The relations between the United States and South America have been chiefly political rather than commercial or personal. In the early days of the South American struggle for independence, the eloquence of Henry Clay awakened in the American people a generous sympathy for the patriots of the south as for brethren struggling in the common cause of liberty. The clear-eyed, judicious diplomacy of Richard Rush, the American minister at the Court of St. James, effected a complete understanding with Great Britain for concurrent action in opposition to the designs of the Holy Alliance, already contemplating the partition of the southern continent among the great powers of continental Europe. The famous declaration of Monroe arrayed the organized and rapidly increasing power of the United States as an obstacle to European interference and made it forever plain that the cost of European aggression would be greater than any advantage which could be won even by successful aggression.

That great declaration was not the chance expression of the opinion or the feeling of the moment; it crystallized the sentiment for human liberty and human rights which has saved American idealism from the demoralization of narrow selfishness, and has given to American democracy its true world power in the virile potency of a great example. It responded to the instinct of self-preservation in an intensely practical people. It was the result of conference with Jefferson and Madison and John Quincy Adams and John C. Calhoun and William Wirt—a combination of political wisdom, experience, and skill not easily surpassed. The particular circumstances which led to the declaration no longer exist; no Holy Alliance now threatens to partition South America; no European colonization of the west coast threatens to exclude us from the Pacific. But those conditions were merely the occasion for the declaration of a principle of action. Other occasions for the application of the principle have arisen since; it needs no prophetic vision to see that other occasions for its application may arise hereafter. The principle declared by Monroe is as wise an expression of sound political judgment today, as truthful a representation of the sentiments and instincts of the American people today, as living in its force as an effective rule of conduct whenever occasion shall arise, as it was on December 2, 1823.

These great political services to South American independence, however, did not and could not in the nature of things create any relation between the people of South America and the people of the United States except a relation of political sympathy.

Twenty-five years ago, Mr. Blaine, sanguine, resourceful, and gifted with that imagination which enlarges the historian's understanding of the past into the statesman's comprehension of the future, undertook to inaugurate a new era of American relations which should supplement political sympathy by personal acquaintance, by the intercourse of expanding trade, and by mutual helpfulness. As secretary of state under President Arthur, he invited the American nations to a conference to be held on November 24, 1882, for the purpose of considering and discussing the subject of preventing war between the nations of America. That invitation, abandoned by Mr. Frelinghuysen, was renewed under Mr. Cleveland, and on October 2, 1889, Mr. Blaine, again secretary of state under President Harrison, had the singular good fortune to execute his former design and to open the sessions of the first American conference at Washington. In an address of wisdom and lofty spirit, which should ever give honor to his memory, he described the assembly as—

... an honorable, peaceful conference of seventeen independent American powers, in which all shall meet together on terms of absolute equality; a conference in which there can be no attempt to coerce a single delegate against his own conception of the interests of his nation; a conference which will permit no secret understanding on any subject, but will frankly publish to the world all its conclusions; a conference which will tolerate no spirit of conquest, but will aim to cultivate an American sympathy as broad as both continents; a conference which will form no selfish alliance against the older nations from which we are proud to claim inheritance—a conference, in fine, which will seek nothing, propose nothing, endure nothing that is not, in the general sense of all the delegates, timely, wise, and peaceful.

The policy which Mr. Blaine inaugurated has been continued; the Congress of the United States has approved it; subsequent presidents have followed it. The first conference at Washington has been succeeded by a second conference in Mexico, and now by a third conference in Rio de Janeiro; and it is to be followed in years to come by further successive assemblies in which the representatives of all American states shall acquire better knowledge and more perfect understanding, and be drawn together by the recognition of common interests and the kindly consideration and discussion of measures for mutual benefit.

Nevertheless, Mr. Blaine was in advance of his time. In 1881 and 1889 the United States had not reached a point where it could turn its energies away from its own internal development and direct them outward towards the development of foreign enterprises and foreign trade, nor had the South American countries reached the stage of stability in government and security for property necessary to their industrial development.

Now, however, the time has come; both North and South America have grown up to Blaine's policy. The production, the trade, the capital, the enterprise of the United States have before them the opportunity to follow, and they are free to follow, the pathway marked out by the far-sighted statesmanship of Blaine for the growth of America, North and South, in the peaceful prosperity of a mighty commerce.

To utilize this opportunity certain practical things must be done. For the most part these things must be done by a multitude of individual efforts; they cannot be done by government. Government may help to furnish facilities for the doing of them, but the facilities will be useless unless used by individuals. This cannot be done by resolutions of this or any other commercial body; resolutions are useless unless they stir individual business men to action in their own business affairs. The things needed have been fully and specifically set forth in many reports of efficient consuls and of highly competent agents of the Department of Commerce and Labor, and they have been described in countless newspapers and magazine articles; but all these things are worthless unless they are followed by individual action.

I will indicate some of the matters to which every producer and merchant who desires South American trade should pay attention.

1. He should learn what the South Americans want and conform his product to their wants. If they think they need heavy castings, he should give them heavy castings and not expect them to buy light ones because he thinks they are better. If they want coarse cottons, he should give them coarse cottons and not expect them to buy fine cottons. It may not pay today, but it will pay tomorrow. The tendency to standardize articles of manufacture may reduce the cost and promote convenience, but if the consumers on the River Plata demand a different standard from the consumers on the Mississippi, you must have two standards or lose one market.

2. Both for the purpose of learning what the South American people want and of securing their attention to your goods, you must have agents who speak the Spanish or Portuguese language. For this there are two reasons: one is that people can seldom really get at each other's minds through an interpreter, and the other is that nine times out of ten it is only through knowing the Spanish or Portuguese language that a North American comes to appreciate the admirable and attractive personal qualities of the South American, and is thus able to establish that kindly and agreeable personal relation which is so potent in leading to business relations.

3. The American producer should arrange to conform his credit system to that prevailing in the country where he wishes to sell goods. There is no more money lost upon commercial credits in South America than there is in North America; but business men there have their own ways of doing business; they have to adapt the credits they receive to the credits they give. It is often inconvenient and disagreeable, and it is sometimes impossible, for them to conform to our ways, and the requirement that they should do so is a serious obstacle to trade.

To understand credits it is, of course, necessary to know something about the character, trustworthiness, and commercial standing of the purchaser, and the American producer or merchant who would sell goods in South America must have some means of knowledge upon this subject. This leads naturally to the next observation I have to make.

4. The establishment of banks should be brought about. The Americans already engaged in South American trade could well afford to subscribe the capital and establish an American bank in each of the principal cities of South America. This is a fact, first, because nothing but very bad management could prevent such a bank from making money; capital is much needed in those cities, and six, eight, and ten per cent can be obtained for money upon just as safe security as can be had in Kansas City, St. Louis, or New York. It is a fact also because the American bank would furnish a source of information as to the standing of the South American purchasers to whom credit may be extended, and because American banks would relieve American business in South America from the disadvantage which now exists of making all its financial transactions through Europe instead of directly with the United States. It is unfortunately true that among hundreds of thousands of possible customers the United States now stands in a position of assumed financial and business inferiority to the countries through whose banking houses all its business must be done.

5. The American merchant should himself acquire, if he has not already done so, and should impress upon all his agents that respect for the South American to which he is justly entitled and which is the essential requisite to respect from the South American. We are different in many ways as to character and methods. In dealing with all foreign people, it is important to avoid the narrow and uninstructed prejudice which assumes that difference from ourselves denotes inferiority. There is nothing that we resent so quickly as an assumption of superiority or evidence of condescension in foreigners; there is nothing that the South Americans resent so quickly. The South Americans are our superiors in some respects; we are their superiors in other respects. We should show to them what is best in us and see what is best in them. Every agent of an American producer or merchant should be instructed that courtesy, politeness, kindly consideration, are essential requisites for success in the South American trade.

6. The investment of American capital in South America under the direction of American experts should be promoted, not merely upon simple investment grounds, but as a means of creating and enlarging trade. For simple investment purposes the opportunities are innumerable. Good business judgment and good business management will be necessary there, of course, as they are necessary here; but, given these, I believe that there is a vast number of enterprises awaiting capital in the more advanced countries of South America, capable of yielding great profits, and in which the property and the profits will be as safe as in the United States or Canada. A good many such enterprises are already begun. I have found a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a graduate of the Columbia School of Mines, and a graduate of Colonel Roosevelt's Rough Riders smelting copper close under the snow line of the Andes; I have ridden in an American car upon an American electric road, built by a New York engineer, in the heart of the coffee region of Brazil; and I have seen the waters of that river along which Pizarro established his line of communication in the conquest of Peru, harnessed to American machinery to make light and power for the city of Lima. Every such point is the nucleus of American trade—the source of orders for American goods.

7. It is absolutely essential that the means of communication between the two countries should be improved and increased.

