for discharging upon docks, 50 cents per ton for loading into American vessel at Colon making trip to San Francisco, plus the cost of wharfage or storage at Colon, say 25 cents, and the delay to two steamers, amounting to, say, 25 cents per cargo ton; total, $1.50 per cargo ton spent to save 50 cents per cargo ton in canal tolls. No man familiar with shipping believes that the two vessels will meet at Colon at the same time, and, as the delay of the steamer costs more than extra stevedoring, there will be no waiting at Colon one for the other. Then great docks must be provided at Colon to hold all this freight.

Rates of freight.-Some Members of Congress have stated that the consumer would receive no benefit from free tolls-there would be no reduction in rates. Steamers are chartered right along in the Gulf by reliable steamship lines to take cargo to Europe upon an estimated profit per steamer per trip of $1,000. Steamship lines would be glad to count upon an absolute net profit each trip of a large freight steamer of even $500. Thus you can see the margin of profit for the chartering of steamers and the risk of booking parcel lots to fill such steamers. The tolls would amount to $4,000 to $6.00 on these freighters, according to size, each trip. If the American merchant marine is ever given a fair break with the foreign vessel, then steamers will be built for charter. The many steamship lines and agencies will charter these steamers and make ocean rates that the strongest steamship lines of the world must follow. This is the history of the European trade where the strong European freight lines make their rates based upon the competition of tramp steamers, chartered per trip or per year, in this trade. Subsidy. I permitting American vessels to pass through the canal free of tolls is a subsidy, then we are subsidizing the freight steamers from Duluth and other Lake cities in passing them through the locks free of tolls on the trip eastward to Ohio and New York; we are subsidizing the coal barges from Pennsylvania down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans; and we are subsidizing the barges now being loaded with coal and iron in mineral district of Alabama, and passing through locks and dams of Warrior and Tombigbee rivers on their trips to Mobile and New Orleans. These waterways all cost Federal money just as did the Panama Canal, and will have to be maintained in the same manner. Are we to reverse our waterway policy of a century and in the end really subsidize the railroads competing with these waterways? For just the moment tolls are charged at the locks in the rivers of Alabama, at that moment the barge freight must increase. When the barge freights increase, so at once do railroad freights wherever there is rail and water competition. Result, we lose our cheap water rates, coal and iron cost more, and in the final settlement the public pays the freight bill in increased cost of iron and coal. When a man argues that canal tolls are a subsidy, then he might just as well argue that every dollar spent by the Government for a lower transportation cost and a reduction of the American freight bill is a subsidy--that Government money spent upon a public highway is a subsidy to the farmers, who must pay toll for the interest and maintenance of these highways. The argument can be extended to cover almost every act of the Federal Government for benefit of the American public. The Government runs a fishery department and furnishes free stocks of fish to individuals and communities. Is this not just as much a subsidy as free tolls? I don't eat fish, but I do eat beef; yet I see no reason for yelling subsidy at the fish eater because the latter is assisted in getting a cheaper food supply. I can build a fish pond and have fish, too, if I want fish; and, in turn, the fish eater can build a boat and pass sit toll free" through the locks and dams of American waterways-excepting, possibly, the Panama Canal- where the opposition of Canada and Great Britain may prevent his "free passage." It is very strange that while the Panama Canal act was being considered the Democrats did not know hat "free tolls" meant "subsidy"; that Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bryan did not know a subsidy during the Presidential campaign; and that for almost two years the minds of all of these statesmen (now favoring a repeal) remained a blank, and they did not know a subsidy when they saw one. How many other alleged mistakes have they made during the past two years while in this most unfortunate state of mind?

To sum up the situation, I would say:

First. That granting free canal tolls on coastwise vessels is simply following the fixed American principle of "the free use of all United States waterways to its citizens and their boats.'

Second. That free canal tolls whether at Panama, on the Great Lakes, or in our rivers, mean a cheaper freight bill for the American public upon all American goods shipped upon American waterways.

