RECOMMENDATIONS OF TRANS-MISSISSIPPI COMMERCIAL CONGRESS.

LETTER FROM THE TRANS-MISSISSIPPI COMMERCIAL CONGRESS TRANSMITTING RECOMMENDATIONS TO CONGRESS ADOPTED AT ITS EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL SESSION.

DECEMBER 16, 1907.-Referred to the Committee on Commerce and ordered to be

printed.

TRANS-MISSISSIPPI COMMERCIAL CONGRESS,

Muskogee, December 10, 1907. Mr. VICE-PRESIDENT: Inclosed please find copy of the recommendations adopted by the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress at its eighteenth annual session, held in this city November 19-22, 1907.

It is the earnest desire of the executive committee that you give these recommendations careful consideration and have proper reference made to the various committees to which they belong.

Very respectfully,

Hon. CHARLES W. FAIRBANKS,

ARTHUR F. FRANCIS,
Secretary of the Congress.

Vice-President, Washington, D. C.

Recommendations to the National Congress, adopted at the eighteenth annual session of the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress which met in Muskogee, Okla., November 19–22, 1907.

RIVERS, HARBORS, AND CANALS.

We emphatically reaffirm the clear and comprehensive resolutions passed at the last session of this congress in regard to the improvement of the waterways and harbors of our entire country. Speaking more especially for the trans-Mississippi region, which is far more than half of the United States, we recognize that within the past year our transportation necessities have greatly increased. The time has come when we should push with all possible expedition the perfect improvement, ample extension, and eflicient maintenance of these natural facilities, by which alone can we get the cheapest transportation and adequate outlets for our products. Hence we again most earnestly commend to our members the movement more especially

represented by the National Rivers and Harbors Congress and adopt as ours its slogan-an annual appropriation of at least $50,000,000 to be expended in the furtherance of this pressing and indispensable work.

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We trust there will be a full attendance of our members at the proaching session of that congress to be held at Washington. We again indorse the project of deep water from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, so that the sea shall virtually be carried to Cairo, so that our teeming products shall find water transportation at convenient ports all through the center of our great country, instead of being subjected to long and expensive hauls over congested railroads to the coast. The freight condition of the past year or more shows practically and conclusively that all of our facilities, both by rail and water, will be taxed to the utmost to meet the present and future wants of

our commerce.

We favor the perfect and permanent improvement to the highest points of navigation of such channels of travel as the Missouri River, reaching to the far Northwest; the Arkansas and Red, penetrating to the heart of the great middle Southwest and affording outlets to the new and prosperous State of Oklahoma and to an even larger area of adjacent and populous territory; the Columbia, Coos Bay, the Snake, the Sacramento, the San Joaquin, the Trinity, the Brazos, and all other useful streams with which our great country is so richly endowed.

We favor appropriations fully adequate for the purpose, and under continuing contracts by the Federal Government, for increasing the number and enlarging the capacity of our harbors on the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

We find that even our most extensive works are soon inadequate both in depth and space for the wants of commerce. A new era in our trade development has come upon us. Already we are badly congested in the movement of our commodities. The older nations, though of small area and with productions near to the sea, have long since found it indispensable to avail themselves of the most perfected capacity of all classes of transportation. What was indispensable for them is now even more vital for us, with our greater territory and far more productive population. Hence we urge that improvement keep pace with and anticipate our commercial wants.

There should be a revised and systematic plan for the future enlargement and development of the improvements of Galveston Harbor; and it is the sense of this congress that a board of competent and skilled engineers should be appointed by the Federal Government to revise the projects for the improvement of Galveston channel, Texas City channel, and Port Boliver channel, with the view of adopting a systematic plan for their enlargement and extension so as to accommodate the now large and constantly increasing volume of business that seeks the high seas through them.

This congress respectfully commends an appropriation by the Congress of the United States for the survey of a canal directly connecting Lake Superior and the Mississippi River by the most feasible route to be designated by engineers.

We indorse the proposed intercoastal canal from the Mississippi River to the Rio Grande as a needed and most beneficial waterway improvement, and we respectfully urge the Senators and Representatives of the Trans-Mississippi States in Congress to favor a canal of not less than 9 feet in depth and not less than 100 feet in width.