This underlies all other considerations and it applies to the mail, the passenger, and the freight services. Between all the principal South American ports and England, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, lines of swift and commodious steamers ply regularly. There are five subsidized first-class mail and passenger lines between Buenos Ayres and Europe; there is no such line between Buenos Ayres and the United States. Within the past two years the German, the English, and the Italian lines have been replacing their old steamers with new and swifter vessels of modern construction, accommodation, and capacity.

In the year ending June 30, 1905, there entered the port of Rio de Janeiro steamers and sailing vessels flying the flag of Austria-Hungary, 120; of Norway, 142; of Italy, 165; of Argentina, 264; of France, 349; of Germany, 657; of Great Britain, 1785; of the United States,—no steamers and seven sailing vessels, two of which were in distress!

An English firm runs a small steamer monthly between New York and Rio de Janeiro; the Panama Railroad Company runs steamers between New York and the Isthmus of Panama; the Brazilians are starting for themselves a line between Rio and New York; there are two or three foreign concerns running slow cargo boats, and there are some foreign tramp steamers. That is the sum total of American communication with South America beyond the Caribbean Sea. Not one American steamship runs to any South American port beyond the Caribbean. During the past summer, I entered the ports of Para, Pernambuco, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, Santos, Montevideo, Buenos Ayres, Bahia Blanca, Punta Arenas, Lota, Valparaiso, Coquimbo, Tocopilla, Callao, and Cartagena—all of the great ports and a large proportion of the secondary ports of the southern continent. I saw only one ship, besides the cruiser that carried me, flying the American flag.

The mails between South America and Europe are swift, regular, and certain; between South America and the United States they are slow, irregular, and uncertain. Six weeks is not an uncommon time for a letter to take between Buenos Ayres or Valparaiso and New York. The merchant who wishes to order American goods cannot know when his order will be received nor when it will be filled. The freight charges between the South American cities and American cities are generally and substantially higher than between the same cities and Europe; at many points the deliveries of freight are uncertain and its condition upon arrival doubtful. The passenger accommodations are such as to make a journey to the United States a trial to be endured and a journey to Europe a pleasure to be enjoyed. The best way to travel between the United States and both the southwest coast and the east coast of South America is to go by way of Europe, crossing the Atlantic twice. It is impossible that trade should prosper or intercourse increase or mutual knowledge grow to any great degree under such circumstances. The communication is worse now than it was twenty-five years ago. So long as it is left in the hands of our foreign competitors in business, we cannot reasonably look for any improvement. It is only reasonable to expect that European steamship lines shall be so managed as to promote European trade in South America, rather than to promote the trade of the United States in South America.

This woeful deficiency in the means to carry on and enlarge our South American trade is but a part of the general decline and feebleness of the American merchant marine, which has reduced us from carrying over ninety per cent of our export trade in our own ships to the carriage of nine per cent of that trade in our own ships and dependence upon foreign shipowners for the carriage of ninety-one per cent. The true remedy and the only remedy is the establishment of American lines of steamships between the United States and the great ports of South America, adequate to render fully as good service as is now afforded by the European lines between those ports and Europe. The substantial underlying fact was well stated in the resolution of this Trans-Mississippi Congress three years ago:

That every ship is a missionary of trade; that steamship lines work for their own countries just as railroad lines work for their terminal points, and that it is as absurd for the United States to depend upon foreign ships to distribute its products as it would be for a department store to depend upon the wagons of a competing house to deliver its goods.

How can this defect be remedied? The answer to this question must be found by ascertaining the cause of the decline of our merchant marine. Why is it that Americans have substantially retired from the foreign transport service? We are a nation of maritime traditions and facility; we are a nation of constructive capacity, competent to build ships; we are eminent, if not preeminent, in the construction of machinery; we have abundant capital seeking investment; we have courage and enterprise shrinking from no competition in any field which we choose to enter. Why, then, have we retired from this field in which we were once conspicuously successful?

I think the answer is twofold.

1. The higher wages and the greater cost of maintenance of American officers and crews make it impossible to compete on equal terms with foreign ships. The scale of living and the scale of pay of American sailors are fixed by the standard of wages and of living in the United States, and those are maintained at a high level by the protective tariff. The moment the American passes beyond the limits of his country and engages in ocean transportation, he comes into competition with the lower foreign scale of wages and of living. Mr. Joseph L. Bristow, in his report upon trade conditions affecting the Panama Railroad, dated June 14, 1905, gives in detail the cost of operating an American steamship with a tonnage of approximately thirty-five hundred tons as compared with the cost of operating a specified German steamship of the same tonnage, and the differences aggregate $15,315 per annum greater cost for the American steamship than for the German; that is $4.37 per ton. He gives also in detail the cost of maintaining another American steamship with a tonnage of approximately twenty-five hundred tons as compared with the cost of operating a specified British steamship of the same tonnage, and the differences aggregate $18,289.68 per annum greater cost for the American steamship than for the British; that is $7.31 per ton. It is manifest that if the German steamship were content with a profit of less than $15,000 per annum, and the British with a profit of less than $18,000 per annum, the American ships would have to go out of business.

2. The principal maritime nations of the world, anxious to develop their trade, to promote their shipbuilding industry, to have at hand transports and auxiliary cruisers in case of war, are fostering their steamship lines by the payment of subsidies. England is paying to her steamship lines between six and seven million dollars a year; it is estimated that since 1840 she has paid to them between two hundred and fifty and three hundred millions. The enormous development of her commerce, her preponderant share of the carrying trade of the world, and her shipyards crowded with construction orders from every part of the earth indicate the success of her policy. France is paying about eight million dollars a year; Italy and Japan, between three and four million each; Germany, upon the initiative of Bismarck, is building up her trade with wonderful rapidity by heavy subventions to her steamship lines and by giving special differential rates of carriage over her railroads for merchandise shipped by those lines. Spain, Norway, Austria-Hungary, Canada, all subsidize their own lines. It is estimated that about $28,000,000 a year are paid by our commercial competitors to their steamship lines.

Against these advantages of his competitor the American shipowner has to contend; and it is manifest that the subsidized ship can afford to carry freight at cost for a period long enough to drive him out of business.

We are living in a world not of natural competition, but of subsidized competition. State aid to steamship lines is as much a part of the commercial system of our day as state employment of consuls to promote business.

It will be observed that both of these disadvantages under which the American shipowner labors are artificial; they are created by governmental action—one by our own Government in raising the standard of wages and living, by the protective tariff; the other by foreign governments in paying subsidies to their ships for the promotion of their own trade. For the American shipowner it is not a contest of intelligence, skill, industry, and thrift against similar qualities in his competitor; it is a contest against his competitors and his competitors' governments and his own government also.

Plainly, these disadvantages created by governmental action can be neutralized only by governmental action, and should be neutralized by such action.

What action ought our Government to take for the accomplishment of this just purpose? Three kinds of action have been advocated.

1. A law providing for free ships—that is, permitting Americans to buy ships in other countries and bring them under the American flag. Plainly, this would not at all meet the difficulties which I have described. The only thing it would accomplish would be to overcome the excess in cost of building a ship in an American shipyard over the cost of building it in a foreign shipyard; but since all the materials which enter into an American ship are entirely relieved of duty, the difference in cost of construction is so slight as to be practically a negligible quantity, and to afford no substantial obstacle to the revival of American shipping. The expedient of free ships, therefore, would be merely to sacrifice our American shipbuilding industry, which ought to be revived and enlarged with American shipping, and to sacrifice it without receiving any substantial benefit. It is to be observed that Germany, France, and Italy all have attempted to build up their own shipping by adopting the policy of free ships, have failed in the experiment, have abandoned it, and have adopted in its place the policy of subsidy.

2. It has been proposed to establish a discriminating tariff duty in favor of goods imported in American ships—that is to say, to impose higher duties upon goods imported in foreign ships than are imposed on goods imported in American ships. We tried that once many years ago and abandoned it. In its place we have entered into treaties of commerce and navigation with the principal countries of the world, expressly agreeing that no such discrimination shall be made between their vessels and ours. To sweep away all those treaties and enter upon a war of commercial retaliation and reprisal for the sake of accomplishing indirectly what can be done directly should not be seriously considered.

3. There remains the third and obvious method: to neutralize the artificial disadvantages imposed upon American shipping through the action of our own government and foreign governments by an equivalent advantage in the form of a subsidy or subvention. In my opinion this is what should be done; it is the sensible and fair thing to do. It is what must be done if we would have a revival of our shipping and the desired development of our foreign trade. We cannot repeal the protective tariff; no political party dreams of repealing it; we do not wish to lower the standard of American living or American wages. We should give back to the shipowner what we take away from him for the purpose of maintaining that standard; and unless we do give it back we shall continue to go without ships. How can the expenditure of public money for the improvement of rivers and harbors to promote trade be justified upon any grounds which do not also sustain this proposal? Would any one reverse the policy that granted aid to the Pacific railroads, the pioneers of our enormous internal commerce, the agencies that built up the great traffic which has enabled half a dozen other roads to be built in later years without assistance? Such subventions would not be gifts. They would be at once compensation for injuries inflicted upon American shipping by American laws and the consideration for benefits received by the whole American people—not the shippers or the shipbuilders or the sailors alone, but by every manufacturer, every miner, every farmer, every merchant whose prosperity depends upon a market for his products.

