The President’s Words at Buffalo

     IN the noteworthy address of our late and much lamented President McKinley, at Buffalo, his last public address, nothing was more significant than his words touching the immediate need of great enlargement of our merchant marine.
     Following his remarks on tariff revision and reciprocity, he goes on to say: “Then, too, we have inadequate steamship service. New lines of steamers have already been put in commission between the Pacific Coast ports of the United States and those on the western coast of Mexico and Central and South America. These should be followed up with direct steamship lines between the eastern coast of the United States and South American ports.
     “One of the needs of the times is direct commercial lines from our vast fields of production to the fields of consumption that we have but barely touched. Next in advantage to having the thing to sell is to have the conveyance to carry it to the buyer. We must encourage our merchant marine. We must have more ships. They must be under the American flag, built and manned and owned by Americans. These will not only be profitable in a commercial sense, they will be messengers of peace and amity whereever [sic] they go.”
     In these words, the President has truly voiced the fast growing purpose of the American people that no longer shall ninety-one per centum of our enormous volume of foreign trade go in foreign bottoms, but that America shall once more have a merchant marine worthy of her commercial traditions and befitting her place in the world’s wealth and industries.
     All signs indicate that a great revival of American shipbuilding is at hand. It is a thousand pities that our good President could not have lived to see our merchant service expand to meet the growing needs of the nation, which during his administration has had such unparalleled prosperity.