to receive free passage through the canal must enter into a contract to the effect that in case of war or other emergency such vessel may be appropriated and used by the United States. Under the clear and undisputed terms of the treaty this proposed condition would constitute a class of boats which could be passed without tolls, and no discrimination would be practiced.

What I said at the beginning in reference to tolls was general and applied to all nations, but permit me to advert briefly to the special case of Canada. It is urged that if the tollgates swing free to United States boats, but will open to Canadian boats only upon the payment of tolls, that the Dominion will retaliate at the Canadian Soo, the Welland and St. Lawrence Canals. I can not so believe, and I would not violate either the letter or the spirit of our treaty relations with our neighbor on the north, although her present administration seems actuated by something less than the truest feelings of amity and good will toward us. Our existing treaty with Canada gives that country no right to participate in our coastwise traffic. It does provide, however, that both nations can on equal terms use the Canadian and American Soo locks and canals, the American St. Clair Canal, the Detroit River artificial channel, the Welland and the St. Lawrence Canals. The benefits to the two countries are mutual. There is actual and real reciprocity in this treaty, and no benefits from any other sources than those inhering in the mutual use of the Great Lakes, the Welland Canal, and the St. Lawrence River were contemplated.

It is true that until our new Soo lock, which is in process of construction, is completed, lake traffic would be retarded if we were denied the use of the Canadian Soo locks for some of our large boats, but our treaty with the Dominion will not have terminated before our new lock will be done and Canada will have no just cause to abrogate the treaty if we live up to our part of the contract, and we will. We will be just to all nations, and in this instance"all" will include our own.

Free ships will have a tendency to encourage the building and operating of more ships, and this result will, through competition, have a tendency to materially reduce rates to such an extent that the consignee the consumer— will get the benefit. But the boat rates must be met by the rail rates. This fact has been made eloquent by every act of the railroad companies since the canal project was started. It is because of this fact that railroad managers want a controlling hand in canal affairs. They know that this completed enterprise will be more potent in reducing rates and in furnishing adequate facilities than all the orders of the Interstate Commerce Commission and all the decrees of the courts. We may not be able to balance all influences and segregate those which are properly due to canal influence, but we may be sure that the lower rail rates will inure to the benefit of the people, as they should, because it was their genius which conceived this enterprise, it was their money and energy which constructed it, and it will be their patriotism which will maintain and operate it.

FROM SPEECH OF HON. JULIUS KAHN, OF CALIFORNIA, IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES MAY 21, 1912.

Mr. KAHN. Mr. Chairman, I have listened attentively to the debate, and I have heard a great deal said about the provisions of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty and their effect upon this legislation. I believe our country has been looked upon by the rest of the world as a Nation of altruists. Since our entrance into the family of nations we have been doing things unselfishly for the benefit of mankind. As early as 1815 Commodore Stephen Decatur destroyed the power of the Barbary pirates, in Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli, and the countries of Europe thanked us for the good work. Later on, on December 2, 1823, President Monroe announced his famous doctrine that we would look upon the aggression of any European power on American territory as an unfriendly act. The world has tacitly accepted that doctrine. In 1898 we went into Cuba in the great cause of humanity, and gave liberty to the oppressed people of that island. A year or two ago, in the cause of human justice, we returned our indemnity to China. To-day we are helping the Republic of Santo Domingo in solving its financial difficulties. But despite these evidences of altruism, there

is not a single nation in the world that believes we are crazy enough to spend $400,000,000 in constructing this canal without giving an advantage in the matter of coastwise shipping to our own citizens. [Applause.] And the time to settle the question as to our rights in the premises is now, on this bill, the first bill that attempts to regulate the commerce of that canal. If there be any question about our rights under the treaty, let us settle it now. It will undoubtedly be determined in our favor.

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Mr. Chairman, this proposition of free tolls to American ships in the coastwise trade means much to the American merchant marine. I believe that free tolls will encourage the building of American ships for this trade. The building of American ships means auxiliary cruisers and colliers for our Navy in time of war. It was the historic cruise of the battleship Oregon all the way around South America to Santiago de Cuba, during the Spanish-American War, that helped materially to bring about the legislation for the construction of the Panama Canal. It is only a few years since our battleship fleet, in its cruise around the world, gave a practical demonstration of the weakness of our merchant marine to all the nations of the earth. For it was a fleet of foreign merchant vessels, carrying foreign flags, that acted as colliers for our battleship fleet. In case of war we could not procure the services of similar colliers. We clearly need American ships. Let us by our votes to-day do something for the upbuilding of an American merchant marine. Let us not neglect this opportunity. And I feel confident the great majority of our countrymen will approve and applaud our course.

