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CLEVELAND, VOLS XXX. OUR NAVY AND MERCHANT MARINE, Secretary Paul Morton of the navy department .was re- cently given a dinner by the Merchants' club in Chicago. In the course of the after dinner Mr. Morton said: "T desire to acknowledge the courtesy of this club for this great honor. While I understand perfectly that it is a MR. PAUL MORTON, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY. dinner to the secretary of the navy, I cannot altogether sep- arate myself from the fact that Chicago is my home; that I belong to this club and among its members I have the pleas- ure of counting some of my warmest friends. I hope so long as I am a cabinet officer, you will consider me the represen- tative of this club and this section of the country in the pres- ident's official family. Most of you probably know that I O; AUGUST 11; 1904. NO. 6. have not sought the public service which I have just accepted. No man ever entered public life leaving behind him a more comfortable or fascinating position than I abandon here in Chicago. I have literally-been in the house of my friends. I have had the greatest admiration and respect for my superior officer; the most cordial regard for my associates, and the keenest interest in my work and environments. We have been a happy family and all of us have been interested in the weal and woe of Chicago and the great west. "Notwithstanding the press of the country has advertised me as an after-dinner talker of such rare ability that Senator Depew must look to his laurels, I am not a speech-maker as most of you know. I was brought up on a Nebraska farm, and on certain occasions this fact impresses itself on me with much emphasis. There is a great difference between plow- ing the field in agriculture, plowing the air in oratory and plowing the sea in the navy, and when I think of my doing either of the latter 'stunts' it naturally occurs to me what a farmer lam: "Tt is very fitting that the Merchants' club should give a dinner to the secretary of the American navy, regardless of who he may be. This club represents the hope and future of the commerce of Chicago, and the navy is the watch-dog of American commerce everywhere on the high seas. I con- sider the American navy the policeman by day and the watchman by night, of our foreign trade, and the beat it trav- els is anywhere in the great universe where American trade or American interests are to be protected. Our _ sea-coast, next to that of the British empire, is the greatest in the world--over 23,000 sea-miles and there are those who living along the banks of tide-waters, think that the navy is solely for the protection and defense of our coast, but such is not the case, as the interior is and ought to be intensely interested in its success. "Chicago being the chief commercial and financial center of the great Mississippi river valley--the most wonderful of all the valleys the world has ever known, is keenly interested in the navy because here is the center of agriculture, and agri- culture is the foundation of all our commerce with foreign countries. It is a great satisfaction to me to find that Ameri- cans, regardless of politics, regardless of residence, whether on the sea-coast, from the prairies or from the mountains, believe that our navy should be modern, wide-awake com- petent instrument of warfare, second in its capacity to no other navy in the world. "It will be my purpose to endeavor to impress the neces- sity of this upon the congress of the United States, which has of recent years been so liberal in its treatment of the