File No. 811f.812/296.
The President to Congress.
[Extract from the Message on the financial condition of the Treasury, needed banking and currency reforms, and departmental questions; communicated to Congress December 21, 1911; committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union, December 21, 1911; printed as House Document No. 343, 62d Congress, 2d Session.]
the panama canal.
The very satisfactory progress made on the Panama Canal last year has continued, and there is every reason to believe that the canal will be completed as early as the 1st of July, 1913, unless something unforeseen occurs. This is about 18 months before the time promised by the engineers.
We are now near enough the completion of the canal to make it imperatively necessary that legislation should be enacted to fix the method by which the canal shall be maintained and controlled and the zone governed. The fact is that to-day there is no statutory law by authority of which the President is maintaining the government of the zone. Such authority was given in an amendment to the Spooner Act, which expired by the terms of its own limitation some years ago. Since that time the government has continued, under the advice of the Attorney General that in the absence of action by Congress there is necessarily an implied authority on the part of the Executive to maintain a government in a territory in which he has to see that the laws are executed. The fact that we have been able thus to get along during the important days of construction without legislation expressly formulating the government of the zone, or delegating the creation of it to the President, is not a reason for supposing that we may continue the same kind of a government after the construction is finished. The implied authority of the President to maintain a civil government in the zone may be derived from the mandatory direction given him in the original Spooner Act, by which he was commanded to build the canal; but certainly, now that the canal is about to be completed and to be put under a permanent management, there ought to be specific statutory authority for its regulation and control and for the government of the zone, which we hold for the chief and main purpose of operating the canal.
I fully concur with the Secretary of War that the problem is simply the management of a great public work, and not the government of a local republic; that every provision must be directed [Page 468] toward the successful maintenance of the canal as an avenue of commerce, and that all provisions for the government of those who live within the zone should be subordinate to the main purpose.
The zone is 40 miles long and 10 miles wide. Now, it has a population of 50,000 or 60,000, but as soon as the work of construction is completed, the towns which make up this population will be deserted, and only comparatively few natives will continue their residence there. The control of them ought to approximate a military government. One judge and two justices of the peace will be sufficient to attend to all the judicial and litigated business there is. With a few fundamental laws of Congress, the zone should be governed by the orders of the President, issued through the War Department, as it is to-day. Provisions can be made for the guaranties of life, liberty, and property, but beyond those, the government should be that of a military reservation, managed in connection with this great highway of trade.
furnishing supplies and repairs.
In my last annual message I discussed at length the reasons for the Government’s assuming the task of furnishing to all ships that use the canal, whether our own naval vessels or others, the supplies of coal and oil and other necessities with which they must be replenished either before or after passing through the canal, together with the dock facilities and repairs of every character. This it is thought wise to do through the Government, because the Government must establish for itself, for its own naval vessels, large depots and dry docks and warehouses, and these may easily be enlarged so as to secure to the world public using the canal reasonable prices and a certainty that there will be no discrimination between those who wish to avail themselves of such facilities.
tolls.
I renew my recommendation with respect to the tolls of the canal that, within limits which shall seem wise to Congress, the power of fixing tolls be given to the President. In order to arrive at a proper conclusion, there must be some experimenting, and this can not be done if Congress does not delegate the power to one who can act expeditiously.
power exists to relieve american shipping.
I am very confident that the United States has the power to relieve from the payment of tolls any part of our shipping that Congress deems wise. We own the canal. It was our money that built it. We have the right to charge tolls for its use. Those tolls must be the same to everyone; but when we are dealing with our own ships, the practice of many Governments of subsidizing their own merchant vessels is so well established in general that a subsidy equal to the tolls, an equivalent remission of tolls, can not be held to be a discrimination in the use of the canal. The practice in the Suez Canal makes this clear. The experiment in tolls to be made by the President would doubtless disclose how great a burden of tolls the coastwise trade between the Atlantic and the Pacific coast could bear [Page 469] without preventing its usefulness in competition with the transcontinental railroads. One of the chief reasons for building the canal was to set up this competition and to bring the two shores closer together as a practical trade problem. It may be that the tolls will have to be wholly remitted. I do not think this is the best principle, because I believe that the cost of such a Government work as the Panama Canal ought to be imposed gradually but certainly upon the trade which it creates and makes possible. So far as we can, consistent with the development of the world’s trade through the canal, and the benefit which it was intended to secure to the east and west coastwise trade, we ought to labor to secure from the canal tolls a sufficient amount ultimately to meet the debt which we have assumed and to pay the interest.