Efforts have been recently made in Congress to depart from the traditional policy, and to revive the Nicaragua Canal scheme under the auspices of the United States, but these efforts have not yet been successful.

The old policy of seeking no exclusive advantage and of wishing to place the canal under the protection of all nations, for the benefit of all nations, is in accordance with treaty obligations, justice, and practical wisdom. In return for the expense in armament, which would be necessary to maintain control of the canal, the United States, in guaranteeing, alone, the free passage of the Isthmus, would, as Mr. de Bustamante* observes, "only succeed in wilfully drawing upon themselves an inexhaustible source of international conflicts." The canal can be neutralized, in the proper sense of the word, only by conventional agreement between the great maritime Powers. Similar arrangements in regard to Belgium, Switzerland, and other places have been found satisfactory. The neutralization of Colombia or Nicaragua would remove them from the danger of attack by any foreign power, while leaving their domestic affairs free from the control of external influence. This is a state of things which the "Monroe doctrine" was designed to bring about; and an international agreement to neutralize the country through which the canal may pass would be equivalent to an international agreement to observe the "Monroe doctrine" in regard to that country. JAMES GUSTAVUS WHITELEY.

* In article in Revue de Droit International, tome XXVII., Nos. 2 and 3. This article contains an interesting discussion of the means of neutralizing the canal.

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE ADMINISTRATION AND HAWAII.

THE Constitution of the United States, in the first section of Article XIV., declares that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States;" and in the first section of Article XV. that "the right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Up to this time we have found in our naturalization laws and treaties a shield for the American ballot box against Asiatics.

Neither treaties nor naturalization laws will serve for this object if we annex Hawaii and make it a part of the territory of the United States. All persons born in Hawaii after annexation would be born on American soil, and their right to vote-all males possessing the same qualifications as other males, black and white, born in the United States-could not be abridged by the United States or by any State.

Either we should have to deport after annexation the entire Asiatic population of Hawaii born in the islands, or, on reaching voter's age, the legally qualified would have to be admitted to the ballot on equal terms with the white Europeans and Americans in the islands.

Neither the Executive of the United States, nor Congress, nor the Executive and Legislature combined can set aside the Constitution.

After annexation migration of American citizens of Hawaii, of every race and color, will have to be free and unrestricted to every State and territory of the United States. After annexation legal voters of Hawaii, of every race and color, will be constitutional voters in every State and Territory of the United States.

Thus the detested and dangerous Asiatic must reach the American ballot box if Hawaiian annexation is to become an accomplished fact.

It is true that native-born Hawaiian American citizens, with voters' rights, cannot arrive thus in practical American politics for nearly another generation, if the projected and pending treaty becomes law. But the issue must be faced now. Is the nation prepared to accept it and its full consequences? It involves the writing of an absolutely novel chapter in national and international history, more momentous than the American Civil War and its political, economic, industrial, and social results.

In a spirit, therefore, of wisdom, of patriotism, and of statesmanship, has President McKinley deferred definite consideration of the proposal of Hawaiian annexation. Let the administration wait for the mandate of the nation. Give the nation time to reflect!

According to the latest statistical returns the population of Hawaii con

There is no restriction on Japanese immigration. The slight restriction on Chinese immigration has proven effectual only in a limited degree.

The voting category, to be added to ours, therefore, as a consequence of Hawaiian annexation, will comprise Chinese, Japanese, Polynesians, Maories and numerous other hybrid human varieties. They may be voters in every part of the United States, as well as in Hawaii, if Hawaii becomes American soil. Is President McKinley, is the Republican party, ready for this responsibility? LONGFIELD GORMAN.

A NEW BUSINESS ALLIANCE.

DOES the East realize how rapidly it is losing its hold on the business interests of the prairies? Does it know that the West and the Southwest are joining hands, not politically but commercially, in the formation of new trade relations that mean the hardest blow to the traffic of the Atlantic slope that it has ever seen? It is so.

A third of a century ago Texas was further from Kansas and Nebraska in a business sense than it was from Europe. One day an energetic cattle. man laid out a trail across the 200 miles of Indian lands separating the commonwealths, and for a time they were almost one. Great herds were driven up from the ranches of the Southwest to the northern shipping and feeding stations. Then the trade fell off, and both sections looked to the East again. Events are bringing about another business alliance between them, but this time the tide of traffic is southward.

Corn sold during the winter in Northern Texas for 36 to 45 cents; in Kansas, 450 miles away, it was worth 8 to 12 cents, and the farmers were complaining because with an abundant crop they could not get cash enough to pay their taxes. This sort of a condition has set the people to thinking, and the result is a demand for closer trade relations between the North and South and the promise of a business revolution. The entire Western Mississippi valley is looking to the Gulf of Mexico as an outlet for the vast granary of the plains. The legislatures of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas have appointed commissions to consult on the feasibility of an interstate railroad to be built and operated by the three governments, and there is an ever-increasing stream of business flowing Gulfward. Perhaps the never-ceasing abuse of the "plutocratic East," the "Wall Street sharks," and the "millionaire robbers," with which the Populist orators have regaled their audien ces through six campaigns in every schoolhouse, has had some influence in awakening public sentiment, but the hope of better prices for crops has been the more potent factor. The farmers have seen the prices of their products decrease and the payments on their bonds and mortgages remain as before; they have "figgered" on the freight charges to the seaboard and have realized why their old-time neighbors "back East" received so much more for their labor; then they have clamored for a nearer market. They have seen in the Gulf an export point 500 miles nearer than that of the Atlantic slope. By reason of this shorter haul they think they can thus secure better prices for grain. That is, in

brief, their argument, and they talk it on the farms, on the street corners, in the prairie towns, and at the schoolhouse "lyceum."