FROM SPEECH OF HON. WILLIAM M. CALDER, OF NEW YORK, IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES MAY 17, 1912.

Mr. CALDER. Mr. Chairman, the great problem that is occupying the attention of the business world is the question of transportation. This Government in the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission sought to regulate transportation over railroads, and in subsequent legislation amendatory of the interstate-commerce act has increased the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission to an extent not dreamed of by the authors of the original act, so that to-day the commission has power not only to pass upon the question of rebates, practices, and regulations of all description, but also passes upon the sufficiency of rates, and has the right under the law to fix same. As a result of this legislation we have done away with unfair methods and have prohibited a condition of affairs whereby one shipper could be favored over another, thus placing every shipping concern and every railroad in the United States on an equal footing with the other. All of this has been of the greatest benefit to the railroads. It has stopped the giving of free transportation; it has stopped ruinous competition, and to-day no honestly conducted railroad would agree for a moment that they would favor its repeal.

In the consideration of section 5 of the Panama bill we are dealing with a subject of as great importance to the shipping interests of the country as Congress did in the consideration of the interstate-commerce law and in the amendments thereto. In the effort to encourage traffic through the canal we are establishing a competitor with the railroads in which every part of the United States is vitally interested. I represent on this floor a district in the city of New York. As a result of the opening of the Panama Canal that city will become within a short period easily the greatest commercial center in the world. The granting of free tolls to the ships in the coastwise trade will unquestionably add some to the commercial importance of that city, but it is of small moment compared to its effect upon the agricultural and manufacturing business of the entire country. It has been well said in the minority report:

The tolls imposed at the canal will be added to the freight paid by the American people who consume the commodities. We hold this proposition to be fundamental; and viewed in this light, free tolls to our coastwise trade would not be a subsidy to shipowners, but a concession to the American people.

Every ton of merchandise carried through the canal is that much merchandise taken from the transcontinental railroads, thereby compelling the transcontinental roads to compete with the canal. The effect of this, it seems plain to me, would be to compel the transcontinental roads to meet the competition

of the canal, thereby lessening freight rates between points within the country. The impression seems to prevail that the only people to be benefited by the free tolls in the coastwise trade are at points on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Careful consideration of the proposition will convince everybody, I am sure, that any reduction in freight rates forced by sea competition between New York and San Francisco is contemporaneously applied between Chicago and St. Paul, Kansas City and St. Louis, and, in fact, every city of the Middle West on the one hand and the Pacific coast cities and towns on the other. The selfish interests of the railroads serving the Middle West is the strongest possible guaranty of the perpetuity of this already established rate-making system. If, by reason of free tolls to vessels in the coastwise trade, freight rates between New York and Seattle would be less than if tolls were charged, they will by the same measure be less between St. Paul and Chicago, Omaha and St. Louis, and Kansas City on the one hand and Seattle and Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles on the other. In all of the hearings before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce on the subject of free tolls no one appeared in advocacy of American ships engaged in the coastwise trade paying tolls.

FROM SPEECH OF HON. ALBERT B. CUMMINS, OF IOWA, IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES AUGUST 7, 1912.

Mr. CUMMINS. Mr. President, it is very unfortunate that there are such differences of opinion upon the question of our right to care for our own people under this treaty to a greater extent than we are called upon to care for the other peoples of the world. I have not known any disagreement here in my short experience so fraught with injurious consequences as the disagreement respecting the interpretation of this contract between the United States and Great Britain. It is of vast import. We must decide it, and we must decide it now. There is no possibility under the circumstances which surround us of evading the duty and the responsibility which have come to us, not by our own act, but through the act of Great Britain.

