“I’m not contesting the fact, Mr. Snowden,” he said, “that the opening of the Canal means a good deal to your portion of the country. Does it mean as much to the rest of the country, and does it mean so much to you for a long time. You mention cotton. Do you know that the cotton cultivation of India and Egypt has increased enormously, and that it is grown with cheaper labor than you can command. You have made the negro acquainted with his value. You have raised his expectations, you have thrust him into a hundred avenues of occupation and every one of his new avocations adds a shilling a day to the worth per man of the remainder, who stick to field work and cultivate your cotton fields. The cotton of Egypt and the cotton of India, I mean its manufactured forms, will go through that canal to Asia and Japan and Polynesia just as surely as yours will, and it’ll go cheaper. It is poorer cotton, I know, but that will not effect the result. “That isn’t all. Brazil and the Argentine Republic are growing cotton, and they are doing well at it. Europe will take the raw stuff from them and keep up her present predominance in that market while she turns their cotton bolls into satinettes and ginghams for the almond-eyes of Asia. The canal, breaking down a barrier of separation between the two oceans, turns loose into the Pacific the whole frenzied, greedy and capable cohorts of European manufacture. It will make a common highway for Europe, and our unbuilt clippers and tramp steamers will stay unbuilt, or unused, to rot on their ways in the shipyards. The west coast will be sidetracked, and our trunk railroads will cut down their schedules and their dividends at the same time. Roosevelt put this canal through, and your southern votes helped to elect him against his protest, but brought to it by an overwhelming public sentiment that applauded his power to chain or sterilize trusts; and he promised last March to your southern rooters, at his inauguration, to see that before his present new term was over, before 1913, the canal would be opened, and perhaps he’ll make good. “You southerners elected Roosevelt, and you have killed the Democratic party. The new powers of growth of that party were most likely to develop among you, but you shoved aside the proffered offer of political supremacy, because you too had surrendered to the idols of Mammon, and were willing to sell your birth-right for a mess of pottage. Well! You’ve got the canal and you’ve got Roosevelt, and let me tell you Mr. Snowden,” and the restrained, almost nonchalant demeanor of Mr. Tompkins became suddenly charged with electric earnestness, “you’ll get Hell, too.”