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in aid of shipping. Instead of the enactment by Congress of a law granting a general navigation bounty or making appropriations to lines designated in the statute, it would be wiser for Congress to act in accordance with the technical and administrative character of the general problem of rendering effective government aid to the merchant marine, and to authorize the shipping board to enter into contracts with a limited number of steamship lines from the United States to foreign countries. The selection of the lines to be aided should be left to the shipping board, also the amounts to be paid and the formulation of the provisions of the contracts made by the Government with the lines assisted. It is quite certain that, by giving to the shipping board the responsibility of selecting the lines that will be of most assistance to the development of the foreign commerce of the United States, better results can be obtained than by the passage of laws granting subsidies such as have previously been given by Congress. The task to be accomplished being executive in character, its performance should be intrusted to an able body of experts vested with power to exercise its discretion in using the funds appropriated by Congress.

Effective legislation for the promotion of the American marine in the foreign trade ought not to be postponed; in fact it should have preceded

the completion of the Panama Canal. The opening of the canal increases the need for a larger American marine in the foreign trade and gives the vessels under the flag of the United States a greater opportunity. Having invested $400,000,000 in the construction of the Panama Canal, it would be a serious mistake for the people of the United States to neglect to adopt such a policy toward the merchant marine as will enable the canal to be of effective assistance in restoring the marine to the place it held in American commerce at the middle of the nineteenth century. It is not to be expected that this can be accomplished all at once or in a few years, but it should be the definite aim of the people and Government of the United States to bring about this desirable result ultimately and at the earliest practicable date.

CHAPTER IX

EUROPE'S INTEREST IN THE PANAMA CANAL

Before the United States Government undertook the construction of the Panama Canal, a company of Frenchmen, incorporated by France, attempted to accomplish the task. The Panama Canal Company-La Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique-was organized and obtained its concession from Colombia twenty-five years before the United States obtained from the Republic of Panama the grant of the Canal Zone and the right to build the canal. The ten years of heroic effort on the part of the French to pierce the Isthmus failed partly because the company's financial management was too loose, but more because the work was carried on before the methods of controlling yellow fever and checking malaria were known. The experience of the Panama Canal Company made it clear that the canal must be made a government undertaking, and the European capitalists reluctantly turned over the task to the United States, whose funds for canal construction and whose success in the execution of the great work to be done did not depend upon

the sale of stocks and bonds of a corporation, the value of whose securities was determined by the prospective revenues from the operation of the canal if and when completed.

A review of the history of the attention given to the project of a canal across the American Isthmus by the European governments from the time of Columbus to the days of De Lesseps is outside of the purpose of this chapter which is concerned with an analysis of the commercial and political interest of Europe in the completed waterway, now open on terms of entire equality to the commerce of all nations, but owned and operated by the United States, between which country and European nations there must unavoidably be more or less commercial and political rivalry.

From the standpoint of commerce, Europe's interest in the Panama Canal is twofold. As the result of opening the canal, Europe is compelled to face a stronger and more extended competition with the United States for the trade of all countries bordering the Pacific Ocean; but, while the relative advantages of Europe over the United States for the trade of Pacific countries have been lessened by the canal, the waterway has so reduced the costs of transportation between Europe and the west coast of North and South America as to be of much assistance to the commerce of

Europe. Europe thus stands both to lose and to gain from the canal.

The changed conditions of competition between Europe and the eastern seaboard of the United States for the trade of Pacific countries, resulting from the opening of the Panama Canal, were indicated in Chapter III which set forth the effect of the canal upon the length of ocean routes and the time of voyages. By way of the Straits of Magellan the distance from New York to Valparaiso, Chile, is 8,380 nautical miles, while from Liverpool the mileage is 8,747, the distances being nearly equal. Via the Panama Canal, Valparaiso is 4,633 miles from New York, and 7,207 miles from Liverpool, New York now having an advantage of 2,574 miles over Liverpool in trading with Valparaiso and all other west coast South American ports. The ports of the west coast of Central America and North America by way of the canal are, likewise, 2,574 miles nearer New York than Liverpool. As compared with Hamburg, Germany, New York has a distance advantage of 3,093 miles in trading with the ports of the Pacific coast of the Americas. New Orleans and the other Gulf ports, being nearer than New York to the canal, have a correspondingly greater distance advantage over Europe in trading with Pacific ports north and south of the canal.

Before the opening of the Panama Canal

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