The provision for such just compensation should be carefully shaped and directed so that it will go to individual advantage only so far as the individual is enabled by it to earn a reasonable profit by building up the business of the country.

A bill is now pending in Congress which contains such provisions; it has passed the Senate and is now before the House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries; it is known as Senate bill No. 529, Fifty-ninth Congress, First Session. It provides specifically that the Postmaster-General may pay to American steamships, of specified rates of speed, carrying mails upon a regular service, compensation not to exceed the following amounts: For a line from an Atlantic port to Brazil, monthly, $150,000 a year; for a line from an Atlantic port to Uruguay and Argentina, monthly, $187,500 a year; for a line from a Gulf port to Brazil, monthly, $137,500 a year; for a line from each of two Gulf ports and from New Orleans to Central America and the Isthmus of Panama, weekly, $75,000 a year; for a line from a Gulf port to Mexico, weekly, $50,000 a year; for a line from a Pacific coast port to Mexico, Central America, and the Isthmus of Panama, fortnightly, $120,000 a year. For these six regular lines a total of $720,000. The payments provided are no more than enough to give the American ships a fair living chance in the competition.

There are other wise and reasonable provisions in the bill relating to trade with the Orient, to tramp steamers, and to a naval reserve, but I am now concerned with the provisions for trade to the south. The hope of such a trade lies chiefly in the passage of that bill.

Postmaster-General Cortelyou, in his report for 1905, said:

Congress has authorized the Postmaster-General, by the act of 1891, to contract with the owners of American steamships for ocean mail service and has realized the impracticability of commanding suitable steamships in the interest of the postal service alone by requiring that such steamers shall be of a size, class, and equipment which will promote commerce and become available as auxiliary cruisers of the navy in case of need. The compensation allowed to such steamers is found to be wholly inadequate to secure the proposals contemplated; hence, advertisements from time to time have failed to develop any bids for much-needed service. This is especially true in regard to several of the countries of South America, with which we have cordial relations and which, for manifest reasons, should have direct mail connections with us. I refer to Brazil and countries south of it. Complaints of serious delay to mails for these countries have become frequent and emphatic, leading to the suggestion on the part of certain officials of the government that for the present and until more satisfactory direct communication can be established, important mails should be dispatched to South America by way of European ports and on European steamers, which would not only involve the United States in the payment of double transit rates to a foreign country for the dispatch of its mails to countries of our own hemisphere, but might seriously embarrass the government in the exchange of important official and diplomatic correspondence.

The fact that the government claims exclusive control of the transmission of letter mail throughout its own territory would seem to imply that it should secure and maintain the exclusive jurisdiction when necessary, of its mails on the high seas. The unprecedented expansion of trade and foreign commerce justifies prompt consideration of an adequate foreign mail service.

It is difficult to believe, but it is true, that out of this faulty ocean mail service the government of the United States is making a large profit. The actual cost to the government last year of the ocean mail service to foreign countries other than Canada and Mexico was $2,965,624.21, while the proceeds realized by the government from postage between the United States and foreign countries other than Canada and Mexico was $6,008,807.53, leaving the profit to the United States of $3,043,183.32; that is to say, under existing law the government of the United States, having assumed the monopoly of carrying the mails for the people of the country, is making a profit of $3,000,000 per annum by rendering cheap and inefficient service. Every dollar of that three millions is made at the expense of the commerce of the United States. What can be plainer than that the government ought to expend at least the profits that it gets from the ocean mail service in making the ocean mail service efficient. One quarter of those profits would establish all these lines which I have described between the United States and South and Central America, and give us, besides a good mail service, enlarged markets for the producers and merchants of the United States who pay the postage from which the profits come.[12]

In his last message to Congress, President Roosevelt said:

To the spread of our trade in peace and the defense of our flag in war a great and prosperous merchant marine is indispensable. We should have ships of our own and seamen of our own to convey our goods to neutral markets, and in case of need to reenforce our battle line. It cannot but be a source of regret and uneasiness to us that the lines of communication with our sister republics of South America should be chiefly under foreign control. It is not a good thing that American merchants and manufacturers should have to send their goods and letters to South America via Europe if they wish security and dispatch. Even on the Pacific, where our ships have held their own better than on the Atlantic, our merchant flag is now threatened through the liberal aid bestowed by other governments on their own steam lines. I ask your earnest consideration of the report with which the Merchant Marine Commission has followed its long and careful inquiry.

The bill now pending in the House is a bill framed upon the report of that Merchant Marine Commission. The question whether it shall become a law depends upon your Representatives in the House. You have the judgment of the Postmaster-General, you have the judgment of the Senate, you have the judgment of the President; if you agree with these judgments and wish the bill which embodies them to become a law, say so to your Representatives. Say it to them individually and directly, for it is your right to advise them and it will be their pleasure to hear from you what legislation the interests of their constituents demand.

The great body of Congressmen are always sincerely desirous to meet the just wishes of their constituents and to do what is for the public interest; but in this great country they are continually assailed by innumerable expressions of private opinion and by innumerable demands for the expenditure of public money; they come to discriminate very clearly between private opinion and public opinion, and between real public opinion and the manufactured appearance of public opinion; they know that when there is a real demand for any kind of legislation it will make itself known to them through a multitude of individual voices. Resolutions of commercial bodies frequently indicate nothing except that the proposer of the resolution has a positive opinion and that no one else has interest enough in the subject to oppose it. Such resolutions by themselves, therefore, have comparatively little effect; they are effective only when the support of individual expressions shows that they really represent a genuine and general opinion.

It is for you and the business men all over the country whom you represent to show to the Representatives in Congress that the producing and commercial interests of the country really desire a practical measure to enlarge the markets and increase the foreign trade of the United States, by enabling American shipping to overcome the disadvantages imposed upon it by foreign governments for the benefit of their trade, and by our government for the benefit of our home industry.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] There would be some modification of these figures if the cost of getting the mails to and from the exchange offices were charged against the account; but this is not separable from the general domestic cost and would not materially change the result.



SOUTH AMERICAN COMMERCE

ADDRESS AT THE NATIONAL CONVENTION FOR THE EXTENSION OF THE FOREIGN COMMERCE OF THE UNITED STATES, WASHINGTON, D. C., JANUARY 14, 1907

I thank you for your cordial greeting, and I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the very kind terms which you have used regarding myself. I have come here with pleasure, not to make a prepared address, or to attempt oratory, but to talk a few minutes about subjects of common interest to us all.

I wish first to express the satisfaction that I feel in the existence of this convention. The process of discussion, consideration, mutual information, and comparison of opinion among the people who are not in office, is the process that puts under the forms of representative government the reality of freedom and of a self-governing people. The discussion which takes place in such meetings as this, and which is stimulated by such meetings as this, in the club, in all the local associations and places where men meet throughout the country, is at once far removed from the secret and selfish devices of the lobbyist and from the stolid indifference which characterizes a people willing to be governed without themselves having a voice in government.

I congratulate you that you have come here to the nation's capital to discuss and consider subjects which are properly of national concern; that you have not come to ask the national government to do anything which you ought to do yourselves at home in your separate states, but to consider the exercise of the great commerce power of the nation, the power which from the beginning of our government has been fittingly placed in the hands of the national administration.

To my view we are advancing, and the whole world is advancing, in the opportunities and in the spirit and method which create opportunities for that kind of commerce which is profitable and beneficial to both parties the world over. Our relations continually grow more reasonable, more sensible and kindly with Europe and all the powers of Europe, with our vigorous and growing neighbor to the north, with our rapidly advancing and developing neighbors to the south, and with the nations that face us on the other side of the Pacific. Little occasions for controversy, little causes for irritation, little incidents of conflicting interests continually arise, as they do among friends and neighbors in the same town, but the general trend of international relations is a trend towards mutual respect, mutual consideration, and substantial good understanding.

Of course our relations to Europe, and our relations to the Orient, and our relations to Canada have long been much discussed and are worthy of discussion; but it seems to me that the subject which at this particular time opens before us with more of an appearance, and just appearance, of new opportunity than any other, is the subject of our relations to the Latin American nations to the south. I am not going to detain you by any extended discussion of that subject. I made a long—perhaps too long—speech about it before the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress at Kansas City a few weeks ago, and that has been printed in various forms and some of you, perhaps, have seen it or will see it. The substance is that just at the time when the United States has reached a point of development in its wonderful resources and accumulation of capital so that it is possible for us to turn our attention from the development of our own internal affairs to reach out into other lands for investment, for the fruits of profitable enterprise, for the expansion and extension of trade—just at that time the great and fertile and immeasurably rich countries of South America are emerging from the conditions of internal warfare, of continual revolution, of disturbed and unsafe property conditions, and are acquiring stability in government, safety for property, capacity to protect enterprise. So that we may look with certainty to an enormous increase of population and of wealth throughout the continent of South America, and we may look with certainty for an enormous increase in purchasing power as a consequence of that increase in population and wealth.

