The Nicaragua Canal and the Economic Development of the United States

The economic influences exerted by such a waterway as the Nicaragua Canal are, in general, two.First, the inter- oceanic canal will give a wider market to our raw materials obtained by agriculture, mining, forestry, and the other extractive industries; second, the waterway will assist American manufactures by cheapening the expense of trans- portation, thus reducing the costs of raw materials used, and giving the finished goods a wider range of markets.By means of lower costs, American manufacturers will be enabled to compete more successfully both for home and foreign markets.Briefly stated, the general economic effects of the Nicaragua Canal will be to stimulate the pro- duction of raw materials and to increase our manufactures.Both of these results will inevitably follow the lessening of the costs of transportation and the extension of the limits within which our raw and finished products are marketable.In measuring more closely the influences which the Nic- aragua Canal will exert upon our economic welfare, it is of assistance to analyze the more important services which this waterway will perform, in providing American indus- tries with a new and efficient highway by water for our domestic commerce, in supplying the foreign trade of the eastern and central parts of the United States with a shorter and more direct route to the countries bordering on the Pacific, and by giving the foreign trade of our own Western States a shorter highway to European ports.In calculating the effects which the Nicaragua Canal will produce in the development of domestic industry and com- merce, it is first to be noted that our industrial situation is

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