PANAMA CANAL AND AMERICAN COMMERCE. 69 
by the Hay-Pauncefote treaty many were willing to harken back to the older 
treaty to our own undoing when it was proposed to protect our own by 
fortifications. 
Of course our vessels passing through our own waterway should pass 
through free. But again a treaty forbids. 
What is our manifest duty as an independent nation with the sovereign 
right to do as it will with its own. To give notice that in this respect the 
treaty does not bind us, and if this is questioned abrogate the treaty. 
Now listen to the inspired chorus railing of breach of faith. 
Bargains of this sort match privilege against privilege and it is not 
expected nor is it equitable that they should be one-sided. In this instance 
we are bound not to prefer our own ships, an enormous advantage given to 
our competitors. We are given permission to build the canal—a permission 
we should as a nation be ashamed to admit necessary. 
A rebate to our own vessels would be a cowardly compromise. This 
canal is a thoroughfare through our territory and should be free to our vessels. 
Our treaty makers up to the last few years have unhesitatingly swapped 
American rights for doubtful considerations which have usually turned out 
worthless. 
Congress seeing this fatal tendency to dicker, after the War of 1812 
when we made the much-to-be-regretted treaty of 1815, stopping our con- 
stitutional right to regulate commerce in direct foreign trade, passed a law 
which at least removed one part of our marine from such hazard. 
They passed a law confining the coasting trade to United States vessels. 
This remnant of the inspired legislation of the patriotic men who enacted 
our early navigation laws stands to-day—a monument of constructive 
legislation. Without it we should have lost the demand for coasting vessels 
that kept alive the flickering flame of shipyard capacity which roused by the 
proposal that we should buy our first man-of-war in Europe laid the founda- 
tion of the splendid shipyards we have to-day. 
Our tonnage in the coasting trade is enormous but must not be con- 
fused with our tonnage in the foreign trade which in 1911 is less than it 
was in 1811. 
To one man of this country, more than all others, who fought for years 
for the recognition of the American shipbuilder, Charles H. Cramp, do we 
Owe our present Navy. Beaten at one point and having to permit the 
building of hulls here, American doubting Thomases begged that we import 
the machinery and the splendid patriotic stand taken by Secretary Whitney, 
when he declared hull and machinery should be built in the United States 
if built at all, was based to my knowledge upon his faith in the promises of 
