The United States Government has covered into its Treasury approximately $113,000,000.00 which it loaned the overland railways; the enormous land grants they keep. What "injustice or outrage" is there in _again_ using this money to build another transportation route, national in character, for the benefit of all the Republic? This is not even taxation of our people: they have been once taxed to build the overland railways. I have in mind an instance where 1,500 barrels provisions were shipped from Sioux City, Iowa, to Jersey City, lightered to the California bound ship in East River, New York; carried 15,000 miles around Cape Horn, paying rail freight Eastward, lighterage, Cape Horn freight, insurance, six months interest and San Francisco wharfage; after all these charges saving _one third on the rail freight_ westward from Sioux City to the Pacific. Freight rates eastward on Pacific Coast perishable products are even higher. You are aware that, to save the onerous westward freight charges by rail, California merchants have repeatedly shipped heavy goods by steam from our Atlantic Ports to Antwerp: thence reshipped via Cape Horn to San Francisco, paying charges before named, and would be now doing so save for Customs regulations forbidding it. It cannot be expected that freight can be carried by rail across the continent more than three thousand miles over two mountain chains and compete in cost with water transportation which under conditions most favorable to rail transportation costs only one-fifth, while, with heavy grades, the ratio is one by water to fifteen by rail. In the effort to control such freight, the overland railways are _preventing the development of the Pacific Coast_ to their own detriment and against the interests of our great country. The day will come when these railway managers will regard their opposition to the Canal as error born of _unfounded apprehension_. Even now one of the main overland railway systems is quietly friendly to the Canal. Water transportation has its limitations, mainly _cheapness at the expense of time_. Railway transportation also has its limitations, mainly _speed at increased cost_. One is the complement of the other--not properly its competitor, and by carriage of cheap and bulky freight which is frequently unprofitable to railways on a long haul, water transportation can and is being used to _aid_ railways. Even Mr. Huntington frequently shipped his railway iron around Cape Horn, as he would have done through the canal had it been available. While controlling a railway system from ocean to ocean, he bought out the "Morgan Steamship Company" between New York and New Orleans and with the advantage of this _one-third water route_, dictated terms to his railway competitors. Could he have better expressed his true appreciation of cheap water carriage and of the inter-oceanic canal?