Dr. Butler:
It is a great pleasure to meet with you this morning and say a word of greeting on the occasion of the rededication of this church, coming as it does almost simultaneously with the entry of your pastor into his eightieth year.
From the standpoint from which I am obliged so continually to look at matters, there is a peculiar function to be played by the great Lutheran Church in the United States of America. This is a Church which had its rise to power in, and, until it emigrated to this side of the water, had always had its fullest development in the two great races of Northern and Northern Middle Europe—the German and the Scandinavian. The Lutheran Church came to the territory which is now the United States very shortly after the first permanent settlements were made within our limits; for when the earliest settlers came to dwell around the mouth of the Delaware they brought the Lutheran worship with them, and so with the earliest German settlers who came to Pennsylvania and afterward to New York and the mountainous region in the western part of Virginia and the States south of it. From that day to this the history of the growth in population of this Nation has consisted largely, in some respects mainly, of the arrival of successive waves of newcomersto our shores; and the prime duty of those already in the land is to see that their own progress and development are shared by these newcomers. It is a serious and dangerous thing for any man to tear loose from the soil, from the religion in which he and his forbears have taken root, and to be transplanted into a new land. He should receive all possible aid in the new land; and the aid can be tendered him most effectively by those who can appeal to him on the ground of spiritual kinship. Therefore the Lutheran Church can do most in helping upward and onward so many of the newcomers to our shores; and it seems to me that it should be, I am tempted to say, wellnigh the prime duty of this Church to see that the immigrant, especially the immigrant of Lutheran faith from the Old World, whether he comes from Scandinavia or Germany, or whether he belonged to one of the Lutheran countries of Finland, or Hungary, or Austria, may be not suffered to drift off with no friendly hand extended to him out of all the church communion, away from all the influences that tend toward safeguarding and uplifting him, and that he find ready at hand in this country those eager to bring him into fellowship with the existing bodies. The Lutheran Church in this country is of very great power now numerically, and through the intelligence and thrift of its members, but it will grow steadily to even greater power. It is destined to be one of the two or three greatest and most important national churches in the UnitedStates; one of the two or three churches most distinctively American, most distinctively among the forces that are to tell for making this great country even greater in the future. Therefore a peculiar load of responsibility rests upon the members of this Church. It is an important thing for the people of this Nation to remember their rights, but it is an even more important thing for them to remember their duties. In the last analysis the work of statesmen and soldiers, the work of the public men, shall go for nothing if it is not based upon the spirit of Christianity working in the millions of homes throughout this country, so that there may be that social, that spiritual, that moral foundation without which no country can ever rise to permanent greatness. For material well-being, material prosperity, success in arts, in letters, great industrial triumphs, all of them and all of the structures raised thereon will be as evanescent as a dream if they do not rest on “the righteousness that exalteth a nation.”
Let me congratulate you and congratulate all of us that we live in a land and at a time when we accept it as natural that there should be an interdenominational service of thanksgiving, such a ceremony as is to take place this afternoon, in which the pastors of other churches join to congratulate themselves and you upon the rebuilding of this church. One of the constant problems of life is to try to cultivate breadth without shallowness, just as we want to try to cultivate depth without narrowness. It seems to me that thanksgiving withthe combined earnestness, the liberty, of the great body of the pastors who, for our good fortune, are in the various churches of this country can be accepted as in a peculiar measure typifying the American spirit in religious thought; that for our good fortune those men have been able to combine fervor in doing the Lord’s work with charity toward their brethren who do it with certain differences in the non-essentials. The forces of evil are strong and mighty in this century and in this country as they are in other countries, as they have been in all the past centuries; and the people who sincerely wish to do the Lord’s work will find ample opportunity for all their labor in fighting the common enemy and in assuming toward their fellows of a different confession an attitude of generous rivalry in the effort to see how the most good can be done to our people as a whole.
I thank you for having given me the chance to speak to you this morning, to say a word of greeting to you and to wish you Godspeed with all my heart.
