he most burdensome to the industries of the people.

I specially urge that there be included in whatever reduction is made
the legacy tax on bequests for public uses of a literary, educational,
or charitable character.

American vessels during the past three years have carried about 9 per
cent of our exports and imports. Foreign ships should carry the least,
not the greatest, part of American trade. The remarkable growth of our
steel industries, the progress of shipbuilding for the domestic trade,
and our steadily maintained expenditures for the Navy have created an
opportunity to place the United States in the first rank of commercial
maritime powers.

Besides realizing a proper national aspiration this will mean the
establishment and healthy growth along all our coasts of a distinctive
national industry, expanding the field for the profitable employment of
labor and capital. It will increase the transportation facilities and
reduce freight charges on the vast volume of products brought from the
interior to the seaboard for export, and will strengthen an arm of the
national defense upon which the founders of the Government and their
successors have relied. In again urging immediate action by the Congress
on measures to promote American shipping and foreign trade, I direct
attention to the recommendations on the subject in previous messages,
and particularly to the opinion expressed in the message of 1899:

I am satisfied the judgment of the country favors the policy of aid to
our merchant marine, which will broaden our commerce and markets and
upbuild our sea-carrying capacity for the products of agriculture and
manufacture, which, with the increase of our Navy, mean more work and
wages to our countrymen, as well as a safeguard to American interests
in every part of the world.

The attention of the Congress is invited to the recommendation of the
Secretary of the Treasury in his annual report for legislation in behalf
of the Revenue-Cutter Service, and favorable action is urged.

In my last annual message to the Congress I called attention to the
necessity for early action to remedy such evils as might be found to
exist in connection with combinations of capital organized into trusts,
and again invite attention to my discussion of the subject at that time,
which concluded with these words:

It is apparent that uniformity of legislation upon this subject in
the several States is much to be desir