PANAMA AND CANADA.

(Detroit News.)

It is beginning to be appreciated by outsiders as well as by ourselves that the completion of the Panama Canal will work great transformation in commerce, economics, geography, population centers and travel. At this moment, perhaps, no people have a more lively sense of the importance of the great canal than the railroad builders and the people of western Canada.

A peculiar rivalry has arisen between the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and the Panama enterprise as to how soon each will be completed. The builders of that road from Quebec to Prince Rupert, in British Columbia, openly avow their intention of completing their Pacific coast terminal in time for the Panama. Canal opening, and of putting on a line of steamers which will carry all the grain of Alberta, northern British Columbia and the great Peace River district through the Panama Canal to the ports of Europe. The Grand Trunk Pacific was to be completed in 1915. Now that President Taft has announced that the canal will be opened in July, 1913, the Canadian railroad builders announce that their road will be completed then, too.

All the Pacific ports of the United States and Canada are spending millions of dollars to improve their harbors in anticipation of this trade. There are in the making northern Pacific ports that will prove the natural outlet for the great west, and the advantage of the cheap water rates will give that coast a boom which it has never before experienced. If one considered the matter in a narrow parochial light, the digging of the canal might be regarded as of no material benefit to the great lakes district, but rather a detriment, because of the diversion of the channels of trade, the upsetting of lines of travel and the formation of new centers of population in the far northwest, not contributory to us. But, as a matter of fact, every dollar well spent on the coast will help the commerce of the whole continent. We would rather manufacture for a future Prince Rupert of 500,000 people than for a lesser one.

THE "OPEN DOOR" CLOSING.

(Providence Evening Tribune.)

CURRENT developments plainly point to the paramount dominance of Russia and Japan in the Far East, with the prospects for American trade in that part of the world distinctly darkened. The "door" which John Hay opened is closing.

Turkestan, already a Russian province in fact, will no doubt soon be that also in name. The vast territory of Mongolia, though going immediately, with its proclamation of independence of China, under nominal subservience to the Dalai Lama, is really in process of passing under the rule of Russia as surely as if that country of nomads had been formally annexed to the Czar's dominions. With the disruption of China various plans of other nations, which have been long maturing, are being hurried to consummation.

It is reasonable to suppose, among other things, that Russia and Japan have a distinct understanding regarding the partition of the northern parts of the breaking Manchu empire. What this is in its precise details we can not conjecture. But it seems probable that when the trans-Mongolian railroad is built Japan, controlling lower Manchuria and Port Arthur, will be content to see Russia obtain in the Gulf of Liaotung the ice-free port she has long been seeking. With such an arrangement it is not likely that either Great Britain or Germany would now interfere; the possession of Wei-hai-Wei by the former and of Kiao-Chow by the latter measurably protects the Far Eastern trade interests of both.

But where does the United States come in? The end of the Manchu dynasty is at hand; the establishment in its place of either a republican or a constitutionally monarchical government that will be able to unite and hold together the rebellious provinces is going to be very difficult, and the often prophesied partition of China may soon be carried far beyond the present beginnings. It is a time of readjustments when every nation interested must be paying heed to the impending effects upon itself. But of all the nations having interests in the Far East none is so nearly isolated as is the United States.

THE INQUIRY INTO THE COST-OF-LIVING

QUESTION.

(New York Evening Post.)

It is to be hoped that the New York Chamber of Commerce will give its emphatic approval to the project placed before it recently, looking to the establishment of an international commission on the cost of living, upon the initiative of the United States. The stupendous difficulty and the enormous importance of the inquiry alike make the coöperation of the leading nations of the world essential to its successful prosecution; and it was a most happy inspiration that led Prof. Irving Fisher of Yale to propose the scheme, and to sound prominent economists, in this country and Europe, as to the desirability of such a plan. His inquiries have met with the most cordial response on all sides. The feeling is everywhere manifest that the economic disturbance produced by the world-wide rise of prices in recent years, and the distinct possibility of further experiences of the same kind, make the undertaking of a truly comprehensive and searching inquiry into all phases of the cost-of-living question a matter of cardinal importance to every industrial nation at the present time. Some look forward to remedial governmental measures as a possible or probable outcome of the inquiry; but, irrespective of any such prospect, it is felt that a really thoroughgoing research into the facts will be sure to prove of the highest practical importance, as well as of great scientific value.

The mere ascertainment of the extent of the rise of prices which has taken place, and its character, will be an undertaking of prodigious difficulty and of very high importance. To get at the nature and the seriousness of such increase as has taken place in the cost of living will require not only a vast amount of minute inquiry, but also genuine sagacity and judgment. What is wanted is something more than mechanical averages;

and even for the getting of such averages in a proper way a great deal of skill, as well as labor, is required. Only the conclusions of a body composed of the ablest experts, basing their results upon ample and fully analyzed material, can be of real value. It is of the utmost importance to know in what measure the pinch of high prices which has led to widespread and ominous disturbances in so many countries is a manifestation of a general fall in the purchasing power of money or of the failure of money wages to rise in corresponding degree; and in what measure, on the other hand, it is to be traced to exceptional or inordinate advance in those necessaries most vital to the workingman's welfare. The findings of an authoritative international commission on these and a variety of cognate questions could not fail to be of profound influence upon general thought and action.

Of even more acute interest and probably of more practical effect would be the Commission's inquiry into causes. First and foremost stands the question of the influence of the vast increase in the world's stock of gold, and the correlative phenomena relating on the one hand to the world's monetary and credit arrangements and on the other to the increasing volume of production and of business. But it is not to be supposed that when the international commission once got to work upon its great problem, it would confine itself to phenomena expressly connected with the question of the recent rise in prices. In a number of directions, the conditions of the past few years have centered attention upon questions which are not in any way new, but which have acquired a new intensity and importance under the pressure of the cost-of-living agitation. The influence of protective tariffs, the part played by the arrangements of middlemen, and by the profits of retailers-these things may not have undergone any particular change, but their share in the determination of prices has assumed a new prominence in the public eye. With German cities undertaking, upon a considerable scale, the functions of the food-merchant, and with sporadic experiments of the same kind going on in this country, an inquiry into the possibilities of lowering retail prices by coöperative expedients and otherwise might well form an important chapter in the Commission's labors.

Possibilities of a more ambitious nature are suggested in the preliminary sketch of the Commission's contemplated work. It

will be expected to give consideration to "the problem of preventing changes in the purchasing power of the monetary unit, as, for instance, through monetary or banking legislation." That it will be able to accomplish anything in this direction seems to us highly doubtful; but that is certainly no reason for refraining from the attempt. The subject is of such vast moment that any real illumination of it must be regarded as justifying all the labor and expense that may be necessary to secure it. While the gold standard, and that freedom of banking arrangements based upon it which now prevails, is in all probability the best thing available and will long continue so, yet there is not the same reason for complacency in regard to it that there was a dozen years ago. We have seen regrettable and even sinister phenomena arising from the instability of prices; and it is not impossible that future developments in gold production may produce disturbances more serious than anything we have seen. Both with reference to the past and present and with regard to the possibilities of the future, the concentration of the best economic thought of the world on this question is most sincerely to be desired. Taking the inquiry as a whole, we feel sure that the United States by initiating it will do a great and lasting service to the world, and will be readily followed by the leading European nations.