These two things coming together spread before us an opportunity for our trade and our enterprise surpassed by none anywhere in the world or at any time in our history.

It was with this view that last summer I spent three months, in response to the kind invitations of various Governments of South America, in visiting their capitals, in meeting their leading men, in becoming familiar with their conditions, and in trying to represent to them what I believe to be the real relation of respect and kindliness on the part of the people of the United States.

I wish you all could have seen with what genuine reciprocal friendship they accepted the message that I brought to them. We have long been allied to them by political sentiment. Now lies before us the opportunity—with their stable governments and protection for enterprise and property, and our increased capital—now lies before us the opportunity to be allied to them also by the bonds of personal intercourse and profitable trade.

This situation is accentuated by the fact that we are turning our attention to the south and engaging there in the great enterprise of constructing the Panama Canal. No one can tell what effect that will have upon the commerce of the world, but we do know that there never has been in history a case of a great change in the trade routes of the world which has not powerfully affected the rise and fall of nations, the development of commerce, and the development of civilization.

We, by the expenditure of a part of our recently acquired capital, are about to open a new trade route that will bring our Atlantic and Gulf ports into immediate, close intercourse with all the Pacific coasts of South and Central America, and which will bring our Pacific ports into immediate and close relation with all the countries about the Caribbean Sea and the eastern coast of South America. The combination of political sentiment which has long allied us with the Latin American countries, the opportunity which comes from their change of conditions and our increase of capital, and the effects that must necessarily follow the opening of the great trade route of the Panama Canal, all point to the development of American enterprise and American trade to the south.

Now, in considering that view of the future there are certain practical considerations that necessarily arise. How are we to adapt ourselves to this new condition? How are we to utilize this opportunity? One subject naturally presents itself, and that is the increase of means of communication through which our intercourse and our trade may be carried on. And that may be in two ways: one by the promotion of the railroad, long ago projected, and in constant course of development—the road that we speak of as the Pan American road. When we speak of the Pan American Railroad we are speaking of something of the future, and which exists today only in a great number of links, each of which has its separate name. They are being built, and being built with great rapidity. In Mexico, in Guatemala, in Bolivia, in Peru, in the Argentine, in other countries pieces of road are being built—many of them by American capital and American enterprise; some of them by capital coming from other countries—promoted by the strong desire of the people of these Latin American countries to break out from their isolation and to be brought into closer contact with the rest of the world. Those pieces are being built until now, when the work actually under contract is completed, there will be less than 4,000 miles remaining to be built to make a complete railroad which will unite the city of Washington with the city of Buenos Ayres in the Argentine.

One of the objects of the Rio conference last summer was to promote and further the interest of all American countries in the building of this road, and I am glad to believe that the action taken by that conference has had that effect. The line now running to the south is almost through Mexico—has almost reached the Guatemala line; and lines are being built in Guatemala to connect with that; and within the life of men now sitting in this room it will be possible for passengers and merchandise to travel by rail practically the entire length of both the North and South American continents.

The other method of communication is by steamships. We are lamentably deficient in that. A great many fine, swift, commodious lines of steamships run between the South American ports and Europe and very few and comparatively poor ships run between those ports and the ports of the United States. No American line runs south of the Caribbean Sea. Our mails are slow and uncertain. It is a matter of hardship for a passenger to go directly between the great South American ports and the great North American ports, while the mails run swiftly and certainly to and from Europe, and it is a pleasure for a passenger to go between one of those ports and the European ports. The Postmaster-General reports that the best way for him to get the despatches from my Department to our ministers in South America with certainty and swiftness is to send them to Europe and have them sent from there to South America. That condition of things ought not to continue if we can prevent it.

One great reason why it exists is, that American shipping is driven off the seas by two great obstacles interposed in its way by legislation. One is the legislation of foreign countries which has subsidized foreign shipping; the other is the legislation of our own country which by the protective tariff has raised the standard of living of all Americans—a most beneficent result—has raised the standard of living of all Americans so that American ships paying and feeding their officers and men according to the American standard cannot compete on even terms with foreign ships, the cost of whose officers and men is under the foreign standard.

If our Government will equalize these artificial disadvantages under which our vessels labor and will do for them enough to make up to them the disadvantage caused by raising the standard of living of the men they employ and to make up to them the disadvantage, coming from the fact that their foreign competitors are subsidized by foreign governments for the purpose of promoting foreign trade against American trade, we will have an American merchant marine and American ships to carry passengers and freight and mails between South and North American ports. A bill to provide that is pending in Congress now. It has passed the Senate. It is in the Committee of the House. I hope that all of you who agree with me in believing that our Government ought to be fair to the American merchant marine will say so out loud; say so to your neighbors; say so in such a way that American public opinion will realize that that kind of fair treatment is not a matter of the lobbyist, but is a matter of broad, American public policy.

There is one other subject—very important as a part of this general outlook and forecast of American policy looking towards the south. That is our special relation towards the countries, the smaller countries about the Caribbean, and particularly the West Indian countries, the islands that lie directly on the route between our ports and the Panama Canal. Some of them have had a pretty hard time. The conditions of their lives have been such that it has been difficult for them to maintain stable and orderly governments. They have been cursed, some of them, by frequent revolution. Poor Cuba, with her wonderful climate and richness of soil, has suffered. We have done the best we could to help her, and we mean to go on doing the best we can to help her.

I think the key of our attitude towards these countries can be put in three sentences:

First. We do not want to take them for ourselves.

Second. We do not want any foreign nations to take them for themselves.

Third. We want to help them.

Now, we can help them; help them govern themselves, help them to acquire capacity for self-government, help them along the road that Brazil and the Argentine and Chile and Peru and a number of other South American countries have travelled—up out of the discord and turmoil of continual revolution into a general public sense of justice and determination to maintain order.

There is a good deal of talk in the newspapers about the annexation of Cuba. Never! so long as the people of Cuba do not themselves give up the effort to govern themselves. Our efforts should be towards helping them to be self-governing. That is what we are trying to do now and what we mean to try to do.

So with Santo Domingo. Poor Santo Domingo! With her phenomenal richness of soil, her people ought to be among the richest and happiest on earth; but the island has been the scene of almost continued revolution and bloodshed. Her politics are purely personal, and have been a continual struggle of this and that and the other man to secure ascendancy and power. She has come to us for help. She is burdened with an enormous amount of debt, much of it fraudulent, much of it created by revolutionary governments in the bush or by regular governments in distress, needing a little money to save themselves from being overthrown, in desperate circumstances, ready to make any sort of bargain, to pay any sort of interest, to promise anything to get immediate relief. Many debts have been created in that way and are hanging over her, foreign debts as to which she has pledged the resources of this custom-house to the creditors of this country, and of that custom-house to the creditors of that country, and of another custom-house to the creditors of the third country. She is unable to pay interest; unable to make any settlement because she could not give anything to carry out any settlement. With this enormous debt hanging over her like a pall, and with this record of continual revolution and strife depriving her of credit, depriving her of courage and of hope, she came to us to help her. And we are trying to arrange so that she may have the little—very little—moral support of the United States which is necessary to settle her debts, to insure the honest collection of her revenue and its application to carry out the settlement, and that she may be able to stand and walk alone. Now, we are trying to make an arrangement of that kind by a treaty; trying to perform the office of friendship and discharge the duty of good neighborhood towards Santo Domingo. I hope you wall take a little interest in this unfortunate neighbor and try to create a little interest in her on the part of our people; for our treatment of Santo Domingo, like our treatment of Cuba, is but a part of a great policy which shall in the years to come determine the relations of this vast country, with its wealth and enterprise, to the millions of men and women and the countless millions of trade and treasure of the great world to the south.

Our treatment of Santo Domingo, like our treatment of Cuba, is but a part of the working out of the policy of peace and righteousness as the basis for wealth and prosperity, in place of the policy of force, of plunder, of conquest, as the means of acquiring wealth.

The question is frequently asked, Should not a series of reciprocity treaties be adopted for the purpose of promoting our relations with these southern countries? That is not so important in regard to the South American countries as it might seem at first, because so greatly do the productions of North and South America vary that most of the products of South America already come into the United States free, as they are not competing with our products. Between eighty and ninety per cent of all our imports from South America are now admitted to the United States free of duty. The great country of Brazil—over ninety per cent of all our imports from there come in free of duty. So that the field to be covered by reciprocity treaties with those countries is comparatively narrow, and that question is not a question of first importance in regard to our relations with them. There are, however, some countries in regard to whose products I should like very much to see an opportunity to make reciprocity treaties.