Captain Brownson, Members of the Graduating Class, Governor Warfield, and to the other Midshipmen and their friends and kinsmen here gathered together:
I fail to see how any good American can be other than a better American when he comes here to Annapolis and sees the Academy as it is and as it soon will be, thanks to the wise munificence of Congress; and I am not surprised that you who graduate from this institution should make the kind of men that as a rule you do make afterward; should show the qualities of courage, of lofty fidelity to duty, of devotion to the flag, and of farsighted preparedness to meet possible future emergencies; should show the traits which I think, Captain Brownson, I can say without flattery, characterize the service to which you belong. I am not surprised that you should show those traits, for I should be heartily ashamed of you if you did not. More than any other people in this country, with the sole exception of those in the sister service who have had your advantages, you owe a peculiar fealty to the Nation which has trained you, which has given you a career in after life, a career in which, if you do your duty, you are sure to lead honorable lives, and to deserve well of the Republic; and a career in which thereis always the chance that you may spring into one of those few places to be occupied by the men of the Nation who win deathless fame for themselves by the way in which they serve the Nation in the hour of the Nation’s need. On the one hand we have the right to expect a peculiar measure of self-sacrificing service from you. On the other hand we have the right to expect from the representatives of the people a peculiar care for your interests. It is well that every public man should feel under a particular obligation to see to the welfare of the Army and the Navy. Governor Warfield, if you will pardon the personal allusion, I want to thank you for the way in which you have made evident your feeling toward this institution, for the reception you gave just the other night to these very men about to graduate. It is well that they should understand that because of the position they hold the Governor of the great State in which the institution is situated recognizes their possibilities of usefulness to the country, the obligations due them, and the obligations we have a right to feel that they will recognize to the whole Nation in return.
There are a good many baseless alarms which some worthy people feel from time to time in this country, and which other less worthy people affect to feel, but of all foolish crimes, of all baseless figments of a disturbed imagination, the cry of militarism in this country is the most foolish and the most baseless. Not only there does not exist now, but there never has existed in recent times, any nationso wholly free as this is from any danger of excessive militarism, so wholly free from any danger of an undue growth of the military spirit. The danger is now, will be, and always has been, the exact reverse; the danger is lest we do not take sufficient thought in preparing the men and material which will make our attitude in claiming to be a great nation respectable. I would be sorry to see us content to assume the position of a nation unwilling and unable to play a great part in the world, unable to hold its own in the shock of arms, should it be ever necessary, which I most earnestly hope that in the lifetime of no man here present it will be necessary. Should it ever be necessary, and I hope it will not be, to appeal to arms, I should be sorry to see us take the position of avowed weakness, take the position that we did not intend to rank ourselves among the great powers of the earth. I should be sorry to see that; but I would a great deal rather see that than see us insist upon taking such a position and refuse to provide the means which would make such a position other than a sham. If this country believes in the Monroe Doctrine; if this country intends to hold the Philippines; if it intends, besides building, to police the Isthmian Canal; if it intends to do its duty on the side of civilization, on the side of law and order, and that duty can be done only by the just man armed; if this country intends to do that, then it must see to it that it is able to make good, if the necessity arises to make good. It is idle to talk of our faith inthe Monroe Doctrine if we are not able to make that faith evident. It is foolish to remain permanently in the Philippines unless we provide a base of military action for our fleets and army should it be necessary to defend the Philippines in time of war. It is foolish to assert our position as entitled to the respect of other great nations unless we are willing to build the ships, to build the guns, and to train the men who are to man the ships and handle the guns if the need arises. I should be ashamed to see this Nation play the part of a weakling. But I would rather see it play that part frankly than see it boast what it was and then so handle itself that if any one questioned the boast we should have to retreat from the position we assumed because we lacked the power to make our words good.
I earnestly hope that our foreign policy shall be continued absolutely without regard to change of Administration, to change of party, along the lines of treating every foreign nation with all possible respect, of avoiding all provocation for war, for trouble of any kind, of taking every step possible to minimize the chance of trouble occurring; and at the same time of taking every step possible to see to it that if by any chance trouble does occur we do not come out second best.
Just at this moment, to illustrate what I mean, we have negotiated certain arbitration treaties with the great foreign Powers. I most earnestly hope that those arbitration treaties will become part of the supreme law of the land. Every friend of peacewill join heartily in seeing that those arbitration treaties do become part of the supreme law of the land. By adopting them we will have taken a step, not a very long step, but undoubtedly a step in the direction of minimizing the chance for any trouble that might result in war; we will have in measurable degree provided for a method of substituting international disputes other than that of war as regards certain subjects, and as regards the particular nations with whom those treaties are negotiated. We can test the sincerity of those people devoted to peace largely by seeing whether this people does in effective fashion desire to have those treaties ratified, to have those treaties adopted. I have proceeded upon the assumption that this Nation was sincere when it said that it desired peace, that all proper steps to provide against the likelihood of war ought to be taken; and these arbitration treaties represent precisely those steps. But the adoption of those treaties by themselves would not bring peace. We are a good many years short of the millennium yet; and for the present and the immediate future we can rest assured that the word of the man who is suspected of desiring peace because he is afraid of war will count for but little. What we desire is to have it evident that this Nation seeks peace, not because it is afraid, but because it believes in the eternal and immutable laws of justice and of right living. Therefore, hand in hand with the negotiation of treaties of that character, hand in hand with the effort to put our foreign relations with every nationon a better footing, must go the steady upbuilding of the Army and the Navy; above all the Navy, so that our national honor may be sure of an adequate safeguard should our national honor ever be actively menaced.
