Shortening of trade routes is the first and obvious consideration. Everything else grows out of the elimination of distances by the Canal cut-off. It requires no prophetic gift to take the figures from any good map and ascertain that from New York to San Francisco via Magellan is 13,135 miles, whereas via Panama it is 5,262--a saving of 7,873 miles, or a month of steady steaming. Between New York and Honolulu there is a saving of 6,610 miles; and Yokohama is 2,768 miles nearer New York via Panama than by the Suez route. The list of distances saved may be indefinitely extended. [Illustration: PANAMA PUBLIC WATER WORKS, INTERIOR COUNTRY] If there were no results other than the saving of a week or a month of steamer time, the Canal would be cheap at several times its price. But these changes in steamer schedules and prices introduce an entirely new set of reactions into the commercial and social world, and this is where the interesting problems arise. Left to herself, nature tends to establish a balance of flora or fauna in any locality. Introduce a new plant or animal or microbe and all sorts of readjustments begin at once, and before a new balance is established almost anything may happen. Commerce finds its level in much the same way and by the same law. Introduce a radical disturbance, like the Panama short-cut, and everything begins to happen. Add the direct and indirect results of the war with its weakening of German influence and strengthening of inter-American interests, and we may have practically a new world before a new balance is established. Commercial interests naturally forge to the front in any discussion of canal results. So ably have these matters been discussed by experts that any repetition of figures and industries here would be beyond the scope of this work. It must be understood that the world war rendered obsolete our former ideas regarding trade between the United States and Spanish-America. Whether the extensive German political-commercial machine that covered all Latin-America can regain its prestige in fifty years to come remains to be seen, but it is certain that for a generation following the defeat of Germany by the free nations of the world North America will have a magnificent opportunity to enter South American trade on very advantageous terms. And the great bulk of the west-coast trade will pass through the Canal on its way to Gulf and Atlantic ports, as well as to Europe.