Subject to this proviso of the proper protection necessary to our industrial well-being at home, the principle of reciprocity must command our hearty support.  The phenomenal growth of our export trade emphasizes the urgency of the need for wider markets and for a liberal policy in dealing with foreign nations.  Whatever is merely petty and vexatious in the way of trade restrictions should be avoided.  The customers to whom we dispose of our surplus products in the long run, directly or indirectly, purchase those surplus products by giving us something in return.  Their ability to purchase our products should as far as possible be secured by so arranging our tariff as to enable us to take from them those products which we can use without harm to our own industries and labor, or the use of which will be of marked benefit to us.

It is most important that we should maintain the high level of our present prosperity.  We have now reached the point in the development of our interests where we are not only able to supply our own markets but to produce a constantly growing surplus for which we must find markets abroad.  To secure these markets we can utilize existing duties in any case where they are no longer needed for the purpose of protection, or in any case where the article is not produced here and the duty is no longer necessary for revenue, as giving us something to offer in exchange for what we ask.  The cordial relations with other nations which are so desirable will naturally be promoted by the course thus required by our own interests.

The natural line of development for a policy of reciprocity will be in connection with those of our productions which no longer require all of the support once needed to establish them upon a sound basis, and with those others where either because of natural or of economic causes we are beyond the reach of successful competition.

I ask the attention of the Senate to the reciprocity treaties laid before it by my predecessor.

The condition of the American merchant marine is such as to call for immediate remedial action by the Congress.  It is discreditable to us as a Nation that our merchant marine should be utterly insignificant in comparison to that of other nations which we overtop in other forms of business.  We should not longer submit to conditions under which only a trifling portion of our great commerce is carried in our own ships.  To remedy this state of things would not merely serve to build up our shipping interests, but it would also result in benefit to all who are interested in the permanent establishment of a wider market for American products, and would provide an auxiliary force for the Navy.  Ships work for their own countries just as railroads work for their terminal points.  Shipping lines, if established to the principal countries with which we have dealings, would be of political as well as commercial benefit.  From every standpoint it is unwise for the United States to continue to rely upon the ships of competing nations for the distribution of our goods.  It should be made advantageous to carry American goods in American-built ships.