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Show past twenty-five years, the fashionable thing is to make the 'round the world journey. Again during and since the war with "Spain the United States has been a very considerable factor in the Suez canal traffic. .Then the world generally was poor, especially our country, between 1890 and 1895. The destruction of silver crushed the life out of business and' only those who dealt in interest-bearing interest-bearing securities made any money, but after 1896 when the world in four years paid our country two thousand millions of dollars for food, and. at the same time the Rand, West Australia and Cripple Crip-ple Creek gave; out their treasures, the ; onward sweep of the business of our Republic has had no parallel in history. The commerce passing through the Suez canal does not compare with that of our Sault Ste. Marie or Detroit river. SUEZ CANAL TONNAGE. i The tonnage passing through the Suez canal has increased from 2,009,984 in the first five years after its opening (1870-75) to 13,132,694 tons in the period .from 1900 to 1906, and the average size of the ships passing. through has increased from 897 tons to 4449 tons, and this a contemporary cites as "the tremendous tremen-dous change wrought by the opening of the canal." It strikes us that it was not the opening of the canal that did the business, but rather the doubling of the volume of money in the world, the transfer of the great bulk of ocean carriage from sail to steamships and the building of ships of a size undreamed of thirty years ago. The transfer from sail to steamships is what caused the business of the canal to increase, for steamships 6eek the short lines, but the increase in-crease in the moneyv is what produced the. cargoes for the ships. We suspect that the passenger travel - through the canal to and from India, Australia and South Africa has doubled, probably quadrupled in the last thirty years, partly by the discovery of the . Band and "West Australian gold mines, and because rince so many millionaires have bloomed out in the |