COMMERCIAL ASPECTS OF THE PANAMA. CANAL.* Ma. Ids/cows HUTCHINSON, of
the University of California, in his treatise on The Panama Canal and international Trade Competition throws a good deal of light on the com- mercial aspects of the great engineering enterprise which Colonel Goethals recently carried to so eminently successful a conclusion. At the present time it is not without interest to remember that the fact which finally awoke Americans to the need of making the canal was the famous voyage of the battleship • Oregon ' from the Pacific to the Atlantic at the outset of the Spanish-American War. Peaceful as the policy of the United States has always aimed at being, it was the strategical value of a waterway between the two oceans which then impressed itself on the American mind. Mr. Hutchinson is chiefly concerned with the way in which the opening of the canal will affect the sea-borne trade of the world. He hes collected a large store of material facts in the course of several years' study of the commercial problems of Latin America and the Pacific Coast, and he utilizes this materiel for the purpose of illustrating the tendencies of modern commerce— especially of American commerce. He does not profess to decide whether the Panama Canal will prove itself to be a "paying concern," apart from its indubitable strategical value, so much as to consider how far, if it is freely used, it will affect the sea-borne trade of the world. To this end he examines the trade of the chief countries which are likely to be affected by the change in trade routes, using the statistics of the past ten or fifteen years. How far will the canal supersede the three great steamer routes between the Atlantic and the Pacific—by the Suez Canal, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Straits of Magellan ? The question reduces itself to one of simple arithmetic, which has to be worked out for any particular vessel. The carriage of freight is usually a question of cost, not of speed, and in order that the canal may be used the tolls must be leas than the cost of the extra days' run which is saved by its use. Mr. Hutchinson gives some typical instances, showing that at existing rates the Panama route will be used by average freighters from Liverpool to Wellington but not to Sydney, to San Francisco but not to Shanghai, and so forth. His book is too loaded with statistics to be easy reading, but it should be full of interest to students of shipping and trade routes.
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