President Roosevelt's resolve to purchase ships and supplies in the
open market for the carrying out of his Panama policy, instead of excluding all foreign competition, has naturally created a tremendous stir in the States. Yet, according to the Washington correspondent of the Times, not only is every Free- trade or moderately Protectionist journal, as well as every public man in the party of Opposition, on the President's side, but many Republicans of extreme tariff views are coming round to his views. "They see that the President has appealed directly to patriotic sentiment, and has exposed, as nobody ever has before, the trite nature of the commercial policy adopted by the manufacturing trusts, which consists in selling cheaper to foreigners than to Americans." The impetus which the President's decision has given to the Free. trade movement in the States is not easily to be overestimated. No great effort of reasoning is required to arrive at the con- clusion that what is good for the Government is also good for the consumer.
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