We hail with satisfaction the progressive, statesmanlike, and patriotic utterances and actions of the President of the United States in regard to these great measures. We call upon our Senators and Representatives in Congress, regardless of party, to support him in this policy, which we wish advanced to the very first rank of our public policies. If necessary, in the construction and maintenance of the great system of works of which our whole country now stands in such urgent need, we favor the creat on of a department of public works, and, so far as requisite, an increase of the public debt. We wish no waste, nor do we wish to antagonize any other proper public interest, but we demand prompt and efficient attention to these commercial needs.

SABINE LAKE SHIP CHANNEL.

The Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress urges upon the National Congress the importance of the waterway known as the Sabine Lake ship channel, and recommend that there be incorporated in the rivers and harbors bill an appropriation sufficient to secure a ship channel with a depth of 25 feet from Beaumont to the Gulf of Mexico.

BOND ISSUE FOR RIVER AND HARBOR IMPROVEMENT.

It is the sense of this congress that it is desirable that the Government shall issue its 2 per cent bonds to the extent of $500,000,000 more to carry forward the work which has already been approved by the engineers of the Army and the Committee on Rivers and Harbors of the House of Representatives in the matter of the improvement of the rivers, harbors, and waterways of the country, and to carry forward such other new work as may be approved by the Engineering Department and Congress.

DEPARTMENT FOR INLAND NAVIGATION.

Inasmuch as the Open River Association, a voluntary organization composed of citizens of the States of Washington, Idaho, and Oregon, favor the placing of the improvements of the rivers and harbors of this country on the same basis as any other of the great Departments of the Government, and favors the making of annual appropriations therefor, this congress respectfully requests and urges the Congress of the United States to adopt this policy.

PEARL HARBOR,

As the rapidly growing commercial and naval interests of the United States upon the Pacific Ocean require a dry dock and increased wharf facilities in the Hawaiian Islands, the strategic center of that ocean, and as Pearl Harbor is the only harbor in those islands adequate and suitable for such purpose, but, in order to become available for deep-water vessels, requires the deepening, widening, and straightening of its channel, and as the work necessary to accomplish this result will require much time, and, even if begun soon, will hardly be completed for the opening of the Panama Canal, therefore it is resolved by the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress that the Congress of the United States be urged to make requisite provision for the early inception and effective prosecution of this work.

STATEHOOD FOR NEW MEXICO.

That the long-continued injustice to our fellow-citizens of New Mexico should cease at the earliest possible moment and they should receive their proper right to self-government by the admission of New Mexico as a State early in the next session of Congress.

REMOVAL OF RESTRICTIONS.

The Senators and Members of the House of Representatives from the trans-Mississippi States are respectfully requested to favor the removal of restrictions upon the land of allottees within the limits of Oklahoma, whenever the State legislature of Oklahoma shall have made provision for the protection of the allotted land of full-blood Indians by the State district courts of Oklahoma.

NONPARTISAN TARIFF COMMISSION.

We recommend to Congress and insist upon the enactment of a law which will empower the President of the United States to grant such consideration to foreign countries of import duties on specific articles of commerce to be named in the law as may in his judgment seem necessary in order to secure favorable trade agreements whereby our surplus products will be admitted to the markets of such foreign countries upon the most favorable terms and conditions; and that we recommend the establishment of a nonpartisan tariff commission of experts to thoroughly investigate and study our industrial, trade, and commercial conditions, and the industrial, trade, and commercial conditions of foreign countries, to enable them to formulate a complete revision of our tariff laws and report the result of their action and recommendations to Congress at as early a date as practicable, to the end that the revision of the tariff of duties upon imports be revised upon a sound nonpartisan basis with a view of the general encouragement of our business at home and abroad, without discrimination as between any of our industries, and to build up the greatest foreign trade possible consistent with the prosperity of our own country.

EXPERIMENTAL FARM AND FOREST STATIONS.

We urge upon the Senators and Members of Congress representing the trans-Mississippi States to give their support to the establishment and maintenance of an experimental farm and forest station in each Congressional district, where practical, in the States and Territories west of the Mississippi River.

IMPORT DUTY ON ZINC ORE.

The Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress urges that the Congress of the United States enact a law placing just and reasonable import duty on all zine ores, if a tariff on foreign ores is permitted to remain a part of our Federal statutes.