Third. That free canal tolls mean to aid the American farmer and manufacturer on Atlantic and Gulf forced to use higher priced American vessels to market his goods with his American brother on the Pacific coast, and vice versa-in competition with the goods of Canada, Great Britain, and other foreign nations shipping in the cheaper foreign vessels.

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Fourth. That free canal tolls will, to some extent, aid in offsetting the disadvantage the American vessel has-of higher cost and higher operating expense-and will tend to encourage the building of more American vessels.

We have wasted and are wasting our natural resources, and the time is coming when we must aid and encourage every branch of our trade and transportation-that is if we expert to continue our present expensive scale of living and successfully meet the less expensive living scale of certain other nations.

Í end by asking if we can afford to drive a nail in the coffin of our American farmers and manufacturers, who, with higher priced labor, must compete with the cheaper labor of Europe and Asia, and who will have to pay a higher freight bill-to get their goods from one coast to the other than the foreign manufacturer using cheaper tonnage? If we can afford to further handicap our American vessel-in this coast-to-coast trade already at a disadvantage with the foreign vessel? If we can afford to surrender to our competitors, Great Britain and Canada, our invention for cheaper transportation, so that these countries and others can haul their cheap-labor goods, by reason of our invention, to our own American customers while we are powerless to compete? Should we not save the American domestic trade for Americans? Remember, if we do not look out for ourselves, why, no one else will.

Very truly, yours,

AFTER RECESS.

HORACE TURNER.

The committee met at 2.30 o'clock p. m.,

after recess.

STATEMENT OF MR. JAMES G. CLARKE, OF CHICAGO, ILL. The CHAIRMAN. You may proceed with your statement, Mr. Clarke. Mr. CLARKE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I am not a lawyer and I am not an economizer in any way. I simply came as one of a small group in Chicago who are interested a good deal in this matter here. I am connected with Irish societies; in fact, at the present time I am president of the United Irish Societies of Chicago, and we are interested in this tolls matter, and I will simply give you, in a very brief manner, the sentiment which prevails amongst the people I am associated with principally, and, of course, I might say other people, too, but I will make it very brief. The first thing I will do will be to read a paper that was passed unanimously at a mass meeting a short time ago in Chicago in reference to this case.

(The paper is as follows:)

Fond as are our hopes and desires for the future of Ireland, we wish it to be known in this land of our adoption that we have no compromises to make in Ireland's behalf, when by that compromise we would sacrifice one cherished tradition or one single right that is the heritage of our America.

It is in that spirit of unyielding fidelity to this our adopted land that we oppose with united voice the efforts of American statesmanship to permit foreign nations, and especially England, to shape our treaties and organic law against the interests of America's ocean traffic and to lay down the law for our transocean trade.

The pretext that granting free toll to American coastwise commerce is fostering a monopoly in American shipping has no foundation in fact, and is a direct surrender to our commercial enemy. There is but one supreme monopoly in the world to-day, and that is England's monopoly of the seas. She builded it by subsidies infinitely larger than all the canal tolls that all the world will pay at the gates of Panama. She raised her coast cities to be the mightiest cities on earth because from their harbors cleared the ships fostered by national monopoly, and to dare to deny America's rights to encourage her coastwise shipping by free toll in American waters is to invite America to crush her own water transportation and surrender the American flag over to the British shipping. The policy of the men who advocate tolls through our own waters for our own commerce is serving England's purpose with as much fidelity as Lord Castlerow when he took Ireland's legislature and joined it to England on England's soil.

As men of Irish blood we are out of sympathy with the movement on both sides of the water that is declaring for a closer bond between England and America. England

was in our Capital just a century ago with sword and torch. She is there now with the money of the iron prince and the diplomacy of England to shape American legislation to England's benefit, and we warn our people that she is more to be feared in her diplomatic place than when Ross and Cockburn carried the torch to the public library just a century ago.

We have little faith in the chief apostle of international peace who made wealth and war on the toiling millions of America until his wealth was so enormous that he could become the chief apostle of a universal peace.

Be it further resolved, That as American citizens we take our place on the side of America against our racial foe and America's relentless rival and speak for American trade, American rights, and American freedom in the seat of Government uninfluenced by any pressure from the throne of England.