But this opens up a broader subject. I do not think that the subject of reciprocity can now be adequately considered or discussed without going into that broader subject, and that is the whole form of our tariff laws.

In my judgment the United States must come to a maximum and minimum tariff.

A single straight-out tariff was all very well in the world of single straight-out tariffs; but we have passed on, during the course of years, into a world for the most part of maximum and minimum tariffs, and with our single-rate tariff we are left with very little opportunity to reciprocate good treatment from other countries in their tariffs and very little opportunity to defend ourselves against bad treatment. Of course this is the side that I look at; this is my point of view. I may be wrong, but this is the way it looks to me—that any country in the world can put up its tariff against our products as compared with similar products from another country without suffering for it so far as our present laws are concerned. We go on taking that country's products at just the same rates as we did before. Any country in the world knows that if it puts down our products in its tariff it will get no benefit from it because we will have to charge it the same rates that we charge the country that treats us the worst. The maximum and minimum tariff would be free from one serious difficulty that arises in the negotiation of reciprocity treaties. That difficulty is this: When you make a reciprocity treaty with Country A, agreeing to receive certain products from that country at less than our tariff schedules, you are immediately confronted by Country B, which is equally friendly with us, treats us as well or perhaps better, and to which we cannot with good grace refuse the same. Then comes Country C with the same demand, and D and E. The result is that with that fair and equal treatment which we wish to accord to all countries there is a tendency, by means of successive reciprocity treaties, to change the whole form of the tariff, and to change it without that full and general discussion, without that deliberate consideration of the effect upon all American interests, which there ought to be in dealing with this complicated and interwoven business of tariff rates. Now, a maximum and minimum tariff would enable us to deal equally with all countries, as we are friendly, and ought to be, with all countries. It would be free from invidious discrimination; it would enable us to protect ourselves against those that use us badly, to reward those that use us well; and it would proceed upon a general and intelligent consideration of all interests.

There is but one other subject that I want to speak to you about, one to which the convention that met here last year contributed very much, and that is representation abroad under the American consular system.

The American consular service, I had the honor to say here last year, has been an exceptionally uneven one. There have been many very good men in it, and there have been many men in it who were simply passing the remainder of their days in dignified retirement. That came along naturally enough when we did not have much foreign trade and we were not pushing much for foreign trade; but the strain on that machinery has of late years become rather great. We are pushing out in all the world for trade, and our people want information. Some of them need it—all want it—and they need to be well represented among the people of the other countries where they want to do business. And wherever there is a weak spot there is trouble and dissatisfaction. So that with changing times a change in method has become necessary.

Congress passed a law at the last session, the material parts of which had been hanging in Congress for over thirteen years, introduced years ago by men with foresight a little in advance of the practical requirements of the time. Their ideas did not receive endorsement and practical effect until the last session. The Congress in that law classified the consulates in different grades. They provided an inspection service, so that now we have inspectors who have been selected from among the most able and efficient consuls and whose business it is to see what consuls are doing and whether they are doing anything, so that now the State Department will not be the last place where information is received about the misdeeds of a consul.

They made provision that all fees should be turned into the Treasury and the sole compensation of consuls should be their salary, thus closing the door to temptation.

They did in that act a number of very good things for the consular service. There was a clause in the bill originally which provided that all appointments to the higher positions in the service should be by promotion from the lower positions, and that all appointments to the lower positions should be upon examination. That was stricken out because it was considered that Congress had no constitutional right to limit the President in that way. There is a good deal to be said for that view; but it is equally true of appointments to the army and to the navy, yet there have stood upon the statute books of the United States for many years provisions for the filling of higher grades in the army and navy by promotion, and for the appointment to the lower grades only upon a satisfactory examination. And those provisions, while doubtless the President could break over them with the consent of the Senate, nevertheless have constituted a kind of agreement between the President and the Senate, having the appointing power, and Congress which creates the offices and appropriates the money to pay them, as to how the offices are to be filled. I would like to see that kind of an agreement applied to the consular service, so that the method of selection could be settled, and permanently settled, as it has been in the army and the navy.

Immediately after the passage of the consular reorganization act with that clause omitted, the President made an order, known as the Order of June 27, 1906, in which he provided that all the upper grades should be filled by promotion and that the lower grades should be filled only upon examination, and prescribed the method of the examination, and also provided that as between candidates of equal merit the appointments should be made so as to equalize them throughout the United States, as they ought to be equalized so far as it is practicable, and also that the appointments should be made without regard to the political affiliations of the candidates.

Under that order we will have the opportunity, in filling all of the important consulates, to get the best possible evidence as to whether a man is fit for the important place by scanning the work of the young men in the lower places—better than a dozen examinations and better than ten thousand letters of recommendation.

Under that plan we will put in the young men who come along for the lower grades of places and bar out the lazy fellows that want to fall back on a living they are not energetic enough to get for themselves. And when we have seen how the young fellows work in the lower places we will pick out the men here and there who are born consuls and put them into the higher places.

Now, that is the law for this Administration. It is good until March 4, 1909. What will become of it then no one can tell. I should be very glad if the public opinion of the country would say to Congress: Agree to that in such a way that it will be permanent for all time.

Gentlemen, I thank you for your attention and again renew my expression of satisfaction at the intelligent public service you have rendered by leaving your homes and your occupations to come here and do the work of self-governing American citizens.



INDIVIDUAL EFFORT IN TRADE EXPANSION

ADDRESS AT THE PAN AMERICAN COMMERCIAL CONFERENCE WASHINGTON, D.C., FEBRUARY 17, 1911

Governments may hold doors open all over the world, but if there is no one to go through them it is an empty form, and people get tired of holding doors open as an empty form. The claims of a government to consideration soon come to be regarded as pretentious unless there are really substantial interests behind the claims. No government, and least of all our government, least of all a democratic republic, can make commerce to go through open doors, to avail itself of fair and equal treatment, and to give substance and reality to the theoretical increase of amity and friendship between nations. The people of the country must do it themselves, and they must do it by individual enterprise; they must do it by turning their attention toward the opportunities that are afforded by friendly governments, by availing themselves of those opportunities, and by carrying on their business through availing themselves of them. But while it is a matter of individual enterprise, while that must be the basis of all development and progress, all advance, all extension, nevertheless, there must be something besides the individual enterprise. The great principle of organization which is revolutionizing the business and the social enterprise of the world, applies here as it applies elsewhere. No single business can make very much advance except as all other business of the country makes advance. No one can go into a new field very far in advance of others; and the way for each man to make his business successful in a new field is to do his share as a member of the community, as a citizen of his country, as one of the great business organizations of his country, to advance the trade, the commerce, the influence of his country as a whole, in the field into which he wishes to enter. A recognition of the dependence of each man's business for its prosperity and progress upon the prosperity and progress of the business of all is necessary in order that there be real progress.

Now, there are governments which undertake actively to lead in this direction, and they are governments which are making enormous progress. Germany, a country regarding which Mr. White has just spoken in such apt and appropriate terms, leads, and to a considerable extent in various directions, it requires the combination of her manufacturers, her producers, and her commercial concerns. Japan practically does also. There is solidarity brought about by the wonderful organization of that combination; so that it is one for all, and all for one, under government leadership. We cannot do it here. Our country cannot take that kind of lead. Our people do not conceive of that as a function of government, and as far as the activities of our government are concerned, they are largely engaged in breaking up organizations which do increase the industrial efficiency of our country. I do not want to be understood as criticising that. It is all right to break them up when they are taking too great a portion of the field for themselves. It is all right and important to break them up when they are monopolizing the means of subsistence that should be spread throughout the great body of the people. But we must recognize the fact that when our government does enforce the law—a just law, wise law—against our great commercial and our great industrial organizations, it reduces the industrial efficiency of the country. There is only one way to counteract that effect, not violating any law, but securing through organization the united action, and concentrated action of great numbers of Americans who have a common purpose, substituting that kind of organization for the organizations which it is the duty of our government to break up, because they are contrary to our laws.

I am much gratified by this meeting and by the association of so many practical men, business men, who, by uniting, are really creating a new force in this direction, upon which I am sure we ought to move.

Let me say one thing about the practical direction of your efforts. The so-called Ship Subsidy bill has been reduced now to nothing but the proposition that the Government should be authorized to pay out of the profits of the ocean mail service adequate compensation to procure the carriage of the mails by American steamers to South America; that is what it has come down to. It passed the Senate, as Mr. White has said, only by the casting of the vote of the Vice-President, and I do not know what will be done with it in the House. I am afraid in these last days that it may be lost in the shuffle.

