ecade has a commercial vessel under the American flag passed
the Suez Canal, I have stated. But the time was when Uncle Sam's ensign
was the emblem oftenest seen in foreign harbors.

In but one department of natural growth is the United States
backward--shipping, in its broad and commercial acceptance. To promote
it should now be the plan of both political parties.

Our canal can never pay until we enter as ship-owners into competition
with Europe's trading nations, and these possess a material interest in
the Suez undertaking, be it remembered. The commercial fleet at present
under the American flag could not pay a tenth of Panama's operating
expenses. When we seriously embark upon the work of creating a great
merchant marine, we are going to rouse spirited opposition. Englishmen,
Germans, and Frenchmen will not like it; and Europeans cannot be
expected to take any interest in the welfare of our national canal, and
all may object to fattening the treasury of a country that is their
trade competitor. These facts, insignificant as they may seem, prove in
reality the need for supplying hundreds of ocean carriers under the same
flag as that flying over the canal zone.

By the time the canal is opened, the United States will have 100,000,000
inhabitants; and agriculture, assisted by ordinary methods and by
irrigation, will have developed to an extent making our commodities
dictators of supply and price. By that time, sea transportation cannot
be regarded as a competitor of transcontinental railway systems that
have done much toward making the country what it is: water
transportation will be found a necessary adjunct to rail facilities,
relieving the roads of a fraction of their through traffic.

To restore the Stars and Stripes to the seas will require years of
earnest effort, much debating in the halls of Congress, a drastic
liberalizing of marine laws, and much prodding of human energies by
editorial writers.

Suez shareholders, when asked by Americans if they fear any rivalry from
Panama, reply: "None at all; unless"--and here is the kernel of the
matter--"your countrypeople find a way of creating a mercantile marine
coincidently with the building of the canal."

With unlimited financial resources to promote the most gigantic of
modern enterprises, with inexhaustible raw and cultivated products, with
labor to produce any conceivable commodity, the humiliating fact
confronted the people of the United States a few mo