That is what was passed at that meeting. I am not the author of that at all. I simply present that to show you that there is an intense feeling at this time amongst the people in reference to the canal matter. I am simply here to carry a message from those Irish citizens of Illinois.

WASHINGTON, D. C., April 24, 1914.

President Jas. T. Clarke, United Irish Societies of Chicago, read resolutions adopted at a great mass meeting of all the Irish societies held there recently, and then said he was there simply to carry a message from those Irish from Illinois, and says that they were against having this country spend $400,000,000 for a canal on their own territory and then be asked to stand by a former treaty that had no standing now, since the acquirement of the territory through which the canal was built. He had nothing further to say about the legal standing, but would say that the rank and file of the democracy of Illinois, those outside the office-seeking brigade, had received a shock from which it would take them a long time to recover. They expressed themselves as having been betrayed more or less by some one or other. To these simple Democrats it is astonishing that a President and Secretary of State should immediately turn around after being hoisted into power on a platform already in force, in fact, and throw suspicion on all those American officials just preceding them in office, as they have done at the present time. The Irish Democrats of the Northern States, especially in Illinois, believe that something is wrong. It is well known that they have been the banner bearers of Democracy in the North for more than half a century and still British affiliations with this country are being cultivated now more than at any other time since the Revolution. After the great Irish famine of 1742 more than a million of Irish people came to America before 1776. In 1744, 300,000 Irish people came into the port of Philadelphia. Without those same Irish and their sons it is well known to all students of American history that there would have been no Revolution of 1776.

Pat Henry, of Virginia, as well as John Sullivan, of New Hampshire, and the Barretts, of Massachusetts, show that. It appears that the great Irish artificial calamities of 1742 to 1748, and of 1845 to 1855, those terrible famines, had wonderful effects, the first one materially assisting in the revolution of 1776 and the last one, as well known to all American patriots, in the preservation of the Republic their ancestors took such a material part in forming. The great value of the Irish patriots of 1776 can be exemplified in no better way than by showing the pro-Britishism then prevailining this country, as it is known that 50,000 Royalists left Philadelphia in 1777 and crossed the Canadian line sooner than take up arms against Britain. The Irish of Illinois would warn the United States Senate that no matter if millions of volumes recounted and extolled British civilization, still, regardless of all this, no one knows the British civilization as well as the Irishman. No one can tell him; he knows. Unfortunately for that brand of civilization, the honest Irishman believes that he owes a duty to humanity by saying that he knows British civilization to be the greatest curse and incubus known to-day by suffering millions. He knows there can not be peace until that particular brand of civilization has been wiped out by some great superior force to that of Britain. The Irish of Illinois believe that notwithstanding great wealth there are undesirable citizens in this country whom they consider a menace to our present form of government. Andrew Carnegie has been quoted and a speech of his resurrected wherein he said that the great ambition of his life is to have the United States back where she naturally belongs and where she stood previous to the Revolution of 1776.

Of course, gentlemen, some of this may be a little foreign to the subject, but I would simply say that there is an intensive feeling about this matter throughout the country now to my knowledge.

Away back in 1897, as most of the older men here remember, there, was a treaty known as the treaty of arbitration between England and America. At that time the same press that is lauding and fighting to-day for the exemption of tolls, etc., that tolls be paid by the coastwise shipping-the same press, I say, at that time, to the knowledge of all of us, told us that was an arbitration treaty for peace and unity and love which should exist everywhere. But, gentlemen, I want to say this to you, that we happen to have a Senator to-day in this room whose vote defeated that treaty in 1897, to my knowledge. One of the most eminent lawyers in this country, I believe, will tell you that that treaty of 1897, instead of being an arbitration treaty was a treaty of lies; that if it had passed, no matter where England was engaged in war, in any part of the world, America would have to be there to take care of her. The same treaty was beaten by one vote in 1912, under President Taft.

