Republican platform and pass a proper postal savings bank bill. It will
not be unwise or excessive paternalism. The promise to repay by the
Government will furnish an inducement to savings deposits which private
enterprise can not supply and at such a low rate of interest as not to
withdraw custom from existing banks. It will substantially increase the
funds available for investment as capital in useful enterprises. It
will furnish absolute security which makes the proposed scheme of
government guaranty of deposits so alluring, without its pernicious
results.

I sincerely hope that the incoming Congress will be alive, as it should
be, to the importance of our foreign trade and of encouraging it in
every way feasible. The possibility of increasing this trade in the
Orient, in the Philippines, and in South America are known to everyone
who has given the matter attention. The direct effect of free trade
between this country and the Philippines will be marked upon our sales
of cottons, agricultural machinery, and other manufactures. The
necessity of the establishment of direct lines of steamers between
North and South America has been brought to the attention of Congress
by my predecessor and by Mr. Root before and after his noteworthy visit
to that continent, and I sincerely hope that Congress may be induced to
see the wisdom of a tentative effort to establish such lines by the use
of mail subsidies.

The importance of the part which the Departments of Agriculture and of
Commerce and Labor may play in ridding the markets of Europe of
prohibitions and discriminations against the importation of our
products is fully understood, and it is hoped that the use of the
maximum and minimum feature of our tariff law to be soon passed will be
effective to remove many of those restrictions.