Speech #640074816

This is much larger than the tonnage of the entire annual foreign commerce of the United States. The IstHmian Canal Comnission estimated that the Panama Canal. now to be built at a cost approximating $200.000.000. would have carried a tonnage in 1899 of but 4.574.852 tons." Of the registered tonnage traffic in a recent compilation. 25.873.167 were on Delaware Bay points and 24.151.932 on Chesapeake Bay points. These figures. however. do not include the undocumented and unregistered tonnage traffic. which would add nearly 100 per cent to the total. Considerably less than onetenth of the traffic on the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays and their various points belongs to foreign commerce. The great value of the proposed canal would be il facilitating the coastwise trade.