As I have said before, I have never been one of those who have denounced what is called the "interests," but in the 10 years that I have been a Member of Congress the proposition that comes from the committee to impose tolls upon domestic traffic passing through the Panama Canal is the most indefensible and the most shameless attempt that has ever been made to turn over at the expense of the people a great public work for the benefit of the private interests.

Benefit of Tolls.

Who will be benefited by free tolls and who will be injured? Who has appeared before the committee and pointed out, or attempted to point out, that if free tolls are granted they will be injuriously affected? No one. It has been

secretly circulated about the Halls of Congress that if free tolls are given some unusual calamity, like the San Francisco earthquake or the sinking of the Titanic, will befall somebody and somewhere. But who and where and why? This awful foreboding is so appalling that no one speaks of it except in whispers, and none has been so bold as to commit to print his thoughts upon the subject.

One of the members of the committee favoring the report said in the hearing that not one-third of the population of the United States would be benefited by the construction of the canal, yet considerably more than one-half of the population live within a hundred miles of deep-water transportation. You draw a line south from Chicago to the Ohio River, thence west to the Rocky Mountains, thence north to the Canadian boundary and you will have practically all of the territory of the United States where freight rates and trade are not directly and powerfully influenced to-day by the water and rail rates between the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts by way of the Isthmus. Approximately speaking, the rates to-day from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic by way of the Isthmus, and from ports on the Atlantic as far west as Chicago, and from ports on the Gulf to the interior points and as far north as the Ohio River, are the same as direct rail rates from the Pacific to these points. In other words, it costs less to-day to send a thousand feet of lumber from Seattle to Philadelphia by way of the Isthmus and from Philadelphia back westward to Indianapolis than it does to send it directly by rail from Seattle to Indianapolis. It costs less to send a ton of canned salmon from Seattle to New Orleans by way of the Isthmus and from New Orleans northward approximately to the Ohio River than it does to send it directly from Seattle by rail to these points. It is cheaper to reach practically all points in Texas and Oklahoma by way of the Isthmus than it is directly by rail from Seattle to these points. In some instances rail and water rates meet even much farther west.

And what I say as to Seattle applies to other Pacific coast points as far south as San Francisco. Take as an illustration, the rail and water rates meet as far west as Duluth on canned salmon. On soda ash the rate from Hutchinson, Kans., to the Pacific coast is the same as the rate from New York to the Pacific coast by the Isthmus. In this case we have the water rate fixing the freight-rate miles eastward from the Pacific coast.

To explain more fully, I will refer to the map showing the rates on two of the chief commodities of the Pacific coast-fir lumber and canned salmonthat are shipped to the eastern portion of the United States. I will show the various rates to different points by all rail and by water and rail across the Isthmus of Panama to Atlantic and Gulf ports, and from these ports to various points in the interior. The figures marked "R" is the direct mail rate from the Pacific coast to points mentioned. The figures marked "W & R" is the rate by water and rail, by way of the Isthmus. The figures marked "R, W & L" is the rate by way of the Isthmus, then by rail to the Great Lakes, and by the Great Lakes to the point mentioned.

Now, to explain more fully what I mean, I will illustrate here on the map, because I have heard a great deal of argument to the effect that only the portion of the country along the coasts will be benefited. I am quoting from the actual statements made from the tariff rates on fir lumber and on canned salmon, the most recent I could get, which were of December of last year. You take lumber to-day from Seattle, and it will come down here to the Isthmus of Panama, be transferred on the cars, and carried 103 miles by rail across the Isthmus, come up here to Philadelphia by another boat, and be carried back west to

Pittsburgh by the railroads for 49 cents a hundred, while the direct rail rate from Seattle to Pittsburgh is 68 cents a hundred.

Now, take another illustration. You take Concord, and you will find that the all-rail rate is 75 cents.

The water rate is 55 cents. Take it as far west as Cincinnati, the all-rail rate is 64 cents. The water rate is 60 cents.

Now, you take canned salmon, which is one of the big industries of the Pacific coast, amounting to $30,000,000 last year, and you can send that product to New Orleans and up the Mississippi to St. Louis cheaper than you can ship it direct by rail. A short time ago a cargo of barley was sent from the Pacific coast across the Isthmus and up to New Orleans and up to St. Louis for considerably less than the direct rail rate.

