hould 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 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 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 America, South America and Mexico. The construction of a Pacific
cable cannot be longer postponed.

In the furtherance 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 this practical and
substantial expression and which we all hope will be firmly advanced by
the pan-American congress that assembles this autumn in the capital of
Mexico.

The good work will go on. It cannot be stopped. These buildings will
disappear, this creation of art and beauty and industry will perish from
sight, but their influence will remain to

"Make it live beyond its too short living
With praises and thanksgiving."

Who can tell the new thoughts that have been awakened, and ambitions
fired, and the high achievements that will be wrought through this
Exposition?

Gentlemen, let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not
conflict, and that our real eminence rests in the victories of peace,
not those of war. We hope that all who are represented here may be moved
to higher and nobler effort for their own and the world's good, and that
out of this city may come not only greater commerce and trade for us
all, but, more essential than these, relations of mutual respect,
confidence and friendship which