Under Secretary Hay our State Department attained unprecedented prestige, due in part to the higher position among the nations now accorded us. This result itself Mr. Hay had done much to achieve; and he passed hardly a month in his office without making some further addition to the renown and influence of his country. If the United States has--which may be doubted--raised up diplomatists with Mr. Hay's mastery of international law and practice and his art and skill in conducting delicate negotiations, we have probably never had his equal in diplomatic initiative, or in the thorough preparation and presentation of cases. He did not meet occasions merely but made them, not arbitrarily but for the world's good. Settling the Alaskan boundary favorably to the United States at every point save one, crumbling with the single stroke of his Pauncefote treaty that Clayton-Bulwer rock on which Evarts, Blaine, and Frelinghuysen in turn had tried dynamite in vain, were deeds seldom matched in statecraft. By an act of Congress, in 1903, a new member was added to the President's cabinet in the person of the Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor. George B. Cortelyou was the first man appointed to that office. Two bureaus, those of corporations and of manufactures, were created for the department. The other bureaus, such as the Bureau of Statistics, Bureau of Standards of Weights and Measures and Coast and Geodetic Survey, were transferred from the other departments. The place of this new department was defined by the President in the following: "to aid in strengthening our domestic and foreign markets, in perfecting our transportation facilities, in building up our merchant marine, in preventing the entrance of undesirable immigrants, in improving commercial and industrial conditions, and in bringing together on common ground those necessary partners in industrial progress--capital and labor." [Illustration: Portrait.] Photograph by Rice. George B. Cortelyou, Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor. Among the problems engaging President Roosevelt none was of wider interest than the construction of an Atlantic-Pacific canal. A commission of nine, Rear-Admiral Walker its head, had been set by President McKinley to find the best route. It began investigation in the summer of 1899, visiting Paris to examine the claims of the French Panama Company, and also Nicaragua and Panama. It surveyed, platted, took borings, and made a minute and valuable report upon the work which each of the proposed canals would require. [Illustration: Seven men in overcoats.] The Isthmian Canal Commission, taken March 22, 1904. 1. Col. Frank J. Hecker. 2. William Barclay Parsons. 3. Wm. H. Burr. 4. C. E. Grunsky. 5. Ad. J. G. Walker. 6. B. M. Harrod. 7. Gen. Geo. W. Davis.