Now, as an extreme illustration of cases where you use water again, you take the canned salmon. It comes to New York by the water route and goes up to Buffalo, and there is again placed on a vessel and goes out to Duluth, and there practically meets the direct railroad rate from Seattle at that point.

Now, what becomes of your argument that only the people along the Pacific coast and the Atlantic coast and Gulf coast are benefited by the canal rates if you can to-day bring lumber and many other products down to the Isthmus and there transship them and carry them 103 miles by rail and place them again in ships and bring them to Atlantic and Gulf ports and then take them back west a thousand miles and up north a thousand miles from these ports as cheaply as you can send them direct? What becomes of the argument that only the two coasts of the country are going to be benefited by the Panama Canal?

I want to call the attention of the committee to this fact, that whenever you reduce these rates along the coast, interior rates must be reduced. I have heard arguments made here upon the floor of the House that if we reduce the rates to the coast the railroads will probably increase the interior rates to make up their losses; but this is the first time that I have ever heard the argument made that one competitor lowering his rates must compel the other to increase his. To show you the absurdity of that statement, suppose that we reduced the rates until the rate from New York as far east as Spokane and over into Idaho and Montana, and in all that portion of the country, is less than it is from Chicago. Chicago will either reduce her rates or New York will take that market from her. We know what Chicago will do, what she must do; she must meet the New York rate to the advantage of the buyer and seller.

Now, the argument has been made, and admitting for the sake of argument that it is true, that the east coast and the west coast will be more directly benefited by the canal, and by the remission of tolls, than will the interior, a proposition which I do not admit, except for the sake of argument. Suppose it were

true. Can anyone demonstrate, for instance, that the people upon the Pacific coast are as directly benefited by the Soo Canal and by the improvement of the Great Lakes as the people in that portion of the country nearer the Lake ports? If you are going to adopt that argument, then why should not a special rate be placed upon shipping that goes through the Soo Canal?

Can anyone demonstrate that the many millions that we have put into the Mississippi River and its tributaries-more millions than we have put into the Panama Canal, and we are still putting in other millons-can anyone demonstrate that those millions directly benefit the Pacific coast and the Atlantic coast as much as they do the Mississippi Valley? Yet the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts help to pay for those improvements. If you are going upon that theory, why do you not place a charge upon the vessels that run up and down the Mississippi River? I exclude the Missouri, because, in spite of all the millions we have spent on it, there are no vessels upon it.

Now, I want to answer about the interior not being benefited by the reduction of rates; we know that water and rail rates by the Isthmus are made now as far west as Indianapolis and as far north as St. Louis in competition with the 1ailroads. If you lower the water rate when you go through the Panama Canal, as must be the case, then you open up this territory in the Middle West to a market they have never had before. The products from the Pacific coast will then go up into this portion of the country, into places where they have never been before; and on the other hand you take the people who manufacture in Pittsburgh and Cleveland and all that great manufacturing country, they can get their product out to the Pacific coast for less than they ever did before.

Free tolls means free competition. It means free commerce. All sections of the country will be benefited by the canal, and all sections should bear the burden of its construction and maintenance.

When you say that if you reduce the freight rates on the coast of the United States that the rates in the interior will not be reduced, you might just as well say that if you reduce the level of the water along the edges of a great lake that the interior of the lake will not be reduced. One is to dispute the law of gravitation; the other is to dispute the law of trade. So that while trade will continue between the coasts the people in the Middle West will get lower rates and new markets.

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Many times in this report in sophomorical language the majority cries out that to give free tolls would be an unjust discrimination and a great injustice to 90 per cent of our coastwise vessels that now run up and down our coasts but will not use the canal. Listen how anxious and solicitous they are about the railroad-owned ships in the coastwise trade:

Ninety per cent of the coastwise ships, busy all the time in interstate business, will never approach the canal at all. Less than 10 per cent of all these coastwise ships will use the canal, making long journeys, charging correspondingly more freight and passenger rates, and making infinitely more money, yet it is selfishly demanded that those few ships-for only a few will be needed-shall be given their tolls in the interests of interstate trade, while the 90 per cent rendering service just as valuable in interstate commerce would not participate in the contribution.

