Open Door in the Canal Zone.

Progress, Volume I, Issue 3, 2 January 1906, Page 65

Open Door in the Canal Zone.

One result of the assuming control by the United States Government of the Panama Railroad, is to be the proclamation of the " open door " for trade across the Isthmus of Panama. This policy of the government has been definitely announced by Secretary of War Taft, in a conference held by him with the diplomatic representatives of Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. Traffic charges across the Isthmus, he assured the diplomats, will be reduced to as low a pomt as is consistent with allowing the road to make a reasonable profit, which means, profit sufficient to pay reasonable interest on the 87,000,000 which the United States has expended for the acquirement of the Panama Railroad. The South and Central Americans, after having been excluded for so long a time from American markets by the monopoly exercised by the Panama Railroad and the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, hail this announcement as an assurance of a great growth in the trade of the United States with South America by way of the Panama Railroad. The securing of practical sovereignty over the canal zone of Panama, including the Panama Railroad, places the United States in a position to take this great step in the interests of international trade. What would have happened had the new Republic of Panama retained the rights of governing this strip of territory, it is of no value to discuss. Her individual private interests might have dictated a more selfish policy than that now declared by this government, and things might have gone on in the old fashion, to the continued detriment of commerce. The United States, however, is bound by its trade policy to do everything m its power to increase the volume of international business, and it could have taken no step which would further this end more fully than the one it has now taken of declaring the " open door," for transportation across the Isthmus of Panama. — Exporters' and Importers' Journal.