machinery; yet every American reaper and every American harvester must first be dumped on the Liverpool docks before it can reach the South American consumer.'[1] It is little less certain, in the present writer's opinion, that the subsidized American steamship lines will be established than that the Panama Canal will be built.
That America's commercial future lies chiefly in her own hemisphere few thinking minds can doubt. Her commercial predominance in that region must extend with her political. Let us firmly grasp this point. America is much in advance of Mr. Chamberlain and the supporters of Imperial preference in this country. The fixed policy of the United States endeavours to establish preferential relations wherever they can be arranged. Let us see what has already happened. In Cuba the preferential rebate upon imports from the United States ranges from 20 to 40 per cent. Washington has just blocked the proposed Anglo-Cuban treaty upon the significant ground that it might in the future act in such a way as to prevent the conclusion of another Cuban-American treaty providing for reciprocal shipping privileges.[2] There is a measure now before the Congress of Havana—and the point is well worthy of Lord Curzon's attention—to kill the rice-trade from India in the interest of the rice-growers in Louisiana and Texas. 'The present duty on rice,' says the latest report of the British Minister at Havana, is 1 dollar 20 cents per 100 kilos, the preference to American rice being 40 per cent., or 48 cents per 100 kilos.[3] The proposal now under discussion is to increase the duty to 2 dollars 75 cents (an increase of nearly 180 per cent.), which would raise the preference on American rice to 1 dollar 10 cents per 100 kilos, 'enabling it,' adds the report mildly, 'to compete on very favourable terms.' It may be well to mention here, as throwing
