Wilson To Consider Canal.

New York Times 100 years ago today, March 20, 1913:
Panama Issue with Britain Coming Up for Early Decision.
Special to The New York Times.
    WASHINGTON, March 19.— It is understood that the next important subject of foreign policy to be considered and dealt with by the Wilson Administration will be the Panama Canal tolls question. President Wilson has not yet disclosed his attitude toward the protest made by the British Government.
    President Wilson is confronted by the declaration from the Democratic platform adopted at Baltimore favoring the exemption from tolls of American shipping engaged in coastwise trade passing through the Panama Canal. He will find that the Democratic Chairman of the respective Congressional committees that would consider any bill seeking to repeal the free toll provision entertain conflicting views. Senator O'Gormam of New York. Chairman of the Senate Committee on Interoceanic Canals, opposes tolls on the coastwise shipping using the canal, and is in favor of living up to the plank in the Baltimore platform, while Representative Adamson of Georgia, Chairman of the House Committee on Inter-State and Foreign Commerce, is opposed to the exemption of American coastwise shipping from the payment of tolls.
    Representative Thetus W. Sims of Tennessee, another Democratic member of the House Committee, who also favors the repeal of the free toll provision, intends to introduce a bill for that purpose as soon as the extra session of Congress convenes. Unless President Wilson asks the special session to consider the Panama Canal toll question, however, legislative action would be postponed until the regular session meets in December.
    Representative Frank E. Doremus of Michigan, another Democratic member of this committee, is preparing to combat the movement for the repeal of the toll provision and for the submission of the controversy to arbitration. Mr. Doremus is the author of the free toll provision as it stands in the Canal act. He has an appointment at the White House to-morrow with President Wilson, and it is understood that the Panama Canal act will then be discussed. Representative Doremus asserts that but for the action of Senator Root in the Senate and elsewhere, demanding the arbitration of the controversy, Secretary Knox would have succeeded in reaching a settlement of the Canal toll controversy with Great Britain. "The only beneficiary of the repeal of the canal toll provision would be the transcontinental railroads." Mr. Doremus told The New York Times correspondent tonight. "Diplomacy has not failed in this instance. Yet Senator Root insisted upon arbitration before Great Britain had barely received the first note of Secretary Knox in response to the British protest, and before the issue had been joined diplomatically. Why be so hasty to force this question before The Hague tribunal before diplomacy had hardly begun?"