They hoped much when the first railway line was built across the Indian Territory, then a terra incognita, but now becoming a rich commonwealth itself. They were encouraged when there were two and three lines; now there are four, and the effect of the new direction in which trade is turning is being felt by the eastern roads. The extent to which the southern ports are grasping the export business may be seen in the corn exports of 1896. The total bushels sent out of the country was 128,518,437, being a gain of 67,100,000 bushels over 1895. Of this gain southern ports made 60,000,000 bushels. New Orleans made a gain of 16,500,000 bushels, and Galveston 5,000,000 bushels. Last year Galveston exported nearly 10,000,000 bushels of grain of all kinds, practically its first appearance on the scene. New Orleans advanced in the same twelvemonth from 9,000,000 to 20,000,000 bushels. The total amount of all exports from all ports of the United States in the first eleven months of 1896 was $888,660,415, an increase of $156,300,000 over the same months of 1895. Of this increase nearly one-half, or $78,600,000, was at southern ports, their gain being 35 per cent., while the gain at all other United States ports was only 15 per cent.

New Orleans has steadily advanced as a corn-exporting point, as has Galveston also. Nearly two-thirds of the corn sent out of the States of Kansas and Nebraska for export is going that way, and these two cities are getting the business that formerly had no choice but to seek the Atlantic seaboard. This is significant, and with the building of new roads from the prairies to the Gulf there is sure to be a further increase in the shipments, proportionately, than in the past.

The one fact that handicaps the southern route at the present time is the fact that the railroads have what they call a one-way haul." They must, they say, bring back their cars from the Gulf empty, whereas they can on the eastern haul bring them back laden with the product of loom and spindle. There is much truth in this, and the thing that will do more than any other to strengthen the new business alliance between the prairies and the Southwest is the development that is going on in the Southwest in manufacturing. A double flow is the life of traffic. When the Gulf States get the importing houses that are so influential in the business of the East and when the cotton manufactories that are now in the Atlantic States are duplicated in the heart of the cotton-growing region, there will be a change that will make what will be almost a business revolution. It is passing strange that the people of the Southwest, with the need of employment for their increasing population and with the raw material at hand, should send their cotton fifteen hundred miles to the New England States to be turned into cloth and then ship that cloth back again. They are not going to do it much longer. They are realizing the advantages of home industry and all over the great Southwest are going up buildings which will be used to manufacture the cotton that grows at their doors. In the city of Galveston last winter one was attracted by huge signs that were placed in conspicuous places on every thoroughfare, "Patronize Home Industry-Only Texas Capital is Invested in the Manufacture of -'s Goods." That is the

spirit manifested in the South of to-day, and it means that it is able to stand alone and intends to do so at the earliest opportunity. The Western States are willing to join hands with it and are giving their best efforts in that direction. Scarcely a week passes that every paper in the prairie States does

not say something good for the Gulf outlet, and at the sessions of the Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma legislatures during the past winter this subject attracted more attention than any of the measures before them, except that of railroad freight rates, which after all is closely connected with it.

The rates on grain from Kansas City, the basing point of much of the Western traffic, to the Atlantic sea-board is about 35 cents a hundred pounds. From Kansas City to Chicago it is from 15 to 20 cents. To the Gulf it is 15 cents. The railway haul from the interior of the Northern States to Kansas City and from the terminal points to the interior of Texas made the difference in prices at those points. But for the export trade, on which the price is after all dependent, there is in shipping to Liverpool a railway haul via the Atlantic of 1,208 miles; while through the Gulf ports it is only 767 miles. The ocean haul is, of course, the greater, but the freight thereon is so cheap that the difference is altogether to the credit of the Gulf ports. These things are being spread in the minds of the people and of the capitalists and both are becoming so much interested that they will make the new alliance assume proportions that are of the greatest importance to the business of the nation, if they have not already done so.

During the past six years there has been going on an intermingling of the settlers of the two sections. The States of Kansas and Nebraska have lost thousands in population. The lack of rain and the failure of crops have made them discouraged, and they have loaded their belongings into the white-covered "prairie schooners" that, like ships of discoverers, have sailed the plains for a quarter century, and sought the milder climate and the less arid skies of the South. Some have stopped in the newly-opened Indian lands, but many have gone on to the fertile fields of Texas. The ranches of the cattle barons have been cut up into farms and the wild-eyed steer of cattle trail days has given way to the well-bred cow whose milk is furnishing creamery butter to the city markets. Their industry is manifested in the well-tilled fields and the cosey homes that are scattered all over the northern and southwestern portions of the Lone Star State. They have brought into the politics of the commonwealth a different atmosphere and have compelled a greater intimacy between it and the North. Time was, and not so very long ago, when the idea of a joint commission to consider the mutual interests of the States North and South would have been hooted at, yet now it is an accomplished fact and is looked at as most natural.

The effort to build on the plains great cities has thus far been a failure. Outside those situated on the Missouri there are none that can claim the prominence two decades ago predicted of not less than a score of budding municipalities. But with the appearance of a seaport at a distance of only 700 miles what may not happen? The vast and fertile region between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains is capable of supporting more than one Buffalo, Cleveland or Cincinnati. If the alliance that is being so rapidly perfected unites, as it bids fair to do, all this magnificent section, we may see this come to pass, with a second Boston on the Gulf besides.

The East has populated and built up the West. Its best young men have "broke" the prairies and made, of the level reaches of sod, farms and orchards. Its capital has caused a growth that has been the wonder of the world. But the emigrants who left the homes in that revered land, "back East"-the dweller on the plains speaks the words with tenderness-who

"Crossed the prairies as of old

The Pilgrims crossed the sea,"