I simply want to show you why there is an anxiety; there is an anxiety and a tendency to be very watchful, vigilance being the price of liberty, and there is an intensity of feeling that there is a great deal due to this Irish contingent that fought in the Revolutionary War. And there is a large contingent, as you all know, I presume. However, a great many people I have met recently did not know that in the great famine of 1742—that was 100 years previous to the terrible famine of 1845-drove a million of Irish into this country, who got here before 1776.

Gentlemen, that is all I have to say. I am not a lawyer. I do not pretend to pay much attention to the economic aspects of the question; but we felt it was just and fair to ourselves and to you, gentlemen, to simply let you know that that is the situation and the feeling. I thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. We are very much indebted for your views. Who is the next on the Chicago delegation?

STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN DILL ROBERTSON, OF CHICAGO.

Dr. ROBERTSON. I have jotted down what I have to say, so that I may not wander so far afield, perhaps, as I might had I not written my statement.

I am a surgeon residing in the city of Chicago and am president of the Loyola University Medical School and a teacher of surgery of that institution. I am vice president of the Illinois State Board of Agriculture and am associated with 25 other members of this State board. These members come from the entire State, one from each congressional district. I am superintendent of the Boys' State Fair School, which brings to the State fair each year 300 boys from every county in the State of Illinois. I am also president of the Republican club of Illinois. I have enumerated the positions that I hold for the purpose of showing you that I am in touch with professional men on the faculty of the medical college, with 500 medical students from every State in this United States and Porto Rico, with the agricultural interests of the State of Illinois, and with the Republican Party, and that my opportunities for gaining knowledge of the opinion of the people in Illinois in regard to the tolls question for our coastwise vessels is good.

All day yesterday I listened to the passage of arms between exSenator Foraker, Mr. Bourke Cockran, and the distinguished Senators of this committee-listened not as a lawyer versed on international law, but as a citizen and a surgeon who deals with natural and physical laws pertaining to his profession.

However right Mr. Cockran may be in regard to the legal technical point of sovereignty over the strips of land transferred to us for the expressed purpose of building a canal through it and whether he be right or wrong in his statement that this act of gaining sovereignty over this land nulifies the treaty with Great Britain, and that this treaty is now ultra vires and that the Congress and President of this United States could not make a treaty which would interfere with the great fundamental law that where there is sovereignty nothing can interfere with the sovereign using it as he desired. I submit, gentlemen, that the people of Illinois have no desire to take advantage of any rights that are not embodied in the treaty itself. That conscience, rather than technicalities, govern their action. That conscience, rather than expedience, guides them, and as a Christian Commonwealth we want to do right for right's sake.

The only question before this Congress, as we understand, is what is right? What are our legal and moral rights in the premises? The President in his message stated that the position taken by Congress 15 months ago was wrong, and that this position should be abandoned so that he might more easily handle other difficult problems. He states that our position is a debatable one, but that he for one does not care to debate it. It is certainly his right and privilege to take that position, but many people in Illinois do not concede to him a legislative function, and therefore I am here to-day representing some of the Illinoisans who do not think with him.

Illinois will patriotically help hold up his hands in his every executive function, and stand right by and fight with him in a war with Mexico or any other nation. The State of Lincoln, Grant, Logan, and Douglas still keeps its patriotic fires a burning.

Nations are as individuals are. My reading and observation teach me that the human family, mentally and physically, is very much the same as it was 2,000 years ago. A little more culture and refinement, 'tis true, but fundamentally they are the same. When a treaty is made between nations in which the language is as much involved as many people think the Hay-Pauncefote treaty is, so much so that its meaning is debatable, then I contend that no nation should blame us for arriving at a different conclusion than they do. When we elect an Executive to represent our side of all controversies, methinks that when a controversy is considered debatable it should be debated. Why should we take the position that because it is debatable that we must give way? After the debate is over, things may be so clarified that all the world could see that this debate was conducted by us in our forum of conscience, and that morally as well as legally we were convinced that we are right.

Why should this country back down from what seems to be her treaty as well as sovereign rights, just at the time of the opening of this canal, and thus say to the world: 'Tis true we built it with the best engineering and medical brains to be found in this country. spent a paltry $400,000,000 of American money in building it. Not

We