now firmly established. What we produce beyond our domestic
consumption must have a vent abroad. The excess must be relieved through
a foreign outlet and we should sell everywhere we can, and buy wherever
the buying will enlarge our sales and productions, and thereby make a
greater demand for home labor.

The period of exclusiveness is past. The expansion of our trade and
commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars are unprofitable.
A policy of good will and friendly trade relations will prevent
reprisals. Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the spirit of the
times, measures of retaliation are not. If perchance some of our tariffs
are no longer needed, for revenue or to encourage and protect our
industries at home, why should they not be employed to extend and
promote our markets abroad? Then, too, we have inadequate steamship
service. New lines of steamers have already been put in commission
between the Pacific coast ports of the United States and those on the
western coasts of Mexico and Central and South America. These should be
followed up with direct steamship lines between the eastern coast of the
United States and South American ports. One of the needs of the times is
to direct commercial lines from our vast fields of production to the
fields of consumption that we have but barely touched. Next in advantage
to having the thing to sell is to have the convenience to carry it to
the buyer. We must encourage our merchant marine. We must have more
ships. They must be under the American flag, built and manned and owned
by Americans. These will not only be profitable in a commercial sense;
they will be messengers of peace and amity wherever they go. We must
build the Isthmian canal, which will unite the two oceans and give a
straight line of water communication with the western coasts of Central
and South America and Mexico. The construction of a Pacific cable cannot
be longer postponed.

In the furthering of these objects of national interest and concern
you are performing an important part. This exposition would have
touched the heart of that American statesman whose mind was ever alert
and thought ever constant for a larger commerce and a truer fraternity
of the republics of the new world. His broad American spirit is felt
and manifested here. He needs no identification to an assemblage of
Americans anywhere, for the name of Blaine is inseparably associated
with the Pan-American movement, which finds thi