There are two reasons why that perfectly simple and reasonable proposition failed to carry a great majority of the Senate, and fails—if it does fail—to be certain of passing the House. One is because there is a difference between the people who want to have the thing accomplished about the way in which it should be accomplished. That is one of the most common things in the world. A certain set of men who want to have a revival of our merchant marine, say the way to do it is to pay subsidies, the way to do it is to equalize the differences between the cost of maintaining and running an American ship and the cost of maintaining and running a foreign ship, and to equal the subsidies paid by practically all the other great commercial nations to their steamship lines. Another set of men who equally desire to restore our merchant marine, say that is not the right way; the right way is to throw open the doors and enable our people to buy their ships abroad. Still others say the true way is to authorize our ships to employ crews and officers of the low-priced men of the world, relieve them from the obligations imposed upon them in respect of the employment of Americans, people of the United States, who will require the high standard of living that has been produced in the United States by the operation of our protective system, relieve them from the obligations which are imposed upon them by our laws in regard to the requirements of the crew, the air space, the food, and the treatment that a crew is to receive, so that it will be cheaper to run an American ship. Now, between these different sets of people, having different ideas of the way to accomplish a thing, nothing is done; and that situation which exists so frequently regarding so many measures will exist forever, unless there is put behind the proposition a force that gives it a momentum to carry it over such obstacles. Put force enough behind it so that the gentlemen in the Senate and House of Representatives understand that they are going to be held responsible by the American people, going to be held responsible for not doing the thing, for not finding out some way to do it, and they will come to this sensible conclusion very shortly, and that is:

"We will settle the controversy about the way it should be done by trying one thing first, and if that does not work, we will try the other."

Another difficulty about this measure is that there is a difference in appreciation of its importance in different parts of the country. Down here on the seaboard I think most people do appreciate it. You appreciate it; all the people who are concerned, or wish to be concerned, in South American trade, or the trade of the Orient, appreciate it; but you go back into the interior of the country, into the great agricultural states of the Northwest, and the farther Middle West, states along in the valley of the Mississippi and the Missouri, and the people there are thinking about other things, and they have a natural dislike for subsidies, and when told that a measure means giving somebody else something for nothing, they express and impress upon their representatives a great dislike for it. The way for us to get something done is not for us who are in favor of it to talk to each other about it. We can do that indefinitely without getting much farther. The way is to take steps to bring to the minds of the people of the valley of the Missouri and the Northwest, and those great agricultural states the importance to them, as well as to us, of having our merchant marine restored.

I noticed the other day that the people of San Francisco were justifying their confidence in themselves by procuring all their business correspondents in the state of New York to write letters to me in favor of having the great "Exposition and Celebration of the Opening of the Canal in San Francisco"; and these letters came in by the thousand from my constituents. They became so tiresome that I came very near voting against the project as a measure of revenge; but it showed the San Francisco people understood where to go in order to preach their doctrine. They did not talk to each other on the Pacific coast about it. They came to New York and got their business correspondents interested in it, and got them to talk to their representatives about it. That is what you want to do in Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa and the Dakotas—you want, through all the relations that you have, and by every means in your power, to represent to the people of those great interior states, who have but little direct relation with the ocean commerce of the world, the real conditions under which we exist, and the importance to the whole country of doing something; and if they do come to appreciate the importance to the country of doing what you are talking about, then they will be for it, for they are sincere, patriotic Americans.

There is but one thing more I want to say regarding the relations which underlie the success of such an enterprise as you are now engaged in. Of course, you have had a great amount of advice, and a great many speakers have told you a great many things you know, and I am going to put myself in line with the distinguished gentlemen who have preceded me by doing the same thing. At the basis of all intercourse, commercial as well as social, necessarily lies a genuine good understanding. That cannot be simulated; the pretense of it is in general, in the long run, futile. People trade with those with whom they have sympathy; they tend to trade with their friends. The basis of all permanent commercial intercourse is benefit to both parties—not that cut-throat relation which may exist between enemies, where one is trying to do the other—and a relation founded upon mutual respect, good understanding, sympathy, and friendship; and the way to reach the condition which is thus essential is by personal intercourse and acquaintance between the men of Anglo-Saxon or German or Norse, or whatever race they may be, peopling the United States, and the men of the Latin American race peopling the countries of the South.

This is something, my friends, in which our people are very deficient. So long have we been separated from the other nations of the earth that one of our faults is a failure to appreciate the qualities of the people who are unlike us. I have often had occasion to quote something that Bret Harte said about the people of a frontier western camp, to whom came a stranger who was regarded by them as having "the defective moral quality of being a foreigner." Difference from us does not involve inferiority to us. It may involve our inferiority to somebody else. The sooner our business men open their minds to the idea that the peoples of other countries, different races and speaking different languages and with different customs and laws, are quite our equals, worthy of our respect, worthy of our esteem, regard, and affection, the sooner we shall reach a basis on which we can advance our commerce all over the world. A little more modesty is a good thing for us occasionally; a little appreciation of the good qualities of others—and let me tell you that nowhere on earth are there more noble, admirable and lovable qualities to be found among men than you will find among the people of Latin America.

Gentlemen, I hope for you the effectiveness of a great and permanent organization, and that you may advance the time when through more perfect knowledge, through broader sympathies and a better understanding, ties of commerce may bind together all our countries, advance our wealth and prosperity and well-being with equal step as they advance the wealth and prosperity and well-being of all those with whom we deal, and increase the tie of that perfect understanding of other peoples which is the condition of unbroken and permanent peace.



WELCOME TO THE LATIN AMERICAN PUBLICISTS TAKING PART IN THE SECOND PAN AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS

WASHINGTON, DECEMBER 30, 1915

Mr. Root's interest in and knowledge of the American republics is not of yesterday, nor does it date from his secretaryship of state. It antedated and has survived official position. In 1893 it inspired his address of welcome to the officers of the foreign and United States squadrons which escorted the Spanish caravels to New York. It colors with a touch of personal feeling his address on the Codification of International Law, delivered before the joint sessions of the American Society and the American Institute of International Law, and is beautifully expressed in the following brief passage from his remarks at the dinner of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to the delegates of the Second Pan American Scientific Congress.

Gentlemen of the Pan American Scientific Congress, and our guests: I cannot refrain, in opening the postprandial exercises of this evening, from expressing the great satisfaction which I feel in taking part in the transformation of the serious and sometimes dry exercises of our meetings into this social function. It is especially agreeable to me because I cherish such rich and precious memories of hospitality received from our South American guests.

I have said many times to my own countrymen, without ever provoking resentment on their part, that I wish they could all learn a lesson in courtesy and the generosity of friendship from our brothers in South America. I should have felt that my own participation in this congress was imperfect and lacked an important element, if I could not have met you, my old friends of South America, in this gathering, which excludes the serious and the scientific, and seeks to cultivate and satisfy only the generous sentiments of friendship.

Although his address on the Codification of International Law is contained in Mr. Root's Addresses on International Subjects, it reinforces the views expressed by him, as secretary of state, in the address before the Third International American Conference, and its concluding paragraphs are here reprinted, as a fitting close to the volume of addresses dealing with the relations of the United States to our sister republics of the South.

The presence here of Dr. Maurtua, whom it is a great pleasure for me to hail as a colleague in the Faculty of Political and Administrative Science of the University of San Marcos, at Lima, and of the distinguished Ambassador from Brazil, my old friend from Rio de Janeiro, lead me to say something which follows naturally from my reflections regarding the interests of the smaller nations. It is now nearly ten years ago when your people, gentlemen, and the other peoples of South America, were good enough to give serious and respectful consideration to a message that it was my fortune to take from this great and powerful republic of North America to the other American nations. I wish to say to you, gentlemen, and to all my Latin American friends here in this congress, that everything that I said in behalf of the Government of the United States at Rio de Janeiro in 1906 is true now as it was true then. There has been no departure from the standard of feeling and of policy which was declared then in behalf of the American people. On the contrary, there is throughout the people of this country a fuller realization of the duty and the morality and the high policy of that standard.

Of course, in every country there are individuals who depart from the general opinion and general conviction, both in their views and in their conduct; but the great, the overwhelming body of the American people love liberty, not in the restricted sense of desiring it for themselves alone, but in the broader sense of desiring it for all mankind. The great body of the people of these United States love justice, not merely as they demand it for themselves, but in being willing to render it to others. We believe in the independence and the dignity of nations, and while we are great, we estimate our greatness as one of the least of our possessions, and we hold the smallest state, be it upon an island of the Caribbean or anywhere in Central or South America, as our equal in dignity, in the right to respect and in the right to the treatment of an equal. We believe that nobility of spirit, that high ideals, that capacity for sacrifice are nobler than material wealth. We know that these can be found in the little state as well as in the big one. In our respect for you who are small, and for you who are great, there can be no element of condescension or patronage, for that would do violence to our own conception of the dignity of independent sovereignty. We desire no benefits which are not the benefits rendered by honorable equals to each other. We seek no control that we are unwilling to concede to others, and so long as the spirit of American freedom shall continue, it will range us side by side with you, great and small, in the maintenance of the rights of nations, the rights which exist as against us and as against all the rest of the world.

