PANAMA CANAL AND AMERICAN COMMERCE. 79 
United States vessels through the Canal and neglecting treaties which give impor- 
tant rights to European nations, I am not specifying any particular one—we will say 
Germany or any other foreign nation—you run up against this, that the other 
fellow has something to say about that, and he does not usually do it by coming 
to you diplomatically and saying ‘‘We have a treaty with you that you were to 
leave the canal open,” but he says, “I have a lot of ships, and want to use that 
Canal, and I have a lot of goods to buy from you,” we will'say grain from the West 
and canned goods and provisions, etc., and everybody knows what a tremendous 
trade that is. But the world is getting smaller every day, and if you put obstacles 
in the way of people buying the goods where they get them to the best advantage, 
they go somewhere else, and that is quite a serious matter for this country. You 
want to increase your export trade, and have your own ships to enable you to do 
that, but if you put a high rate on your freight, and put obstacles in the way of 
other people carrying goods in their own bottoms, they simply get these same 
articles from another place. 
I know a little about this thing, because I have noticed—take the British 
market by way of reference, the British market has been buying grain in enormous 
quantities throughout the Canadian Northwest. Until a few years ago the basis 
of all their flour came from the northwestern part of the United States and Canada. 
That trade petered out a year or two ago and there was no grain going down the 
St. Lawrence, and the reason was the Canadians put obstacles in the way of the 
grain going out. They unduly increased the price of it. There were good crops 
elsewhere, and the British simply bought their grain in the Argentine, Austria, or 
wherever there was a surplus. Grain is going to be such a delicate thing to handle 
that it does not require any diplomatic moves to upset the export trade. The 
buyer has a lot to say how he shall have his stuff shipped. That is your difficulty. 
Incidentally, see how much it will mean to the export trade of the United States 
to have that freedom to employ foreign shipping, because you are going to do your 
own coasting trade—that you have already determined to do—therefore you can 
do what you will with the fees from vessels passing through the Canal, but it will 
require more than the rebate of the dues from the Canal to promote that foreign 
shipping which you are so anxious to have. 
I do not think one should forget either that this idea of giving special privileges 
or having special tariffs is more or less an exploded idea to-day. It is one in which 
a great deal of splendid work has been done in developing new interests in this 
and other countries, but the people to-day are more concerned about the nation 
pulling as a whole and getting their goods shipped in the cheapest possible way. 
While the United States is to have its own merchant marine, with the world 
closing all around it, so to speak, I see that the tremendous asset in the develop- 
ment of the United States is that it has been able to draw on Norway, Germany 
and Britain, and every other country, for cheap freight. The export trade of 
the United States is as much based on that to-day as on any other factor. The 
margin of profit on whatever price you get for an order in China depends on the rate 
