OCR Text |
Show - THE PRESIDENT IS A ' ' ' ' PUZZLE. "Vdodrow "Wilson, when he sought J to. evade a direct answer on the suf frage question, informed the suffragettes, suffra-gettes, who called on him at the t White House, that he could not -act unt(l his party spoke. The following week, the president' declared against that 'part of his party platform which favor's toll exemptions for American ship3 passing through the Panama canal. 4 i The. friends of the President have r been unable to reconcile these two attitudes and the Republicans In Congress Con-gress have been deriving much political po-litical advantage in commenting on the evident contradictions. Congressman Knowland of Callfor- I rila lias dug up a speech delivered by Mr. Wilson on August 15, 1912, de- plorlng the non-existence of an American Ameri-can merchant mnrine. Any one reading that address, In the light of recent events, must be puzzled over the President's contradictions: Here is the President's speech' as quotod by the California congressman: congress-man: "Now. there Is another matter. Yon know wc are digging a tremendous ditch across the Isthmus of Panama. It is predicted by the engineers in charge of that colossal enterprise that we shall be able to open It to the ships of tho world by the year 1915. What Interest have you n opening It to the ships of the world? Wc do not own the ships of the world. By a very ingenious process, which 1 would not keep you standing in the bot sun long enough to outline, the legislation of tho United States has destroyed the merchant marine of the United States. The chief road bv which vour crops travel to the Orient Ori-ent is through the Suez canal. They do not go around by the Pacific. Mosi of your maps do not show you the short road to the Orient, because they arc 3pread out fiaL "If you will get a globe and draw a circle around the globe you will see your short road is through the Suez canal, not across the Pacific and that the western farmer, therefore, there-fore, has to ship his crops across the continent In order to reach the ships that arc to take that road. And -when his crops roach the port,- do thev find American ships waiting, for them7 Not at all. In most years not a single ship carrying the American flag goes through that canal carrying freight "Some ships carry the American flat; through that canal, but they are mostly private yachts. A friend of mine who ha3. just traveled around the world told me that he did not see the American flat once between New York and Hongkong, going by the way of the canal, until he reached the island of Ceylon, and then saw tho ilng bf Mr. James Gordon Bennett's Ben-nett's vacht. If the shipowners o the nations carry your grain and cargoes car-goes they are going to carry them by routes and to markets which suit them, not the routes and thfl markets which are chosen by you. "One of the great objects in cutting cut-ting the great ditch across the Isthmus Isth-mus of Panama Is t'o allow farmers who are near the Atlantic to ship to the Pacific by way of the Atlantic ports to allow all the farmers on what 1 may, standing here, call this part of the continent, to find an outlet at ports of the Gulf or the ports of the Atlantic seaboard, and then have coastwise steamers carry their products prod-ucts down nround through the canal and up the Pacific coast or down the coast of South America. "Now, at present there are no ships to do that, and one of the bills pending pend-ing passed, I believe, yesterday by the Senate as It had passed the House provides for free toll for American ships through that canal and prohibits any ships from passing through which Is owned by any American railroad company You sec the object of that, don't you? We don't want the railroads to compete with themselves, because we understand that kind of competition. We want water carriage car-riage to compete with land carriage, so as to be perfectly sure that you j are going to get better rates around the canal than you would across the continent. " "The farmers of this country are, in my judgment, just as much con cerned In tho policy of the United States with regard to that canal as any other class of citizens of the United States. Probably they are more concerned than any other one class, and what I am most desirous to see is the farmers of the country coming forward as partners in the great national undertakings and take a wide national, nay, international, view of these great matters, feeling all the pulses of the world that beat in tho great arteries or their own life and prosperity. Everything that is done In the interest of cheap transportation trans-portation is done' directly for the farmer as well as for other men. So that you' ought not to grudge the millions poured out for the deepening deepen-ing and opening of old and new waterways. wa-terways. n . "Our platform is., not molasses to catch flies. It means business. It meanB what It says.' It is the utterance ut-terance of earnest and honest men, who intend to do business along those lines and who are not waiting to see whether they can catch votes with those promises before going to act upon them or not. "They know the American people arc now taking notice In a way in which they never took notice before, and gentlemen who talk one way and vote another are going to be retired to very quiet and private retreat." oo |