The most rapid change in the commercial map of the world wrought in centuries will be witnessed during the years following the completion of the Panama Canal. Cities that heretofore have been mere way stations on the international routes of trade will grow into rich centers where the new roads of the commercial world will cross. On the other hand, cities which in the past have gloried in a trade supremacy of international recognition will see themselves displaced and their prestige lost. The readjustment will not be the matter of a day or a year; even a generation may pass before it is completed; but the ultimate changes will certainly be greater and more world-encompassing than anyone now can forecast.

The capture of Constantinople by the Turks was directly responsible for the discovery of the New World. It cut off the cities of the Mediterranean from communication with India, and sent Columbus westward in quest of another passage, which could not be obstructed by the Mussulman tyrants of the East. At last the Panama Canal is to afford that passage, and to bring the whole earth into smaller compass.

Of course, the United States will be the first to realize the great benefits of the canal. It will double the efficiency of the American Navy by permitting it to concentrate its forces on either ocean in shorter time, by weeks, than can be done by any other nation; consequently, it will add to American military prestige throughout the world. The benefits immediately accruing to the people of the United States will be as great in a commercial way as in military advantage. As the capture of Constantinople caused the up-building of many notable regions through the transformation of international trade routes, so will the completion of the Panama Canal open up new markets and new opportunities to the Mississippi Valley, the world's greatest granary. Its grain and meat products, loading by way of Gulf ports, can go to the ends of the earth with but little outlay for expensive rail transportation. It is even probable that the great awakening incident to the opening of the canal, may hasten the day when the Lakes-to-the-Gulf waterway will be an accomplished fact and when ships may load in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Paul, and Minneapolis and sail directly to the ports of the world, thus beginning an era of commercial development surpassing even the wonderful growth of the half century just closed.

Pittsburgh may then be able to send its tremendous output of manufactures to all parts of the world without transhipment; Kansas City will feel the stimulus of the new waterway; and the Pacific coast, long cut off from the eastern section of the United States by high mountain barriers that have been only partially overcome by railroads, will find its great resources within marketable distance of the Eastern States.

Canada, too, will feel the stimulus of the canal. No longer will its great crops have to find their slow outlet over railroads that must cross the backbone of a continent, but, pursuing the avenues of least resistance, they may move to all parts of the world by way of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River.

South America will greatly benefit by the completion of the canal. Already its west coast countries and cities are getting ready for the boom of business that is to follow. Brought thousands of miles nearer to all western trade centers—so close that their raw products and American manufactured products can be exchanged to advantage—there will be a growth of trade whose prospect already has awakened the lethargic South American to the possibilities ahead.

These possibilities well may be considered by the business men of the United States. To-day North America buys a large percentage of the products of South America; but, when the South Americans have money to spare, they spend only $1 out of $8 in North America—the other $7 goes to Europe. The American exporter will find himself quickened by the history-making change the canal will produce and, if he goes at it in earnest, he will be in a position to reverse the present situation and get $7 of South American trade where Europe gets only $1.

Australia and New Zealand will experience, perhaps, a greater change in the trade routes than any other countries outside of the Americas. The Australian commerce now is largely carried by way of Suez. The opening of the Panama Canal will place New Zealand 1,200 miles nearer to London than it is by way of Suez, and the eastern ports of Australia will be as near to England by way of Panama as by Suez. All Australasian ports will be brought several thousand miles closer to the Atlantic ports of the United States than they are to-day. No one who has heard an Australasian complain of the long delays and the excessive freight rates that intervene between him and his American shoes, can doubt that the closer proximity of American markets will be welcomed in that faraway land under the southern cross. Sydney will be 4,000 miles nearer to New York through the Panama Canal, and 5,500 miles nearer to New Orleans and Galveston.

The transcontinental tonnage now handled by the railroads, which ultimately will go by the canal, aggregates 3,000,000 tons a year. The seaboard sections of the United States, of course, will benefit more largely than interior points, for the reason that interior points will have to take a combined rail-and-water route. This will involve railroad transportation and transhipment of cargo, also rehandling charges. After the canal is opened it is probable that the railroads will prefer to supply the intermountain States directly from eastern sources, instead of maintaining the existing policy of giving low rates to Pacific coast cities, so as to give them dominance over the shipping business of the intermountain region. The total coast-to-coast traffic of the railroads is said to approximate one-fifth of the entire traffic carried across the Rocky Mountains. Only one-third of the through traffic of the transcontinental lines from the East to the West originates east of a line drawn through Buffalo and Pittsburgh. It is this third of the westward business that will be affected mainly by the operation of the canal.

The principal effect the Panama Canal will have in the readjustment of the trade map of the world is not, perhaps, as much in changing existing routes as in creating new avenues of business. In every region where there is promise of unusual benefit by reason of the opening of the Panama Canal, an effort is being made to capitalize the advantages to be derived therefrom. The west coast of South America feels the stimulus of suddenly being brought thousands of miles closer to the best markets of the world, and anyone who travels down the coast from Panama may see at every port signs of a determination to reap full advantage of the new opportunities.

Even Guayaquil, a city that for years has been a hissing and a byword to the masters of all ships plying up and down the west coast because of its absolute indifference to all requirements of sanitation, has prepared for a campaign of cleaning-up, in order that it may become a port of call for all the ships passing that way. Heretofore, masters of ships, in order to comply with quarantine regulations elsewhere, have given it a wide berth whenever possible.

