Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose

by Willis J. Abbot

The concession seemed the more obvious and proper because the privilege of free passage was limited to vessels in the coastwise trade. Under our navigation laws maritime trade between ports in the United States is confined to ships built in American shipyards. This regulation is clearly intended to confer upon the United States a monopoly of the building of coastwise ships, and the subsequent exemption of coastwise ships from Panama Canal tolls was a further benefaction to this monopoly. As a matter of fact, our coastwise trade was at the moment passing into monopolistic control, and the wisdom of making so prodigious a gift to a monopolistic combination might have justly been questioned. But the strictly business features of the Canal have always been decorated with more or less sentimental declamation about reëstablishing the American flag on the high seas, and it was to contribute to the latter desirable end that the tolls were to be remitted. It seemed to occur to no one that the ships thus favored were either owned by railroad companies and used largely to stifle competition or by a somewhat notorious organizer of trusts whose ambition was to control water transportation from Maine to the Mexico border, and who was checked in the attainment of his aim by a sentence to the Federal penitentiary. It is not only in war time that the flag is waved most enthusiastically by men who only want the bounty that goes with it.

Nobody, however, at the time of the passage of the act regulating tolls thought it had any particular international significance. Its signature by the President was taken as a matter of course and it was not until some time afterward that the Ambassador of Great Britain presented his country’s claim that the exemption clause was in violation of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty. The section of that treaty which it is claimed is violated reads thus:

“The Canal shall be free and open to the vessels of commerce and of war of all nations observing these rules on terms of entire equality, so that there shall be no discrimination against any such nation, or its citizens or subjects, in respect of the conditions or changes of traffic”.

The outcry against the exemption clause soon became very vociferous. Perhaps the Canadian railroads or some of their officials may have been instrumental in this, seeing a possible profit in running ships from Montreal or Quebec to Vancouver or Victoria, touching at various United States ports en route. Such a voyage would not constitute a “coastwise passage” under our laws, and foreign vessels might engage in such traffic. But they saw that the exemption in tolls by which a United States vessel of 12,000 tons would escape canal tolls amounting to $15,000 would put them at a serious disadvantage. Hence they appealed to Great Britain and the protest followed. Whether affected by the vigorous colonial protest or not, the British government urges that the United States will very properly adjust its tolls to meet the needs of the Canal for revenue, and that if the coastwise shipping be exempted there will be a loss of some millions of dollars in revenue which will compel the imposition of higher tolls on other shipping. It is urged also on behalf of the protestants that the word “coastwise” is capable of various constructions and that a vessel plying between New York and Los Angeles might be held not to have sacrificed her coastwise register if she continued her voyage to Yokohama or Hong Kong.

GATUN LAKE. FLOATING ISLANDS MASSED AGAINST TRESTLE

American public men and the American press are radically divided on the question. A majority, perhaps, are inclined to thrust it aside with a mere declaration of our power in the matter. “We built the Canal and paid for it”, they say, “and our ships have the same rights in it that they have in the Hudson River or the canal at the Soo. Besides the British cannot engage in our coasting trade anyway, and what we do to help our coastwise ships concerns no one but us”. Which seems a pretty fair and reasonable statement of the case until the opponents of the exemption clause put in their rejoinder. “Read the treaty”, they say. “It is perfectly clear in its agreement that the United States should not do this thing it now proposes to do. Treaties are, by the Constitution, the supreme law of the land. To violate one is to violate our national honor. It would be disgraceful to let the word go out to all the world that the United States entered into sacred obligations by treaty and repudiated them the moment their fulfilment proved galling. The protected shipyards, the already subsidized coastwise steamship companies, are asking for more gratuities at the cost of our national honor. What is the use of reëstablishing on the high seas a flag which all peoples may point out as the emblem of a dishonorable state”?

GUIDE WALL AT MIRAFLORES
This picture shows method of lock construction. The space within these two walls will be filled with dirt and cement. The ground on either side will be inundated, forming a small lake through which the Canal passes.

So rests the argument. The advocates of the remission of tolls to the coastwise ships of the United States have the best of the position, since their contention is already enacted into law, but the opposing forces are vigorously urging the repeal of the law. Congress will of course be the final arbiter, and as the Canal cannot be opened to commerce before 1915 there is ample time for deliberation and just judgment. A phase of the problem which I do not recall having seen discussed arises out of the literal acceptance of the language of the treaty as bearing upon the use of the Canal in war time. It declares that the Canal “shall be free and open to the vessels of commerce and of war of all nations ... on terms of entire equality”, and while it goes on to prescribe the rules to be followed in war time it nowhere declares the right of the United States to debar to the warships of a hostile nation the privilege of passing through the Canal. Under the strictest construction of the language of the treaty the refusal of the United States to permit a German or a Japanese fleet to pass through, even though that nation was at war with us, would be a violation of the treaty which would justify English interference to enforce the opening of the Canal—which of course would be war. No such contingency could possibly arise, nor any such construction be put upon the language of the treaty by any reasonable and responsible party. Yet it is scarcely a more forced construction than the one applied in order to make it appear that we may not free our own ships in purely domestic trade from canal tolls.