PANAMA CANAL AND AMERICAN COMMERCE. 
By Lewis Nixon, MEMBER OF COUNCIL. 
{Read at the eighteenth general meeting of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, held in 
New York, November 16 and 17, r1911.] 
That Commerce will be stimulated by the opening of the Panama 
Canal is generally admitted, but that its advantage will be aboot to all 
countries is of course impossible. 
This is because some nations are keenly alive to the desirability of 
conserving the material interests of their people, leaving to other countries 
the task of looking out for their own. 
So it will follow as it always has in the past that in the readjustment of 
commercial conditions, to be brought about by the opening of our canal, 
the nations who jealously safeguard their interests and utilize to the utmost 
possibilities confronting them will profit more largely than those who are 
indifferent. 
The men whoframed our Constitution and whoin Congress later carried 
out its intentions and ideals in laws, thoroughly understood that the three 
pillars of national greatness and prosperity were commerce, agriculture and 
manufacturing. 
Patriotism and not political epatiens was the moving spirit and a 
handful of men, in debt, without resources or credit, with the fear of no 
country in their minds and with an eye singly to the progress of the United 
States of America enacted legislation that quickly gave us wealth, power 
and population. 
We all know that departure from the wise policy of our forefathers was 
coincident with the beginning of the decline of our merchant marine, while 
other nations have become strong and rich through utilizing the oppor- 
tunities we have thrown away. 
We are always told that we had to develop our internal resources. 
That is true, but had we adhered to our original, constitutional maritime 
policy we should have saved the money necessary for such development 
instead of turning over vast profits to others to be reinvested here and make 
a vast drain forever upon our earnings. 
It is said by those always eager to find excuses for continuing our 
dependence upon the oceans that our Foreign Trade is mounting now to 