Chile, Peru, and Ecuador—all three have caught the spirit of the new era which a completed canal proclaims, and are striving to set their houses in order for the quickened times they see ahead. With the Central American Republics it is the same. Handicapped as they are by revolutions that sap their life-blood, or dominated by rulers who have no other object in governing the people than to exploit them, these countries still hope for much from the canal, and new activities are beginning to spring up in every one of them.

It is not improbable that the canal will play an important part in transforming the economic situation of the world during the generations immediately ahead of us. One needs only to study the distribution of humanity over the countries of the earth to find how unevenly the population is scattered, and to learn what great tides of immigration will have to flow westward to establish the equilibrium of population, which some day is bound to come. When Asia has a population of 50 per square mile and Europe a population of 100 a square mile, while North America has 15 and South America has 7, it is apparent that the future holds great changes in store. The potential development of the two Americas challenges the imagination. South America, with its virgin soil all but untouched, can support a population half as dense as that of Europe. This means that it can make room for 300,000,000 immigrants. Likewise, it is fair to assume that North America, with its up-to-date methods of agriculture, industry, and commerce, can support a population as dense as that of Asia with its primitive methods of manufacture and agriculture. This means that North America has room to accommodate 300,000,000 souls. In other words, room still remains for 600,000,000 persons on the continents which the Panama Canal divides. When the day comes, as it seems certain that it will, that the Americas reach their full growth, even the Panama Canal, larger by far than any other artificial waterway in the world, will be much too small to accommodate the traffic which naturally would pass its way.

The foreign trade of the United States with its 90,000,000 of population, aggregates 60,000,000 tons a year. Assuming that foreign trade would grow in the same proportion as population, it will be seen that the foreign trade of the two Americas at a time when the population of South America becomes half as dense as that of Europe, and that of North America half as dense as that of Asia, will approximate 500,000,000 tons. Assuming further that only one-fifth of this would pass through the canal, the American commerce alone would exceed its capacity, leaving all the trade between the Orient and eastern Europe to be taken care of by future enlargements.

More immediate, however, will be the realization of the prophecy of William H. Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State, that the Pacific is destined to become the chief theater of the world's events. As the population of the earth stands to-day, more than half of all the people who inhabit the globe dwell on lands which drain into this greatest of oceans. Yet, in spite of that fact, the trade that sweeps over the Pacific is but small in comparison with that which traverses the Atlantic. Where a thousand funnels darken the trade routes of the Atlantic, a few hundred are seen on the Pacific.

But in Japan one may find an example of the possibilities of the Pacific in the years to come. When China, with its 400,000,000 people, awakens as Japan has awakened, and builds up an international trade in proportion to that of Japan, it will send a commerce across the seas unprecedented in volume. When it buys and sells as Japan buys and sells, the waters of the Orient will vie with those of the Occident in the size of their fleets of commerce.

The opening of the Panama Canal promises to be one of the factors in hastening the day when the Orient will become as progressive as the Occident, and when sleeping nations will arise from their lethargy and contribute uncounted millions of tons of traffic to the Pacific Ocean, making it a chief theater of commerce as well as of world events.In our own country the course of empire has been sweeping toward the Pacific. Where once the center of most things lay east of the Mississippi River, now we find its agriculture, its mining industries, and its commercial activities gradually moving westward. The center of cotton production, once in those States celebrated in the melodies of the Southern plantation, has moved westward and to-day in Texas, Oklahoma, and even Southern California, cotton is grown in a way which shows that King Cotton has caught the spirit of the age and is extending his territories westward toward the Pacific. And all of this means a growing business and an expanding traffic through the Panama Canal.

On the Atlantic side there are signs without number that many nations will be up and doing in the reformation of the commercial map of the world. The islands of the Caribbean form a screen around the Atlantic end of the canal, and the majority of them are British possessions. Many of their cities will be situated upon the new international trade routes that will be called into being by the opening of the Panama Canal. At Kingston, Jamaica, great improvements are projected, coaling stations are planned, and other steps are being taken which will enable the British Government to reap what advantage it can from the construction of the canal. With its splendid diversity of climate, brought about by the wide range of elevated land, the fruits of the temperate zones may be grown, as well as those of the Tropics, and, as John Foster Fraser expresses it, Jamaica may become the orchard of Great Britain.Denmark is planning extensive shipping facilities in its beautiful harbor of Charlotte Amalia on the Island of St. Thomas. This island, which commands one of the principal passages from the Atlantic to the Caribbean Sea, might to-day be a possession of the United States had this Government been willing to buy it when Denmark was anxious to sell. It was here that the bold pirates of the Spanish Main hid their crews in the all but landlocked harbor, and waited for the shipping which passed through Mona passage. Here Bluebeard's castle still stands a mute reminder of the romantic days when buccaneers dominated the Spanish Main.

The north coast of South America also expects to figure largely in the new commercial map. The northern cities of Venezuela are on the route from eastern South America through the canal, and on one of the natural routes from Pacific ports to Europe. Nowhere else in the world will one find a more delightful climate or a more picturesque city or scenery than in northern Venezuela. Caracas, the capital, is but two hours' ride from the port of La Guaira, and less than a day's journey from Puerto Cabello, and, while the commerce which may be developed in Venezuela will, for the most part, find its outlet to the sea through the Orinoco River, La Guaira and Puerto Cabello will always prove attractive ports of call for passenger-carrying ships.

The changes in the commercial situation of Asia and the Americas, brought about by the opening of the canal, will be many. There will be a sudden readjustment of existing trade routes and this will be followed by a long era of development of new conditions, which will be so gradual as to be almost imperceptible, and yet so immense as to excite the wonder of humanity when it stops to reckon its full effect and meaning.