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Although the United States government was a party to endless negotiations in regard to an inter-oceanic canal, there were only three treaties of any practical importance prior to the close of the nineteenth century, by which it acquired rights and assumed obligations on that account. We shall proceed to examine these in detail.

This circumstance impressed me at that time only as indicating a remarkable topographical feature of the country; but afterwards, when the impracticability of a canal at Nicaragua and the deficiencies in respect of ports for a railway at Tehuantepec had become established, I was led to reflect upon it in connection with a plan for inter-oceanic communication by railway through Honduras; and, as explained in the introduction, we were now here to test the accuracy of my previous conclusions.

A complete Intercolonial railway system had long been looked forward to by those interested in our North American Provinces, and it would be impossible to overrate the importance to this country of an inter-oceanic railway between the Atlantic and Pacific.

This is especially fortunate in view of the fact that the question of an inter-oceanic canal has recently assumed a new and important aspect and is now under discussion with the Central American countries through whose territory the canal, by the Nicaragua route, would have to pass.

"Do you think they would complain if they became colonists of X Island?" But where was this X? It was an island lost in the immensity of the Pacific Ocean between the Equator and the Tropic of Cancer an island most appropriately named by Robur in this algebraic fashion. It was in the north of the South Pacific, a long way out of the route of inter-oceanic communication.

The astonishing perfection attained by the textile or mining industries in civilized countries is due to the simultaneous development of a thousand other industries, great and small, to the extension of the railroad system, to inter-oceanic navigation, to the manual skill of thousands of workers, to a certain standard of culture reached by the working class as a whole to the labours, in short, of men in every corner of the globe.

On the one side a grant of free and uninterrupted transit for the Government and people of the United States over the transit routes across the Isthmus, and on the other a guaranty of the neutrality and protection of these routes, not only for the benefit of the Republics through which they pass, but, in the language of our treaty with New Granada, in order to secure to themselves the tranquil and constant enjoyment of these inter-oceanic communications.

This is especially fortunate in view of the fact that the question of an inter-oceanic canal has recently assumed a new and important aspect and is now under discussion with the Central American countries through whose territory the canal, by the Nicaragua route, would have to pass.

"Just eight years ago, the great 'Inter-Oceanic Mail Steamship Company, wished to extend its service round the world, and, in order to do so, it applied to Congress for a heavy subsidy. The management of this affair was put into the hands of Mr. Baker, and all his private letters to the President of the Company, in press copies, as well as the President's replies, came into my possession.

Roosevelt intervened in the Anthracite Coal Strike, in 1902, recognised the revolutionary Republic of Panama, and in his administration, the United States acquired the Panama Canal Zone, and began work on the inter-oceanic canal. Great efforts were made, during his administration, to repress the big corporations by prosecutions, under the Sherman Anti-Trust Law.