I do not know just what I can say with propriety in debating a question of this character in open session, and I want to debate it in open session. I premise all that I have to say by the assertion that I want to stay within the boundaries of propriety; I want to say nothing that will disturb the peace we have so long enjoyed, but Great Britain has put the Congress of the United States in a position that makes it absolutely necessary that we shall now construe this treaty; that we shall put whatever interpretation is to be put upon it by the United States. We may defer the exercise of the right, if we like, by attaching the same charges to all ships that pass through the canal, but we can not defer the assertion of the right if we ever intend to exercise it.

Let us see. The House of Representatives passed a bill which in its terms proposed to give to the shipping of the United States a lower toll, or some greater advantage, than it proposed to give to the shipping of the world. Thereupon, Great Britain formally presented a protest to the United States, through the Secretary of State, who esteems it to be his duty-as I have no doubt it was-to lay the protest before the Congress of the country. * * * Her protest here stands as a notice to the Congress of the United States that, if we pass the law which attempts to discriminate between our shipping and the shipping of the rest of the world, she would regard it as a violation of the treaty of 1901.

Tell me, if you can, how we are to escape, if we wanted to escape, the duty of answering that protest. If we do not now assert whatever right we have under this treaty, we will surrender it forever, and in my opinion the Congress that does surrender it will be universally condemned, and the administration that participates in the surrender will be remembered only to be condemned so long as free institutions exist in the United States and so long as the spirit of independence prevails in the hearts of Americans. All that, however, is upon the assumption that the interpretation which I believe this treaty bears and which has been asserted by the House of Representatives is true and just, and it is to that question I intend to devote my time.

* * * I believe, and it can be conclusively shown, that the treaty contains no promise on the part of the United States that it will extend to the other nations of the world the same tolls and the same conditions that we give to

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our own shipping. There is no such promise in the treaty. intended that there should be any such promise in the treaty.

It was never I do not claim that it is expressed as happily and fortunately as it could have been expressed, but I am here to rescue our diplomatists from some of the criticism, some of the censure that have fallen upon them in this debate. I do not believe that John Hay has justly incurred the censure which impliedly has grown out of this discussion. I think that with reasonable plainness he has set down the obligation of the United States, and if we are not searching for an opportunity to favor other nations at our own expense, we will have no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion which I believe he intended to express. I take the treaty just as it is. I eliminate no word from it. I incorporate no word into it. I take it with all its history, with all the circumstances which surrounded it when made, and I believe that I can prove to any impartial mind that there is here no promise whatsoever that the ships of Great Britain shall pass through this canal upon the same terms as to charges and the same conditions as to passage which our own ships may enjoy.

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In 1850 and before, everybody knows there was an enterprise on foot-one organized by private persons, and it was to be carried on by private capitalto build a canal across Nicaragua. You will all remember that not very long before that we had acquired California, and that just a year or two before gold had been discovered in California, and in 1849 and 1850 there were thousands of Americans struggling across the Isthmus of Panama, dying every mile of the way. There is no route known to civilized man which has witnessed more hardship and struggle than the route between the Atlantic and the Pacific at Panama.

There was a great desire for some better means of communication, and a company of Americans had proposed to build a railway across the Isthmus of Panama. It was already fairly well organized, but then, as now, conditions in the Central American States were not favorable. Revolutions were common; governments were not strong; and the men who it was thought might invest their money in the proposed canal at Nicaragua and the men who had proposed to invest their money in the railway at Panama were not willing to do it unless the safety of the physical property which they created could be assured and unless responsible nations guaranteed that justice would be done to them.

It was to give that assurance and secure that construction that the treaty of 1850 was made, and while, as I said a moment ago, there are some things in it which in the light of this day we would not have inserted, upon the whole it is not to be criticized. On the other hand, I think it is to be praised as an evidence of the forward spirit of a Republic then weaker and less able to accomplish things than now. The treaty was made, the railway at Panama was immediately built, and ever since that time, or at least until the railway at Tehuantepec was constructed, it afforded the readiest means of passage from one coast of this country to the other, as well as the readiest means of passage from the west coast of South America to Europe. That was the real reason for the treaty of 1850, and it accomplised its purpose. I pass along.

