy 

 and to sell, to oflfer bargains and to find them. From every 

 country of the world comes the same story of making ready 

 for the trade of Panama — that is. from every country except 

 our own. But there is equal unanimity in the report that our 

 own business men are fast asleep, comfortably dreaming of 

 the great benefit which will come to them from the canal 

 which their government has built, and without the slightest 

 evidence of waking up and really grasping those benefits 

 which other hands — British, French and German — arc eagerly 

 reaching out to secure. The trade — the profits — are there. 

 Whoever goes after them is going to get them, and when he 

 gets them he is going to keep them. 



