led to a visit to the Isthmus of a board of competent engineers to examine the Gatun dam and locks, which are the key of the lock type.  The report of that board shows nothing has occurred in the nature of newly revealed evidence which should change the views once formed in the original discussion.  The construction will go on under a most effective organization controlled by Colonel Goethals and his fellow army engineers associated with him, and will certainly be completed early in the next administration, if not before.

Some type of canal must be constructed.  The lock type has been selected.  We are all in favor of having it built as promptly as possible.  We must not now, therefore, keep up a fire in the rear of the agents whom we have authorized to do our work on the Isthmus.  We must hold up their hands, and speaking for the incoming administration I wish to say that I propose to devote all the energy possible and under my control to pushing of this work on the plans which have been adopted, and to stand behind the men who are doing faithful, hard work to bring about the early completion of this, the greatest constructive enterprise of modern times.

The governments of our dependencies in Porto Rico and the Philippines are progressing as favorably as could be desired.  The prosperity of Porto Rico continues unabated.  The business conditions in the Philippines are not all that we could wish them to be, but with the passage of the new tariff bill permitting free trade between the United States and the archipelago, with such limitations on sugar and tobacco as shall prevent injury to domestic interests in those products, we can count on an improvement in business conditions in the Philippines and the development of a mutually profitable trade between this country and the islands.  Meantime our Government in each dependency is upholding the traditions of civil liberty and increasing popular control which might be expected under American auspices.  The work which we are doing there redounds to our credit as a nation.

I look forward with hope to increasing the already good feeling between the South and the other sections of the country.  My chief purpose is not to effect a change in the electoral vote of the Southern States.  That is a secondary consideration.  What I look forward to is an increase in the tolerance of political views of all kinds and their advocacy throughout the South, and the existence of a respectable political opposition in every State; even more than this, to an increased feeling on the part of all the people in the South that this Government is their Government, and that its officers in their states are their officers.