I have no doubt that both nations practically regarded the treaty as functus officio. I have no doubt that both of them for years and years did not look upon it as containing any obligation that was material to the present time. However that may be, when we came, in 1901, to make this treaty there it was. It had never been abrogated, although it may have been violated by both parties. But I do not know as to that. It is asserted that it was often violated by Great Britain, but I have not thought it material to inquire as to that charge. But, at any rate, when we came to 1901 there were obligations in the Clayton-Bulwer treaty that it was necessary to abrogate in order to maintain friendly and peaceful relations with Great Britain if we intended to go forward with the project.

And here I disagree with the Senator from North Dakota [Mr. McCUMBER] wholly, and I put it squarely now. I am sorry he is not here. I am sorry he is not here because if I misrepresent him he is the best person in the world to put me right. He says, or it is his view, that a part of the treaty of 1850 remains in force without having been incorporated into the treaty of 1901. He finds in the treaty of 1850 an agreement on the part of the United States that this canal shall be used by all the nations of the world, including the United States, upon equal terms.

I do not dispute that construction of the treaty of 1850; and if that part of the treaty of 1850 is still in force, or if any part of it is in force upon that subject, then there is much reason for accepting the conclusion of the Senator from North Dakota. But I maintain that there is no part of the treaty of 1850 in force, that it has been superseded and abrogated by the treaty of 1901, and that neither Great Britain is responsible to us for anything contained in the treaty of 1850 nor are we responsible to Great Britain for anything found there unless the obligation has been reproduced and reenacted in the treaty of 1901.

I look only to the treaty of 1901. I am quite willing to examine into the history of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty for the purpose of understanding the exact situation of our State Department and of Great Britain at that time. I am quite willing to look into the history of our country for the purpose of trying to understand better the spirit that then prevailed and what the two nations really desired to accomplish; but, after all, when we have examined the history, when we have become thoroughly familiar with the spirit of 1850, it is yet true that unless we can find in the treaty of 1901 some promise that we will treat all the ships of the world, including our own, upon terms of equality, then the argument falls to the ground.

I ask the attention of the Senate for an examination of this treaty and to my reasons for believing that it does not embrace any such promise.

My proposition is that the Government of the United States undertook the enterprise, and the rules that would have been applicable to it if it had been carried forward by private enterprise are not applicable or appropriate now, because there are certain qualities in sovereignty that ought not to be surrendered, and only the clearest terms will warrant the construction that surrenders them.

AFTER RECESS.

Mr. President, before the recess I had called attention to the chief purpose of the treaty of 1850. Around that purpose all the obligations of that agreement are found. I do not want to be understood as saying-although it may be that in the effort to be brief I did say that the protection to the enterprises about to be carried forward or that were believed to be imminent was the sole purpose of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. The protection that was given by the two Governments was accompanied, of course, with agreements respecting the use of the proposed canal and the use of the proposed railway.

When we came, in 1901, to consider the subject again the whole situation had changed. The enterprise that was in view in 1850 had never been carried forward so far as the canal was concerned. It was discovered that in all probability there never would be a canal unless undertaken by some governmental power. The French company had intervened at Panama and had gone into miserable failure and bankruptcy. When, therefore, the respective departments of the two Governments took up the subject again it was known that unless the Government of the United States undertook to build a canal across the Isthmus it would in all probability never be built, and the whole negotiation had that in view.

I agree that it was supposed that the canal would be built upon the Nicaragua route, but I deny that the possibility of building the canal upon the Panama route was not present in the minds of a great many people, and it is perfectly manifest from the treaty itself that it was not absent from the minds of the men who composed the agreement now under consideration. The possibility that the United States might acquire the French company and become the possessor of all the work that it had done, all the machinery that it had accumulated, and all the concessions that had been granted to it was perfectly well understood by those who at that time were interested in the project.

But the chief thing that I want the Senate to bear in mind is that it was then known that whether the canal was built over the Nicaragua route or over the Panama route it was the Government of the United States that would build it, either directly or indirectly. It was, I think, the uppermost thought in the minds of the men who represented the United States that the Government would build this canal as a sovereign, and not merely furnish the aid to some private enterprise that might build it. It was known that if the United States undertook the task there would be certain attributes of sovereignty connected with it from which it was utterly impossible for this country to divest itself. Now, all these things were present in the minds of the negotiators of this treaty. Bearing these things in memory, I want to call the attention of the