1901 charged with fostering and developing foreign and domestic commerce, the mining, manufacturing, shipping and fishing industries, the labor interests, the transportation facilities and the insurance business of the United States. A notable feature of the new department is a bureau of corporations charged with making investigations of the business of corporations and joint stock companies engaged in foreign or interstate commerce, with a view to collecting information for the use of the President in enforcing the anti-trust statutes. This is sometimes called the "publicity" bureau and was created in response to President Roosevelt's recommendation that the only effective means of dealing with the powerful trusts was to make their doings public. Mr. George B. Cortelyou was placed at the head of the Department of Commerce and Labor and soon gave it a systematic organization. Another measure enacted at this session was the Elkins law, also aimed at the trusts, and which undertakes to prevent the large corporations from securing discriminating freight rates from the railroads. It forbids the offering as well as the receiving of rebates, and makes the corporations thus favored, as well as its agents, liable to prosecution for violation of the act. It is a matter of common knowledge that some of the most powerful trusts in existence. to-day have attained their greatness largely as a result of favored treatment from the railroads, in competition with which, of course, the small shippers have been at a great disadvantage. Another anti-trust measure appropriated $500,000, to be expended by the Attorney General in prosecuting violations of the anti-trust statutes, and still another was enacted to expedite the hearing and determination of suits arising under the anti-trust acts by providing for the removal of trust cases from the Circuit Courts directly to the Supreme Court. Both of these acts have been taken advantage of by the Government since their enactment and have greatly facilitated the prosecution of several important anti-trust suits. An important measure of a military nature was the act for the creation of a general staff for the army and substituting a "chief of staff" in place of the "commanding general." The general staff consists of forty-five officers and is charged with the preparation of plans for the defense of the country and the mobilization of the army in time of war. This measure was conceived and carried through by Secretary Root, and it is believed has added greatly to the efficiency of the army. It was followed by an act to 1901 regulate the militia, which allows national aid to the State militia. whenever it conforms to certain standards of organization and observes certain regulations prescribed by the Federal authorities with regard to drilling and participating in encampments. The State militia is thus brought more under control of the national government and its efficiency as an arm of the national service consequently increased. On November 9, 1903, a special session of the Fifty-eighth Congress met in response to a call of the President for the purpose of approving the reciprocity convention with Cuba to which reference has already been made. Joseph Cannon of Illinois was elected Speaker of the House to succeed David B. Henderson of Iowa, who had at the close of the previous session resigned his seat in Congress and retired to private life. The House with unanimity promptly passed the bill to carry out the provisions of the reciprocity convention, but the Senate refused its immediate concurrence and fixed December 16 as the day for a vote, and demanded an adjournment of the special session. The House leaders took the position that courtesy to the President required that Congress should perform the duty for which the extra session had been called, and refused to consent to an adjournment. Each House showed resentment at the conduct of the other, each accused the other of attempting to dictate its action and firmly refused to recede from its position. Accordingly both branches of Congress kept up perfunctory sessions until the opening of the regular session on December 7. At the opening of the regular session the President sent in his annual message, in which he devoted much space to praise of the new Department of Commerce and Labor, and to a defense of his Panama policy. He recommended the creation of a commission to investigate the condition and needs of the American merchant marine, a revision of the public land laws, an extension of the classified civil service and the authorization of the Treasury Department to deposit the customs receipts in the national banks. Among the important measures passed were a bill providing for a loan of $4,600,000 to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition; a bill appropriating $250,000 for the extermination of the cottton boll weevil in the Southern States; an act to extend the navigation laws of the United States to the Philippine Islands; and an act to create a commission to investigate the condition and needs of the merchant marine. Much time was devoted to the discussion of a 1901-1905 bill to admit the Territories of Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and the Indian Territory, to statehood, and although the bill passed the House, it failed in the Senate. Another subject of lively discussion was a Democratic proposal for the appointment of a special committee to investigate the frauds and scandals recently discovered in the Post Office Department. As a result of the discoveries, some thirty persons were indicted, several high officers in the department were dismissed, including the superintendent of the free delivery service, the chief of the division of salaries and allowances, the superintendent of the money order bureau, and the auditor of the same department, while several others were forced to resign their positions. In some cases the offenses charged were conspiracy to defraud the government on contracts for supplies, in others they were the abuse of official positions to secure contracts with firms with which the accused were connected, while in still other cases officials were guilty of falsifying their accounts. The President ordered a thorough investigation of the