rican ship. Now, between these
different sets of people, having different ideas of the way to
accomplish a thing, nothing is done; and that situation which exists so
frequently regarding so many measures will exist forever, unless there
is put behind the proposition a force that gives it a momentum to carry
it over such obstacles. Put force enough behind it so that the gentlemen
in the Senate and House of Representatives understand that they are
going to be held responsible by the American people, going to be held
responsible for not doing the thing, for not finding out some way to do
it, and they will come to this sensible conclusion very shortly, and
that is:

"We will settle the controversy about the way it should be done by
trying one thing first, and if that does not work, we will try the
other."

Another difficulty about this measure is that there is a difference in
appreciation of its importance in different parts of the country. Down
here on the seaboard I think most people do appreciate it. You
appreciate it; all the people who are concerned, or wish to be
concerned, in South American trade, or the trade of the Orient,
appreciate it; but you go back into the interior of the country, into
the great agricultural states of the Northwest, and the farther Middle
West, states along in the valley of the Mississippi and the Missouri,
and the people there are thinking about other things, and they have a
natural dislike for subsidies, and when told that a measure means giving
somebody else something for nothing, they express and impress upon their
representatives a great dislike for it. The way for us to get something
done is not for us who are in favor of it to talk to each other about
it. We can do that indefinitely without getting much farther. The way is
to take steps to bring to the minds of the people of the valley of the
Missouri and the Northwest, and those great agricultural states the
importance to them, as well as to us, of having our merchant marine
restored.

I noticed the other day that the people of San Francisco were justifying
their confidence in themselves by procuring all their business
correspondents in the state of New York to write letters to me in favor
of having the great "Exposition and Celebration of the Opening of the
Canal in San Francisco"; and these letters came in by the thousand from
my constituents. They became so tiresome that I came very near voting
against the project as a measure