With that spirit we hail your presence here to cooperate with those of us who are interested in the international law; we hail the formation of the new American Institute of International Law and the personal friendships that are being formed day by day between the men of the North and the men of the South, all to the end that we may unite in such clear and definite declaration of the principles of right conduct among nations, and in such steadfast and honorable support of those principles as shall command the respect of mankind and insure their enforcement.



INDEX



INDEX

Adams, John Quincy, American president, xiii, 21, 76, 79, 90, 94, 251.

Ahumada, Mexican governor, speech of, 208 f.

Alaska, 248.

Alliances, traditional policy of the United States concerning, 86.

Altruism, ideal of, 244.

Amazon, river, 46.

America, services of, to the world's civilization, 169 f.

American colony, the, at Mexico city, 177-181.

American Institute of International Law, the, 291, 293.

Andes, the, 27, 74, 101, 248.

Apollonius Molon, Greek orator, anecdote of, 188.

Arbitration, international, 170; practical difficulties in, 142 f.

Argentina, 73-102, 235-238, 248, 249, 264, 272, 275.

Arias, Ricardo, speech of, 145-148.

Armenians, the, 26.

Arthur, Chester Alan, American president, 252.

Artigas, Jose, dictator of Uruguay (1811-1820), 64.

Atheneum, the, at Montevideo, Uruguay, 65-71.

Austria, 26, 257, 261.

Bahia, Brazil, 48-54, 258.

Bahia Blanca, 258.

Banks, importance of, in securing South American trade, 255.

Barbosa, Ruy, Brazilian senator, 32; speeches of, 19-28, 52 ff.

Barrett, John, director of the Pan American Union, 153, 232.

Barrios, Senator, speech of, 130 f.

Batlle y Ordonez, Jose, president of Uruguay, speech of, 60-63.

Bayard, Thomas Francis, secretary of state, 21.

Belgium, 248.

Bismarck, Otto von, German statesman, 261.

Blaine, James Gillespie, American statesman, 5, 21, 42, 91, 232, 252 f.

Blancos, Uruguayan faction, 64, 65.

Blending of races, effect of, 238.

Bolivar, Simon, Venezuelan general, 129, 154.

Bolivia, 75, 248, 249, 272.

Borglum, Gutzon, sculptor, 232.

Brazil, 3-54, 166, 219, 239-244, 248, 249, 257, 264, 265, 275, 277.

Bristow, Joseph Little, United States senator, 260.

Buchanan, William Insco, American diplomat, 147, 214.

Buenos Ayres, xiii, 73-102, 257, 258, 273.

Buffalo Exposition, the, 172 f.

Bureau of American Republics, establishment of the, 91.

Byron, Lord, 236; characterization of Washington by, 134.

Calero, Manuel, speech of, 168-174.

Calhoun, John Caldwell, American statesman, 21, 251.

Callao, 115, 258.

Camargo, Theodomiro de, speech of, 35 f.

Canada, 110 f., 257, 261, 265.

Canning, George, English statesman, 78, 79.

Capital, opportunities for, in South America, 256 f.; investment of American capital in Mexico, 201.

Caribbean Sea, the, 55, 159, 258, 272, 273, 274, 292.

Carlos, king of Portugal, 219.

Carnegie, Andrew, contributes towards the construction of the Building of the Pan American Union, 223, 228, 231; letter of, 226 f.; letter of Mr. Root to, 225 f.; resolutions concerning, 227.

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the, 291.

Cartagena, Colombia, 153 ff., 258.

Casasus, Joaquin D., speech of, 184-188.

Castlereagh, Viscount, British premier, 77, 78.

Central America, 50, 117, 264, 266, 272, 292.

Central American Peace Conference, the, xiv, 213-218.

Chamber of Commerce, the, of New York, 239-244.

Chamber of Deputies, the, in Mexico, 168-177.

Charleston, the, 55, 166.

Chile, 103-112, 248, 249, 275.

China, 36.

Cicero, anecdote of, 188.

Civilization, the process of, 233.

Clay, Henry, American statesman, xiii, 5, 21, 28, 75, 76, 90, 94, 251.

Cleveland, Grover, American president, 252.

Coffee, importance of, to Brazil, 41.

Colombia, 152-155, 160, 166, 248.

Colorados, Uruguayan faction, 64, 65.

Columbia School of Mines, the, 257.

Columbus, Christopher, 57.

Commerce and Labor, Department of, 254.

Communication, importance of means of, 257-267.

Consular service, the, 279 ff.

Conti, sculptor, 232.

Coquimbo, 258.

Cornejo, Mariano, Peruvian envoy, speech of, 11 f.

Corral, Ramon, Mexican vice-president, speeches of, 192 f., 203 f.

Cortelyou, George Bruce, postmaster-general, 265.

Cortes, Hernan, Spanish soldier, 56.

Costa Rica, 213.

Credit system, the, in South America, 255.

Creel, Enrique C., Mexican diplomat, 214.

Cret, Paul Phillippe, architect, 231.

Cuba, 35, 160, 275, 276, 277.

Cuellar, Samuel Garcia, Mexican officer, 162.

Dakotas, the, 287.

Darcy, Dr. James, speech of, 16 f.

Declaration of Independence, the, 170.

Declaration of the rights of man, the, 57, 64.

Dehesa, Teodoro A., Mexican governor, speech of, 206.

Demosthenes, 187.

Diaz, Porfirio, Mexican president, 158, 161, 167 f., 172, 181, 192, 194, 202, 203, 206, 207, 210; speech of, 162 ff.

Dickens, Charles, observations of, on America, 179.

Drago, Luis M., speech of, xiii, 93-97.

Drago doctrine, the, 95 f.

Ecuador, 248.

Elguera, Federico, speech of, 127 ff.

El Senor Root en Mexico, 158.

England, 64, 246, 247, 248, 257, 261.

Europe, 4, 48, 51, 57, 59, 60, 61, 246, 251, 256, 257, 258, 259, 270.

Evarts, William Maxwell, secretary of state, 21.

Everett, Edward, American statesman, 21; note of, 121 f.

Federalist, The, 21, 24.

Figueroa, Alcorta, J., president of Argentina, speech of, 81-84.

Florida, 75.

Fodere, Pradier, Peruvian publicist, 135.

Forsyth, John, secretary of state, 21.

France, 57, 64, 100, 190, 221, 247, 257, 261, 262.

Franklin, Benjamin, American philosopher and statesman, 29.

Free ships, policy of, 262.

Frelinghuysen, Frederick Theodore, secretary of state, 252.

Gama, Brazilian commercial teacher, speech of, 36 ff.

Garnett, American congressman, 78.

Garrison, William Lloyd, American abolitionist, 23.

Germans, in Brazil, 249 f.

Germany, 57, 100, 190, 247, 257, 261, 262.

Gettysburg, battle of, 178.

Goncalvez, Sigismundo, governor of Pernambuco, 47.

Government, functions of, 132.

Grant, Ulysses Simpson, American general and president, 198, 199.

Great Britain, 57, 251, 257.

Greece, 26.

Grey, Lord, 110.

Guadalajara, Mexico, 208 ff.

Guatemala, 213, 272, 273.

Guimaraes, Paula, Brazilian deputy, speech of, 30 f.

Hague Conference, Second, in 1907, 3, 171, 233.

Hague Tribunal of Arbitration, the, 158.

Hamilton, Alexander, American statesman, 21, 83.

Harrison, Benjamin, American president, 252.

Harte, Francis Bret, American author, 288.

Hay, John, secretary of state, and author, 21.

Hicks, John, American diplomat, 108.

Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel, Mexican priest and revolutionist, 176, 206, 207.

Holy Alliance, the, 77, 251.

Honduras, 213.

Huneeus, Antonio, Chilean minister, address of, 104-108.

Hungary, 26.

Iberian Peninsula, the, 51, 240.

Ibsen, Henrik, Norwegian dramatic poet, 16.

Indians, 7, 47; passing of their civilization in Mexico, 209.

International Bureau of the American Republics, the, 223.

Iowa, 287.

Isolation, disadvantages of, 233.

Italy, 247, 257, 261, 262.

Jalisco, Mexican state, 208.

Japan, 26, 261.

Jay, John, American statesman, 83.

Jefferson, Thomas, American president, xiii, 5, 21, 23, 29, 79, 94, 251.

Jews, the, 26, 48.

Juarez, Benito, Mexican president, 176.

Kansas, 287.

Kansas City, 255, 270.

Kelsey, Albert, architect, 231.

Knox, Philander Chase, secretary of state, 232.

Laboulaye, Edouard de, French historian, 134.

Lafayette, Marquis de, French general and statesman, 28, 54, 237.

Lancaster, house of, 64.

Landa y Escandon, Guillermo de, speech of, 165 ff.

