The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-12-25

o"SHey W thirty uaYS, Oy steamer 1OrtY-
tiye TO fifty days; by sail from ITO to
120 days. When the canal is completed
the length of the voyage between the
same points by steam will be reduced to
eighteen or twenty days; by sail to thirty
or forty days, with a reduction of about
one-third on freight charges. San Fran
cisco, the mouth of the Columbia river,
and Puget Sound will be more than
10000 miles nearer New York than now,
1000 miles nearer our Gulf Ports; by
water too, where the cost of freight car
rage is about one-hfth of that by rail
THE SAVING IN CHARGES.
The cost now of freighting lumber
across the continent by rail is practically
proh1oitory, while on wheat, wool and
canned goods it approaches confscation.
A ship loaded with lumber in Oregon and
bound for the ship yards of Maine now
takes for the voyage 130 days and charges
Sl2 thousand freight. BY canal she
could make the same voyage in forty or
nifty days and net more money at IS a
thousand. A steamer could pass over the
same course in twenty days. There
seems no reason to doubt that if the canal
were once opened it would give tire.
mendous impulse to our coastwise trade
and stimulate nightly the growth of the
Pacific states in population and wealth.
The agricultural department in care
fully prepared report estimates that there
are ., 600, 900 acres of timber lands in the
pacific northwest, and that it averages
5000 feet board measure per acre. AL
lowing 20 per cent for bad land this
means 400, 900 10000 feet. Freight from
Puget Sound 10 New York or
Liverpool is now from $40 to
$l2 a thousand. Here is a little
calculation of what the canal would do
for this timber: 1t would shorten the
voyage around the Horn of 130 days to 60
through the canal, and reduce the freight
charge from $12 to 50 thousand or by
steamer through the Straits of Magellan,
of fifty days to twenty, and reduce the
freight charge from $l4 to $40. Now add
one-half of this saving to the standing
timber and it would increase its value
$500, ,000, 900, six times as much as the es-
timated cost of the canal.
In 1891 there was shipped from the Pa
cific coast to Europe and the Atlantic
ports of the union 100000 tons of wheat
and flour. The canal would reduce the
freight charges on these products at least
81 ton, which would add to the profits
of the wheat-growers or shipper 50, 100000
on the years crop Similarly, though
not perhaps, to the same extent, all other
products of the country would be bene-
fitted, and all the imports from the
Atlantic ports would receive the
UCuCllbo vi LCuuCbAOh VI u dLS-
portation charges. Within the year
the president of the Chamber of Com
merce of San Francisco has testified that
the lack of such competition with the
lines of railway as the
Nicaragua canal would furnish is esti-
mated by conservative statistics to cost
the Pacific coast far up in the tens of mil
lions of dollars every year.
CLEVELAND GREATLY INTERESTED.
President Cleveland has become in
tensely interested in this project, believ-
ing that the completion of the canal un-
der the auspices of the United States,
and its control by the United States
would, taken in conjunction with the new
tariff policy upon which the country is to
enter, mark the Inauguration of a bril-
liant foreign trade by the United States.
1t is universally recognized here that if
the United States is to control the Nicar-
aguan canal the Hawaiian Islands imme-
diately loom up on our horizon.
of the Pacific ocean, commanding
the western entrance to the canal. The
eastern entrance can be commanded from
our gulf ports and the Mole St. Nicholas
and Hawaii would give us the control of
the western coign of vantage. If we are
not to assume a protectorate over the
islands, coaling station at Pearl River
0dfDOr IN perpSGulGy Is an eSSe0G 0Glal ; DuJ
above all the independence of the islands,
if we are not to take them, is paramount
Commanding the western entrance to any
cannal connecting the two great oceans
of the Orient and the Occident, they lie
in the direct path of the Chinese trade,
if that is to increase in volume.
Queen Lii has deliberately turned the
trust behind her The duty of the ad-
ministration ends if she refuses the con-
ditions imposed by President Cleveland.
The question then of accepting the propo-
sition of the provisional government, re-
jected because of the barrier which the
administration assumed stood in the way
of negotiations with that government,
could then be removed and considered on
it's merits, and there is no good reason
for thinking that, in view of
the administration towards the
Nicaraguan canal soon to be made public,
when the provisional government at
Honolulu vindicates its right to rule a
proposition for annexation or . protecto-
rate would be received with favor. 1t Is
therefore, among the possibilities, per-
haps, probabilities of the future, that the
Hawaiian Islands will eventually come
into the territory of the United States,
like all other territorial accretions save
alone Alaska, under the auspices of the
Democratic party.
TWO KILLED BY A BOILER.