passed the Senate, February 14, by a vote of 38 to 27, five Republican
Senators and all the Democrats voting in the negative.[IB]

In the House its progress was less prosperous. It lay with the committee
on merchant marine and fisheries into the second session of this
Congress; and more hearings were given. Reframed after the enacting
clause, but practically the same in principle, it was reported back
January 19 (1907) by Mr. Grosvenor, accompanied by an explanatory
report of the majority of the committee;[IC] and bill and report were
referred to the whole House on the state of the Union. Later the views
of the minority were filed.[IC] On January 23 a message from President
Roosevelt in behalf of the measure was received. The president
particularly urged the "great desirability of enacting legislation to
help American shipping and American trade by encouraging the building
and running of lines of large and swift steamers to South America and
the Orient." As striking evidence of the "urgent need of our country's
making an effort to do something like its share of its own carrying
trade on the ocean," he directed attention to the address of Secretary
Root before the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress at Kansas City,
Mo., the previous November, giving the results of the secretary's
experiences on his recent South American tour. The proposed law, Mr.
Roosevelt repeated, was in no sense experimental. It was "based on the
best and most successful precedents, as for instance on the recent
Cunard contract with the British Government." So far as South America
was concerned, its aim was to "provide from the Atlantic and Pacific
coasts better American lines to the great ports of South America than
the present European lines." Under it "our trade friendship" would "be
made evident to the South American Republics."[ID]

Backed by the explanatory report and this message, the friends of the