Note 169 — Chapter XIX · THE ENCOURAGEMENT AND REGULATION OF COMMERCE.
Reading edition
As a means of facilitating commerce the national government also maintains various aids to navigation. It provides lighthouses, buoys, landmarks, and lifesaving stations. It has made surveys of the coasts and furnishes charts for the use of navigators. It trains and licenses pilots and makes rules to ensure the safety of vessels entering or leaving American ports. Much money has also been spent by the national government in the deepening and improvement of harbors. Mention should likewise be made of the greatest enterprise ever undertaken by any country for the promotion of maritime commerce, namely, the building of the Panama Canal, which connects two oceans and cost the United States more than three hundred and fifty million dollars.