76 PANAMA CANAL AND AMERICAN COMMERCE. 
powers of Congress to have prescribed that vessels, American and foreign, making 
use of these improved waterways costing half a billion dollars should pay charges 
at least sufficient to maintain the improvements, if not to pay the annual interest 
of $10,000,000 on government bonds, kept outstanding and not redeemed. Such 
charges could have been levied, subject to the condition that there should be no 
discrimination based on flag, incorporated in our treaties, of which Article III of 
of our treaty with the Netherlands may serve as illustration :— 
“Neither party shall impose upon the vessels of the other, whether carrying 
cargoes or arriving in ballast from either of the two countries, or any other country, 
any duties of tonnage, harbor dues, light-house, salvage, pilotage, quarantine, or 
port charges of any kind or denomination, which shall not be imposed in like cases 
on national vessels.” 
In fact the policy of the country was declared in Section 4 of the River and 
Harbor Act of July 5, 1884:— 
“No tolls or operating charges whatever shall be levied upon or collected from 
any vessel, dredge, or other water craft for passing through any lock, canal, canalized 
river, or other work for the use and benefit of navigation, now belonging to the 
United States or that may be hereafter acquired or constructed.” 
We do not charge ships, American or foreign, of war or of commerce, for their 
use of the improved harbor of New York, the Mississippi and its jetties and the 
“Soo” Canal. If the Hay-Pauncefote treaty of 1901 be deemed a concession of 
timidity in guaranteeing equality of Canal tolls, then the Forty-eighth Congress, 
presided over by the Hon. George F. Edmunds, of Vermont, and the Hon. John G. 
Carlisle, of Kentucky, made absolute surrender in declaring that no tolls whatever 
should be levied upon any vessel, foreign or American, for passing through any 
work for the benefit of navigation belonging to the United States. The obvious 
truth is that the clear-sighted statesmen who from Washington to Taft have 
directed the policy of the United States have found equally sagacious statesmen 
abroad and in so shaping the commercial policies of nations as to give the largest 
opportunity for ocean navigation they have been the greatest benefactors of naval 
architecture. 
Why charge any Panama Canal tolls? The Panama Canal differs from all 
other American public works for the benefit of navigation in one important par- 
ticular. Every river and harbor improvement—with very few and inconsiderable 
exceptions—has an American terminal, and the people of the United States in 
some form derive benefit from every vessel making use of the improved waterway. 
The ships may be foreign, but their cargoes or passengers in part at least are 
American, coming from or going to the soil of the United States. The Panama 
Canal is in foreign territory over a narrow strip of which the United States has 
acquired jurisdiction in perpetuity for a specific purpose. Ships will pass through 