If the argument of the majority be true, all the coastwise vessels are now participating in a subsidy. Every coastwise vessel receives a subsidy when it runs into one of our subsidized harbors. Why should not a coastwise ship stop and pay tolls to reimburse the Government for improving the harbors it uses? If remission of tolls is a subsidy, then every vessel that goes through the Soo Canal receives a subsidy. Why should these vessels not stop and remit to the Government the money it has expended to construct this canal? Why should this canal be free and the Panama Canal charge tolls? We have subsidized the Mississippi River and its tributaries in a greater amount than we will expend for the construction of the Panama Canal. And all these many millions have been expended for politics more than for the benefit of navigation. If remission of tolls is a subsidy, then every vessel running on our interior rivers is receiving a subsidy. Why does not some subsidy hater, some railroad despiser, some special-privilege denouncer, some self-proclaimed protector of the people rise and exercise his privileges and his vocabulary in demanding that the Government be repaid this vast subsidy that is given to the 90 per cent of the American vessels now running in our coastwise trade and upon our lakes and rivers?

Every charge that is made on an American vessel in the coastwise trade passing through the canal, whether that charge be great or small, will eventually show itself in the freight rate and will eventually be paid by the American people. The amount of the charge will make no difference in the certainty and the sureness of the result. With a mind that deceives itself with the delusion that a tax, however small, is not a burden upon commerce and eventually borne by the people it is useless to argue. It is worse than a waste of words to attempt to convince anyone who holds such views, for such mind is beyond improvement and has absorbed more than earthly wisdom.

I close this argument as I began. This is the case of the People v. The Railroads. Never since I have been a Member of Congress has there been such a transparent and indefensible attempt to legislate in behalf of any great private interest, without regard to the public welfare, as has been displayed in the bill that has been reported to the House proposing that in the use of the Panama Canal ships flying the American flag shall be taxed the same as those flying a foreign flag. Shall we have competition between the steamship lines running between the two coasts and the transcontinental railroads? Shall our commerce be increased and our freight rates lowered? Shall we have dug the canal for the benefit of the American people who have paid for it and own it and must protect it, or shall we have expended all these millions for the benefit of other nations and for the benefit of the railroads? This is the question that we must answer to the American people by our votes upon this bill. [Applause.]

FROM SPEECH OF HON. WILLIAM O. BRADLEY, OF KENTUCKY, IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES JULY 29, 1912.

Mr. BRADLEY. Mr. President, I deny that the people of the United States have known all the time or know now that our Government has no right to extend any privileges to our commerce which goes through this canal. Had the people of the United States thought that such would be the result, the canal would never have been constructed. They never would have been willing to expend $400,000,000 to build a canal for the joint use of all the nations of the earth in which they had no superior right.

I affirm as the first proposition that under the treaty now in force the Goverument of the United States has the right to give preference to its own commerce as well as its battleships.

In the second place, I affirm that if this be not true and if the treaty is to be given the strict construction contended for by those who oppose us, that the treaty is an absolute nullity, because by its terms we have endangered the very life of our own country.

In the third place, I affirm that the United States having become the owner of this territory, having become the sovereign therein, for which right they have paid, the United States having bought all the rights and property of the New Panama Canal Co., for which it has paid, not only the canal but the land which adjoins it is the absolute property of the United States, as much so as is Alaska, as much so as is the District of Columbia; and that any question which may arise in regard to these matters is not subject to arbitration, because it is a domestic question, and the United States never has submitted and never will submit the decision of a domestic question to any court of this earth.

In the fourth place, our only duty as to the nations of the world-aside from our own--is to give them perfect equality in the use of the canal, to preserve strict neutrality as between them in case of war, and to charge them no more than just and equitable tolls.

In the fifth place, now that the United States has become the sovereign of the country through which the canal passes, our right to control it is purely a domestic right, and any question affecting the same is not the subject of arbitration by The Hague or any other tribunal, but must of right be settled by ourselves. That the changed conditions render the treaty voidable whatever may be its construction.

What was the object of the new treaty? I have very serious doubt in view of the changed conditions, the United States building the canal herself with her own money, whether she did not have a right to do so whether the ClaytonBulwer treaty was abrogated or not, because under that treaty England as an independent nation had no right, in view of the Monroe doctrine, to construct the canal. She never had that right, and she has no such right to-day. Therefore she conceded nothing in agreeing to the new treaty. Under that treaty Great Britain expends nothing and incurs no resposibility. What is the responsibility of Great Britain under the present treaty? She does not even agree to stand by the United States, as she agreed to do under the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, as to the persons or company which should construct the canal. Her responsibility under the treaty of 1850 was to guarantee protection to the persons or company building the canal. This she does not undertake under the new treaty. Why? Because the United States did not ask her to do so, and did not desire her to do so. The United States felt that she was able to attend to her own business, take charge of her own property, and while constructing the canal to protect herself without assistance.

