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The National Geographic Magazine 



ments on their own steam lines. I ask 

 your earnest consideration of the report 

 with which tlie Merchant Marine Com- 

 mission has followed its long and careful 

 inquiry." 



The bill now pending in the House is 

 a bill framed upon the report of that 

 Merchant Marine Commission. The 

 question whether it shall become a law 

 depends upon your Representatives in the 

 House. You have the judgment of the 

 Postmaster General, you have the judg- 

 ment of the Senate, you have the judg- 

 ment of the President; if you agree with 

 these judgments and wish the bill which 

 embodies them to become a law, say so 

 to your Representatives. Say it to them 

 individually and directly, for it is your 

 right to advise them and it will be their 

 pleasure to hear from you what legis- 

 lation the interests of their constituents 

 demand. 



The great body of Congressmen are 

 always sincerely desirous to meet the just 

 wishes of their constituents and to do 

 what is for the public interest ; but in this 

 great country they are continually as- 

 sailed by innumerable expressions of 

 private opinion and by innumerable de- 

 mands for the expenditure of public 

 money ; they come to discriminate very 



clearly between private opinion and pub- 

 lic opinion and between real public 

 opinion and the manufactured appear- 

 ance of public opinion ; they know that 

 when there is a real demand for any kind 

 of legislation it will make itself known 

 to them through a multitude of individual 

 voices. Resolutions of commercial bodies 

 frequently indicate nothing except that 

 the proposer of the resolution has a posi- 

 tive opinion and that no one else has 

 interest enough in the subject to oppose 

 it. Such resolutions by themselves, 

 therefore, have comparatively little effect ; 

 they are effective only when the support 

 of individual expressions shows that they 

 really represent a genuine and general 

 opinion. 



It is for you and the business men all 

 over the country whom you represent to 

 show to the Representatives in Congress 

 that the producing and commercial inter- 

 ests of the country really desire a prac- 

 tical measure to enlarge the markets and 

 increase the foreign trade of the United 

 States by enabling American shipping to 

 overcome the disadvantages imposed 

 upon it by foreign governments for the 

 benefit of their trade and by our gov- 

 ernment for the benefit of our home 

 industry. 



FIGHTING THE POLAR ICE 



IN "Fighting the Polar Ice," just 

 published by Messrs Doubleday, 

 Page & Co., Mr Fiala gives a 

 graphic narrative of the Ziegler Polar 

 Expedition of 1903-1905, of which he 

 was the commander. The scientific work 

 of this expedition, it will be remembered, 

 was under the direction of the National 

 Geographic Society. The expedition 

 failed in its object of getting to the Pole, 

 reaching only 82°, owing to wide open 

 leads in the ice, succeeded by immense 

 pressure ridges ; but their two years' stay 

 in the Far North was amply repaid by 

 detailed explorations of previousl}' un- 

 charted portions of the Franz Josef 



Archipelago and by a series of magnetic 

 and meteorological observations by 

 Messrs W. J. Peters and R. W. Porter, 

 which from their exactness and conti- 

 nuity have proved immensely valuable. 

 The Scientific Report is in press and will 

 be published shortly by the National Geo- 

 graphic Society. 



The expedition left Norway early in 

 July, 1903, but owing to the great 

 amount of ice encountered failed to reach 

 Teplitz Bay, in Franz Josef Land, before 

 the end of August. 



As a result, they had not time before 

 the darkness set in to discharge the sup- 

 plies, and were therefore compelled to 



