The cause is not only a clearer appreciation of the benefits to be derived from commerce across the water under conditions that exist now; it is also a growing appreciation of the possibilities of commerce under conditions that will exist later with countries whose resources are almost entirely undeveloped.

For four hundred years, we of the United States, have been developing the land within our borders, and the task has been enormous.

At one time it promised to be the work of centuries; and with the mechanical appliances of even one hundred years ago, it would have taken a thousand years to do what we have already done.

Mechanical appliances of all kinds, especially of transportation and agriculture, have made possible what would, otherwise, have been impossible; and mechanical appliances will do the same things in Tierra del Fuego and Zululand.
Mechanism, working on land and sea, is opening up the resources of the world.

And now, another allied art, that of chemistry, more especially biology, is in process of removing one of the remaining obstacles to full development, by making active life possible, and even pleasant, in the tropics.