Laredo, 210.

Lima, 113-144, 257.

Limantour, Jose, Mexican minister, 161; speech of, 195 ff.

Lincoln, Abraham, American president, 94, 174, 178, 198.

Lobos Islands, controversy concerning, 121 f., 126.

London, 26, 76 f.

Lota, 258.

McKinley, William, American president, 36, 246.

Madison, James, American president, 21, 23, 74, 79, 83, 94, 251.

Magoon, Charles E., provisional governor of Cuba, 147 f.

Mann, Horace, American educator, 101.

Marcelino de Souza, Jose, governor of Bahia, speech of, 48 ff.

Marcy, William Learned, American statesman, 21.

Marshall, John, American jurist, xiii, 21, 83.

Martinez, Mucio P., governor of Puebla, speech of, 204 f.

Massachusetts, 248.

Massachusetts Bay, 51.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the, 257.

Material benefits, importance of, 170.

Maurtua, Peruvian savant, 291.

Mediterranean, the, 26.

Mendez, Luis, speech of, 181-184.

Merchant Marine Commission, the, 266.

Mexican Academy of Legislation and Jurisprudence, the, 181-191.

Mexican Country Club, the, 177-181.

Mexico, 50, 152-210, 215, 264, 265, 272, 273.

Missouri, 248.

Mitre, Emilio, speech of, 73-81.

Mob, rule of the, 141.

Mogy-Guasu, the, river in Brazil, 41.

Monroe, James, American president, xiii, 5, 14, 21, 56, 58, 74, 78, 79 f., 84, 99, 172, 251, 252.

Monroe Doctrine, the, xiii, 50, 56, 58, 61, 74, 79 f., 117, 172 f., 243.

Montague, Andrew Jackson, American delegate, speech of, 13.

Montenegro, Augusto, governor of Para, speech of, 45 f.

Montevideo, 55-71, 258.

Mueller, Lauro, Brazilian minister, 239-244.

Mukden, battle of, 171.

Nabuco, Joaquim, the elder, 47.

Nabuco, Joaquim, Brazilian ambassador, 17, 47, 48, 219, 234; speech of, 3-6.

National Convention for the Extension of the Foreign Commerce of the United States, address of Mr. Root at the, 269-281.

Nazareth de Arujo, Galaor, speech of, 36.

Nebraska, 287.

New Orleans, 264.

New York, city, 26, 115, 166, 255, 258.

New York, state, 287.

Nicaragua, 213.

Norcross, Orlando Whitney, American builder and contractor, 232.

North American Society of the River Plata, the, 87 f.

Norway, 257, 261.

Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, 161 f.

Orient, the, 264, 270, 286.

Orizaba, Mexico, 206 f.

Oyapoc, river in South America, 27.

Pacific railroads, the, 263.

Palacio Monroe, xiii, 14.

Panama, 145-151, 166.

Panama, Isthmus of, 258, 264.

Panama Canal, the, 111, 115, 149, 159, 271, 275.

Panama Railroad, the, 260.

Panama Railroad Company, the, 258.

Pan American Commercial Conference, address of Mr. Root at, 283-293.

Pan American Conference, First, at Washington, xii, 225, 229, 252 f., 291.

Pan American Conference, Second, at Mexico, xi, 225, 229, 253.

Pan American Conference, Third, at Rio de Janeiro, xii, xiii, 3-14, 173, 224 f., 229, 253.

Pan American Railroad, the, 272 f.

Pan American Scientific Congress, Second, address of Mr. Root at, 291 ff.

Pan American Union, the, 91, 223-234.

Para, Brazil, 44, 45 f., 258.

Paranahyba, the, river in Brazil, 41.

Pardo, Manuel, Peruvian statesman, 135.

Pardo y Barreda, Jose, president of Peru, speech of, 113 f.

Paulistas, 39, 40.

Peaceable invasion, 189.

Pernambuco, Brazil, 47 f., 54, 258.

Peru, 11, 12, 113-144, 248, 249, 257, 272, 275.

Philadelphia, 29.

Pious Fund, the, 158.

Piracy, 26.

Pizarro, Francisco, Spanish soldier, 56, 257.

Plutarch, 188.

Political science, chief contribution of the United States to, 141.

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 26.

Portugal, 221.

Prado y Ugarteche, Javier, speech of, 116-123.

Prussia, 100.

Public opinion, rule of, 220 f.

Puebla, Mexico, 204 f.

Punta Arenas, 258.

Purdie, Francis B., speech of, 86-89.

Puritan element, the, in America, 56.

Randolph, Edmund, American statesman, 21.

Recife, see Pernambuco.

Religious toleration, 170.

Reyes, Rafael, Colombian president, 154, 155.

Rezende, Doctor, speech of, 41 f.

Rhodes, 188.

Ribeyro, Ramon, speech of, 136.

Riesco, Jerman, president of Chile, speech of, 103.

Rincon Gallardo, Pedro, Mexican officer, 161; speech of, 161 f.

Rio Branco, Baron do, Brazilian minister, 18; speeches of, 13, 14.

Rio de Janeiro, xii, xiii, 3-35, 40, 55, 58, 63, 66, 67, 68, 95, 107, 136, 257, 258.

Rio de la Plata, 27, 56, 74.

Rio Grande, the, 161, 196.

Rivadavia, Bernardino, Argentine statesman, 78.

Rochambeau, Comte de, French general, 237.

Romeu, Jose, Uruguayan minister, speech of, 55-58.

Roosevelt, Theodore, American president, 5, 13, 14, 28, 30, 58, 65, 84, 97, 108, 114, 115, 117, 135, 158, 163, 164, 166, 171, 172 f., 185, 193, 198, 205, 206, 208, 257.

Roses, Wars of the, 64.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, Swiss-French philosopher, 236.

Rush, Richard, American diplomat, xiii, 76 f., 84, 251.

Russia, 26.

St. Louis, Missouri, 13, 255.

Salisbury, Marquis of, 142.

Salvador, 213.

San Antonio, Texas, 158, 159 ff.

San Francisco, 106, 287.

San Marcos, University of, 133-144, 291.

San Martin, Jose de, Argentine general, 101.

San Martin, Zorrilla de, speech of, 65-69.

Santiago, Chile, 103-112.

Santo Domingo, unhappy condition of, 160, 275 ff.

Santos, Brazil, 41-45, 258.

Sao Paulo, Brazil, 35-40, 54.

Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino, Argentine president, 100 f.

Scandinavia, 16.

Schurz, Carl, American statesman, 171.

Sentiment, power of, 70.

Seward, William Henry, American statesman, 5, 21, 164, 198, 199.

Smith, William, botanist, 232.

Solis, Juan Diaz de, Spanish navigator, 56.

South America, Mr. Root's visit to, in 1906, xi-xiv, 3-155; Mr. Root's addresses in the United States on topics relating to South America, 235-293.

Spain, 26, 57, 75, 77, 235, 247, 257, 261.

Steamships, cost of operating, 260.

Subsidies, maritime, 261-267, 274, 285 ff.

Sweden, 221.

Taft, William Howard, American president, 148, 232.

Taney, Roger Brooke, American jurist, 83.

Tariff, protective, 274; maximum and minimum, 277 ff.; discriminating tariff duties, 262 f.

Texas, 161.

Thompson, David E., American diplomat, 192-197.

Tiete, the, river in Brazil, 41.

Tocopilla, 258.

Trade expansion, individual effort in, 283-293.

Trade routes, importance of, 111, 115, 149.

Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress, address of Mr. Root before, 245-267.

Tucuman, Congress of, 75.

Tuileries, burning of the, 64.

Turkey, 26.

Uruguay, 55-71, 249, 264.

Uruguay, river, 46.

Valparaiso, 103, 112, 258.

Vasquez-Cobo, Colombian minister, address of, 153 f.

Venezuela, 74.

Vera Cruz, Mexican state, 206 f.

Villaran, Luis F., speech of, 133 ff.

Washington, city, 273.

Washington, George, American president, xiii, 21, 23, 28, 83, 94, 101, 129, 134, 198, 206, 207, 233 f., 237.

Webster, Daniel, American statesman, 5, 21.

West Indian countries, difficulties of, 274-277.

White, Andrew Dickson, American diplomat, 284, 285.

Wirt, William, American statesman, 251.

Wotton, Sir Henry, statement of, 245.

Yale University, 182, 187.

York, house of, 64.

PRINTED AT THE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A.

- Transcriber's Note: Typographical errors corrected in the text: Page iv Sigismunco changed to Sigismundo Page vi Oovernor changed to Governor Page vii Expantion changed to Expansion Page 61 it changed to in Page 69 where-ever changed to wherever Page 70 Zorilla changed to Zorrilla Page 112 Valpariso changed to Valparaiso Page 214 establishmen changed to establishment Page 301 Rivadivia changed to Rivadavia -

THE END