affairs of the Post Office Department, and the results showed that the government had lost several million dollars, in the form of excessive prices on supply contracts, a goodly share of which went to the conspirators. Ex-Congressman Driggs of Brooklyn was convicted by a United States court of having accepted from a manufacturing concern a large sum for the use of his influence in securing a contract for cash registers for the use of the government. He was sentenced to a term of imprisonment and to pay a fine of $10,000. An ex-superintendent of the free delivery service and several other private persons were also convicted and punished, but the majority of the accused were acquitted. An important incident in the foreign relations of the United States in the year 1903 was the settlement by arbitration of a long standing and perilous controversy with Great Britain, concerning the boundary between Alaska and Canada. Various efforts to settle the difficulty through diplomatic channels having resulted in failure, the two governments agreed to submit the dispute to the decision. of a commission of six jurists of repute, three appointed by each government. The commissioners were duly appointed and met in London September 3. On October 18 the decision was announced, allowing substantially all the claims of the United States. Her claim that the line passed round the head of the inlets, thus including the White and Chilkoot passes, was confirmed, while she was 1901-1905 also awarded the small islands of Sitklan and Kannaghunut at the mouth of Portland Channel with the right to navigate the Channel and control its western shore. The two Canadian commissioners refused to sign the award, which was made by Lord Alverstone and the three American commissioners, Secretary Root, Senator Lodge of Massachuetts and ex-Senator Turner of Washington, and there was some complaint among the Canadians that their interests had been sacrificed. This feeling was perhaps natural under the circumstances, but the justice of the award can hardly be questioned by impartial observers, and the people of Great Britain with singular unanimity gave it their approval. The settlement by arbitration in the previous year of disputes with Mexico concerning the Pious Fund, and with Russia concerning seizures of American vessels in the Behring Sea, together with the conclusion in the following year of a general arbitration treaty with France and other powers, seemed to furnish strong evidence of the peaceful disposition of the United States, and the desire of the government to settle its disputes with other nations by arbitration, when it can be done consistently with the honor of the country. II THE PANAMA CANAL Of the events of President Roosevelt's administration the one which will probably stand out above the others in the permanency and general usefulness of its results to mankind was the act of Congress authorizing the construction of the long projected ship canal across the isthmus connecting North and South America. The project of this waterway is almost as old as the national government itself. It was one of the proposed subjects of discussion at the Panama Congress of 1826, the American delegates being instructed by Mr. Clay, then Secretary of State, to investigate "the practicability and the probable expense of the undertaking on the routes which offer the greatest facilities." During Jackson's and Van Buren's administrations commissioners were appointed to investigate the question of suitable routes, and reports and recommendations were made, but never acted upon. In 1849 the government of Nicaragua granted a concession for the construction of a canal across Nicaraguan territory to an 1901-1905 American company, of which Cornelius Vanderbilt was the leading member, but nothing was ever done toward the work of construction. In the same year, Mr. Hise, the American chargé d'affaires at Nicaragua, concluded a treaty with the government of that republic by which the United States was given a perpetual and exclusive right of way for the construction of a canal across Nicaraguan territory, but the treaty did not meet with the approval of President Tyler, and was never submitted to the Senate for its action. Interest in the Nicaragua route, however, did not subside, and with a view to securing the coöperation of Great Britain in constructing the proposed canal, as well as in guaranteeing its neutrality, the United States in 1850 entered into an agreement with the British Government, known as the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, already described in another chapter, by which it was stipulated, among other things, that neither power would assume any exclusive control over the canal when completed and that both would unite in guaranteeing its neutrality and uninterrupted use in time of war as in time of peace. During the next twenty-five years various concessions were granted to American citizens, and almost every possible route across the isthmus was surveyed either by private parties or by engineers of the United States army or navy. A commission appointed by President Grant reported, in 1876, in favor of the Nicaraguan route, and in 1884 a treaty was concluded with Nicaragua by which the necessary concessions were granted to the United States. Finding this treaty before the Senate at the time of his accession to the Presidency, Mr. Cleveland withdrew it and refused to resubmit it because it contained certain stipulations which did not meet his approval. In the meantime a movement was under way to construct a canal across the Isthmus of Panama between the cities of Panama and Colon, and in 1879 an international congress held at Paris decided upon this route as the one most practicable. To carry out this project a French company was organized under the presidency of Ferdinand de Lesseps and a concession was secured from the government of Colombia. In 1881 work was actually begun, but unexpected difficulties were soon encountered; increased funds were found necessary, many of the transactions of the company were marked by fraud and scandal, so that after expending about $250,000,000 and having accomplished but a small part of the work of construction, the company was declared bankrupt and a |