It is estimated that this saving of freight on timber alone, which is still standing in California, would pay the cost of the canal, great as it is, three times over. We can hardly estimate the effect that this shortening of water rates will have on all the countries fronting the Pacific Ocean.
It would seem as if the Western hemisphere was at last coming into its own in dignity and progress, in its relation to all the world. Certainly the tides of people of enterprise and of business have been steadily pressing westward since long before Bishop Berkeley declared that “Westward the star of empire takes its way,” and that Western wave is rushing onward today more strongly and steadily than ever before in the world’s history. Men of even middle age today probably will live to see the fulfillment of the dreams and prophecies of the olden time in the opening up of our coasts and land to ship commerce with every country on the globe.
In ancient days it was the fact that seas divided nations, because of the difficulty of ocean travel. In those days the only safe routes were those over the land, but in this modern time of gigantic ocean vessels, capable of carrying thousands of passengers and hundreds of thousands of tons of freight, water travel and transportation is the cheapest and most agreeable of all forms. And therefore, today it is a fact that seas unite the countries of the world instead of dividing them.
PRESIDENT TAFT SIGNING JOINT RESOLUTION DESIGNATING SAN FRANCISCO AS THE PLACE TO HOLD THE WORLD’S FAIR IN 1915.
The completion of the Panama Canal will be only the completion of one link of the chain of three great improvements that are in contemplation by the statesmen of America.
On the eastern side of the continent all the States bordering on, or tributary to, the Mississippi river are engaged in the propaganda for the deepening of that river to a depth of 14 feet from New Orleans to St. Louis, and 12 feet from St. Louis to St. Paul, as well as the improvement of the tributaries thereof, so that ocean-going vessels may penetrate to the very heart of the American continent and discharge their cargoes there.
The up-to-date and progressive city of Chicago, the mighty metropolis of the center of the continent, is alive to the possibilities of the near future, and has made provision for the issuance and sale of bonds to the amount of $24,000,000, the proceeds of which are to be used in the deepening and widening of the Chicago drainage canal and the Illinois river, so that ocean-going vessels may not only penetrate as far as St. Louis, but may also proceed to Chicago, and place that great city in direct water communication with any part of the world.
The improvement of the Mississippi and its tributaries, then, is one of the links of the chain. The Panama Canal is the central link. The third link must be and will be, if the projects of the most eminent and patriotic American statesmen are carried out, the re-establishment of the American merchant marine, so that American ships may be used as the agency for the distribution of the products of our great industrial country to all the lands fronting the Pacific Ocean, as well as to all other parts of the earth.