In previous messages I have called attention to the decline in American shipbuilding and recommended such legislation as would secure to us our proportion of the carrying trade.  Stimulated by high rates and abundance of freight, the progress for the last year in shipbuilding has been very satisfactory.  There has been an increase of about 3 per cent in the amount transported in American vessels over the amount of last year.  With the reduced cost of material which has taken place, it may reasonably be hoped that this progress will be maintained, and even increased.  However, as we pay about $80,000,000 per annum to foreign vessels for the transportation to a market of our surplus products, thus increasing the balance of trade against us to this amount, the subject is one worthy of your serious consideration.

“Cheap transportation” is a subject that has attracted the attention of both producers and consumers for the past few years, and has contributed to, if it has not been the direct cause of, the recent panic and stringency.

As Congress, at its last session, appointed a special committee to investigate this whole subject during the vacation and report at this session, I have nothing to recommend until their report is read.

There is one work, however, of a national character, in which the greater portion of the East and the West, the North and the South, are equally interested, to which I will invite your attention.

The State of New York has a canal connecting Lake Erie with tide water on the Hudson River.  The State of Illinois has a similar work connecting Lake Michigan with navigable water on the Illinois River, thus making water communication inland between the East and the West and South.  These great artificial water courses are the property of the States through which they pass, and pay toll to those States.  Would it not be wise statesmanship to pledge these States that if they will open these canals for the passage of large vessels the General Government will look after and keep in navigable condition the great public highways with which they connect, to wit, the Overslaugh on the Hudson, the St. Clair Flats, and the Illinois and Mississippi rivers?  This would be a national work; one of great value to the producers of the West and South in giving them cheap transportation for their produce to the seaboard and a market, and to the consumers in the East in giving them cheaper food, particularly of those articles of food which do not find a foreign market, and the prices of which, therefore, are not regulated by foreign demands.  The advantages of such a work are too obvious for argument.  I submit the subject to you, therefore, without further comment.