Mr. CUMMINS. Mr. President

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from Kentucky yield to the Senator from Iowa?

Mr. BRADLEY. With pleasure.

Mr. CUMMINS. Let me suggest at this point-I know the Senator from Kentucky will emphasize it during the course of his remarks-that the only agreement or obligation entered into by Great Britain in the Hay-Pauncefote treaty was the agreement that the Clayton-Bulwer treaty might be abrogated and the new treaty should supersede it. That is the only promise or obligation contained in the Hay-Pauncefote treaty so far as Great Britain is concerned.

Mr. BRADLEY. I thank the Senator for his suggestion, and quite agree with him in what he has said.

As I have said, Great Britain has not furnished a dollar to build the Panama Canal. It is a matter entirely in the hands of the United States; but, now when the canal has been about completed, we are told that Great Britain objects to the United States managing her own canal, which she has built and paid for with her own money, and objects to us giving our vessels any preference. Great Britain desires to be put on the ground floor with us. She desires to get the benefits of the canal without paying for them. She is like an old man of whom I once heard. He imagined that he was a philanthropist, and he provided in his will that upon his death his herd of cattle should be slaughtered and the product sold to the highest bidder, but, considering his wonderful sympathy for the poor, he provided that the horns, hoofs, and tails should be divided equally among the poor. [Laughter.] That is a fair illustration of the liberality of Great Britain, which comes here after we have built the canal and asks us now to allow that country every privilege which we have ourselves.

In the present treaty Great Britain does not participate in the adoption of the rules for the administration of the canal; but the United States alone adopts the rules, showing that it was clearly considered between the two countries that the United States, being the builder of the canal, was conceded the right to prescribe the rules, and that Great Britain had nothing to do with the matter. As to the enforcement of the rules, Great Britain is not to-day bound under any of the terms of the treaty. In the last instance the concession to Great Britain allowing her participation was merely a matter of gratuity on the part of the United States in carrying out the original intention that the canal should be neutral.

What is meant by neutrality except that the canal shall be neutral territory as to all nations of the earth except the United States? If Great Britain and Japan should go to war, then the United States could prohibit either of them taking advantage of the canal in any way. She could prohibit any nation on earth from doing so as against a belligerant; but at the same time she does not estop herself from the right of self-protection. By failing to insist on a provision allowing her participation in the making of rules for the canal Great Britain conceded that the United Staes alone had the right to make the rules. The United States alone having adopted the rules, it could not be considered for a moment that she included herself in the term "all other nations." It is perfectly plain that she did not include herself, and that the rules which were adopted by her for the nations at large do not apply to her, because there is nothing to indicate anything of the kind.

You will find that there is another change in the last treaty. In the first treaty there was nothing specifically binding on the United States or any other country as to tolls. Now, bearing in mind that the Government of the United States is the owner and the proprietor of the Panama Canal, and that she was to build it, a provision was inserted in the Hay-Pauncefote treaty that the United States will not collect unjust or unreasonable tolls. That was not in the first treaty, because in the first treaty it was provided that the traffic should be open and equal to the world; but now that the position of the United States is fully understood and admitted, she agrees, so far as tolls are concerned as to the commerce of other nations, they shall be just and equitable.

Mr. President, I call attention to the further fact that in the first HayPauncefote treaty, while the Unied Sates was given the exclusive right of providing for the regulation and management of the canal, its control was subject to the rules then adopted by both countries. In the present treaty the United States is given exclusive right, without any agreement as to rules provided or to be promulgated by the two contracting parties, but with the sole provision that there shall be entire equality of treatment for all nations and that the charges of traffic shall be just and equitable.

I refer to these matters to show what view Great Britain and the United States took, at the time the treaty was written, of the provision as to tolls. It is a mere concession by the United States, which stands as the mistress of the situation. In view of these changes, the exception added to the first treaty was omitted and was no longer necessary, for the United States reserved the right of self-protection in case of war.

It is perfectly plain that Great Britain recognized the justice of this change. It can not be contended that her diplomats were ignorant of changed conditions. So the agreement was made that the United States was to have exclusive right