Aid to our foreign merchant marine.

Another instrumentality indispensable to the unhampered and natural development of American commerce is merchant marine.  All maritime and commercial nations recognize the importance of this factor.  The greatest commercial nations, our competitors, jealously foster their merchant marine.  Perhaps nowhere is the need for rapid and direct mail, passenger and freight communication quite so urgent as between the United States and Latin America.  We can secure in no other quarter of the world such immediate benefits in friendship and commerce as would flow from the establishment of direct lines Of communication with the countries of Latin America adequate to meet the requirements of a rapidly increasing appreciation of the reciprocal dependence of the countries of the Western Hemisphere upon each other’s products, sympathies and assistance.

I alluded to this most important subject in my last annual message; it has often been before you and I need not recapitulate the reasons for its recommendation.  Unless prompt action be taken the completion of the Panama Canal will find this the only great commercial nation unable to avail in international maritime business of this great improvement in the means of the world’s commercial intercourse.

Quite aside from the commercial aspect, unless we create a merchant marine, where can we find the seafaring population necessary as a natural naval reserve and where could we find, in case of war, the transports and subsidiary vessels without which a naval fleet is arms without a body?  For many reasons I cannot too strongly urge upon the Congress the passage of a measure by mail subsidy or other subvention adequate to guarantee the establishment and rapid development of an American merchant marine, and the restoration of the American flag to its ancient place upon the seas.

Of course such aid ought only to be given under conditions of publicity of each beneficiary’s business and accounts which would show that the aid received was needed to maintain the trade and was properly used for that purpose.

Federal protection to aliens.

With our increasing international intercourse, it becomes incumbent upon me to repeat more emphatically than ever the recommendation which I made in my Inaugural Address that Congress shall at once give to the Courts of the United States jurisdiction to punish as a crime the violation of the rights of aliens secured by treaty with the United States, in order that the general government of the United States shall be able, when called upon by a friendly nation, to redeem its solemn promise by treaty to secure to the citizens or subjects of that nation resident in the United States, freedom from violence and due process of law in respect to their life, liberty and property.

Merit system for diplomatic and consular service.