Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
The Canadian Pacific Railway brought into the United States from China and
Japan via British Columbia during the year ended June 30, 1892, 23,239,689
pounds of freight, and it carried from the United States, to be shipped to
China and Japan via British Columbia, 24,068,346 pounds of freight. There
were also shipped from the United States over this road from Eastern ports
of the United States to our Pacific ports during the same year 13,912,073
pounds of freight, and there were received over this road at the United
States Eastern ports from ports on the Pacific Coast 13,293,315 pounds of
freight. Mr. Joseph Nimmo, Jr., former chief of the Bureau of Statistics,
when before the Senate Select Committee on Relations with Canada, April 26,
1890, said that "the value of goods thus transported between different
points in the United States across Canadian territory probably amounts to
$100,000,000 a year."
There is no disposition on the part of the people or Government of the
United States to interfere in the smallest degree with the political
relations of Canada. That question is wholly with her own people. It is
time for us, however, to consider whether, if the present state of things
and trend of things is to continue, our interchanges upon lines of land
transportation should not be put upon a different basis and our entire
independence of Canadian canals and of the St. Lawrence as an outlet to the
sea secured by the construction of an American canal around the Falls of
Niagara and the opening of ship communication between the Great Lakes and
one of our own seaports. We should not hesitate to avail ourselves of our
great natural trade advantages. We should withdraw the support which is
given to the railroads and steamship lines of Canada by a traffic that
properly belongs to us and no longer furnish the earnings which lighten the
otherwise crushing weight of the enormous public subsidies that have been
given to them. The subject of the power of the Treasury to deal with this
matter without further legislation has been under consideration, but
circumstances have postponed a conclusion. It is probable that a
consideration of the propriety of a modification or abrogation of the
article of the treaty of Washington relating to the transit of goods in
bond is involved in any complete solution of the question.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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