Canal Bill Puts Taft In A Dilemma.

New York Times 100 years ago today, August 18, 1912:
If He Vetoes It He Reverses His Views on Free Tolls, Which He Urged on Congress.
HOUSE ADOPTS THE REPORT
Its Adoption Due to His Instigation — He Can Only Veto It on the Free Materials Issue.
Special to The New York Times.
    WASHINGTON, Aug. 17.— The House adopted this afternoon the conference report on the Panama Canal Bill without a roll call. That sent the measure direct to the White House, and it leaves the President to-night in one of the most embarrassing positions of his political career. The President is on public record as indorsing most of the provisions of the bill, and letters from him are in existence at the Capitol showing that the free passage for American ships, was passed largely at his active instigation. But some of his callers to-day got the impression that he is going to veto the bill and that his reason will be the serious blow at our relations with Great Britain struck by the no-toll provision.
    Out from this tangled web of the President's varying declarations the only thing that stands clear is that whether he vetoes the bill or whether he signs he will do so at the expense of deeply offending influential members of both houses. As far back as Dec 21, 1911, he discussed the subject at some length in a message to Congress, and reiterated then an opinion he had expressed the year before that tolls on American ships were entirely outside the treaty and within the discretion of Congress. That discretion — though the best authorities agree it was in open violation of the treaty — Congress has exercised as the President suggested, and the men who stood out prominently in the passage of the bill in its present form will bitterly resent the President's reversal of himself and his desertion of them.
    Since that message the President has made it plain that he had not changed his views as to tolls. And his message  seemed even to indorse something like the radical legislation attached to the Panama bill for the divorcing of railway and water-lines. His message of December, 1911, emphasized the fact that the canal was largely for the purpose of establishing real competition with the transcontinental railways, and that was one of his arguments in favor of reduced American tolls or outright free passage. That certainly looks as if he had not then intended the canal to show favors to railroad-owned lines.
    Since then, in letters to Senators and members of the House, he has reiterated his position as to tolls. The Inter-State Commerce Commission, at his request, has written him, entirely approving a measure to forbid the canal to railway-owned ships. About the only points this leaves the President consistently as a basis for a veto are the provisions for free materials for ship building and the free admission of foreign-built ships to American registry for the foreign service. A veto on those two points would be in line though at long range — with his veto policy on the tariff.
    The extraordinary thing about all this is that the President has not changed his mind as to free tolls. He is still convinced in his own mind that the canal is a domestic question, and subject solely to congressional control. But in conversations to-day he took the position that it seemed precipitate to go ahead on the assumption without allowing any opportunity for testing that assumption with the party to the treaties at stake. He suggested that provision might be made for settling the matter in a court by allowing cases for damages to foreign shipping arising from the favors to American bottoms to go to some duly authorized American tribunal.
    That suggestion, had it come a little earlier, might have been adopted. Senators who discussed the matter with the Present to-day, like Mr. Simmons of North Carolina, seemed not entirely hostile to the suggestion. But they scouted the idea of such a proposition constituting ground at this date for vetoing a measure recommended by the President. It is still thought, however, that a joint resolution making the provision suggested by the President, may be passed hurriedly to prevent a veto and permit the adjournment of Congress. How little satisfactory to Great Britain such a settlement of her treaty rights would be is easy to imagine.
    In his message of 1911 the President had this to say of tolls through the canal and their bearing on railroad traffic:

    I am very confident that the United States has the power to relieve from the payment or tolls any part of our shipping that Congress deems wise. We own the canal. It was our money that built it. We have the right to charge tolls for its use. Those tolls must be the same to every one; but when we are dealing with our own ships the practice of many Governments of subsidizing their own merchant vessels is so well established in general that a subsidy equal to the tolls, an equivalent remission of tolls cannot be held to be a discrimination in the use of the canal. The practice in the Suez Canal makes this clear. The experiment in tolls to be made by the President would doubtless disclose how great a burden of tolls the coastwise trade between the Atlantic and the Pacific Coast could bear without preventing its usefulness in competition with the transcontinental railroads. One of the chief reasons for building the canal was to set up this competition, and to bring the two shores closer together as a practical trade problem. It may be that the tolls will have to be wholly remitted.

    To overcome the point of order made in the House last night by Representative J. Hampton Moore of Pennsylvania who contended that the Conference Committee had exceeded its authority when it redrafted the free-ship provision so as to amend the Payne law and admit foreign shipbuilding material free, the House leaders found it necessary to bring in a special rule. This limited debate to two hours, shut off intervening motions and waived all points of order. After the adoption of this rule Speaker Clark was not required to rule on the Moore point of order, and the road was clear for the quick adoption of the conference report.
    Representative Alexander of Missouri, Chairman of the House Merchant Marine Committee, whose counsel was sought by the House conferrees when it framed the House compromise on the admission of foreign-built ships to American registry, asserted that it was ridiculous to assert that the American shipyards would be hurt. He told the House that he had been informed by Representative Browning of New Jersey that officials of the New York Shipbuilding Company at Camden were satisfied with the free-ship bill as it appears in the conference agreement.
    "I have also been in consultation," added Judge Alexander. "with the President of the Maryland Steel Company, Baltimore, by long distance telephone, and he assures me he is satisfied with the conference proposal for granting American registry to foreign-built ships owned wholly by Americans, provided they are not admitted into the coastwise trade. The fact of the matter is that American shipyards build practically no ships for use in the foreign trade, and their orders are mostly for ships for the coastwise trade. This provision cannot injure American shipyards."