I want to say a word to you boys here in particular. I am about to have the good fortune to present a sword to the best gunner and certain medals also for gunnery. The sword is given by the class of ’71, given annually, so as to put a premium upon markmanship; and, Captain Brownson, I would like through you to thank the members of that class for the patriotic service they have done in making such a gift.
The one thing that you graduates here, and all of the others in this school, must remember, is that you ought to bend your entire energies to fitting yourselves as you can only be fitted by the most careful training in advance for the possible supreme day when upon your success or your failure will depend not only whether your own lives will be crowned with triumph or blasted with ruin, but whether the Nation will or will not write a page of glory or a page of shame on her history. There is not one of you who is not derelict in his duty to the whole Nation if he fails to prepare himself with all the strength that in him lies to do his duty should the occasion arise; and one of your great duties is to see that shots hit. The result is going to largely depend upon whether you or your adversary hits. I expect you to be brave. I rather take that forgranted. It is not that you are to be commended much for bravery. You would be condemned forever if you lacked it. If you lacked it in the highest form, courage physical and moral, the courage that will assume responsibility, no less than the courage that without a thought will face death, that we have a right to expect from every one of you, and I say that you are less to be commended for having it than to be condemned for failure to have it. But, in addition, you have got to prepare yourselves in advance. Every naval action that has taken place within the last twenty years in which our own ships have been engaged or in which any foreign ships have been engaged has shown, as a rule, that the defeated party has suffered not from lack of courage, but because it could not make the best use of its weapons, or had not been given the right weapons. Occasionally, of course, if the victor happened to be matched against people who did not show courage, the courage counted. But I want every one here to proceed upon the assumption that any foe he may meet will have the courage. Of course, you have got to show the highest degree of courage yourself or you will be beaten anyhow, and you will deserve to be; but in addition to that you must prepare yourselves by careful training so that you may make the best possible use of the delicate and formidable mechanism of a modern warship. The reason that you are trained here, the reason that you are put through this academy, the reason that your training goes on in the service is because without that trainingno man can hope to do the work that is set before you to do. It is equally true that the training can not be given you only from without unless you actively and earnestly seek to get the best possible benefit from it yourselves; that the best teachers, the best superiors can not supply wholly or more than in very small part the lack of that which is within you. No other body of men of your age in our country owes so much to the United States, to the flag that symbolizes this Nation, as you do. No other body of young men has on the average as great a chance as each of you has to lead a life of honor to himself and of benefit to the country at large. Deep willbeyour shame if you fail to rise level to your opportunities and duties, and great will be the honor that I know you will win, because I know that, judging you by those who have gone before you in the service, you will rise level to your opportunities and keep untarnished the proud fame of the American officer.
Mr. President; and Gentlemen of the Union League:
This club was founded to uphold the hands of Abraham Lincoln when he stood as the great leader in the struggle for union and liberty. We have a right, therefore, to appeal to this club for aid in every governmental or social effort made along the lines marked out by Lincoln. The great President taught many lessons which we who come after him should learn. Among the most important of these was the lesson that for weal or woe we are indissolubly bound together, in whatever part of the country we live, whatever our social standing, whatever our wealth or our poverty, whatever form of mental or physical activity our life work may assume. Lincoln, who was, more emphatically than any other President we have ever had, the President of the plain people, was yet as far removed as Washington himself from the slightest taint of demagogy. With his usual farsighted clearness of vision he saw that in a republic such as ours permanent prosperity of any part of our people was conditioned upon the prosperity of all; and that on the other hand any effort to raise the general level of happiness by striking at the well-being of a portion of the people could not be but in the end disastrous to all.
The principles which Lincoln applied to the solution of the problems of his day are those which we must apply if we expect successfully to solve the different problems of our own day—problems which are so largely industrial. Exactly as it is impossible to develop a high morality unless we have as a foundation those qualities which give at least a certain minimum of material prosperity, so it is impossible permanently to keep material prosperity unless there is back of it a basis of right living and right thinking. In the last analysis, of course, the dominant factor in obtaining this good conduct must be the individual character of the average citizen. If there is not this condition of individual character in the average citizenship of the country, all effort to supply its place by the wisest legislation and administration will in the end prove futile. But given this average of individual character, then wise laws and the honest administration of the laws can do much to supplement it. If either the business world or the world of labor loses its head, then it has lost something which can not be made good by any governmental effort. Our faith in the future of the Republic is firm, because we believe that on the whole and in the long run our people think clearly and act rightly.
Unquestionably, however, the great development of industrialism means that there must be an increase in the supervision exercised by the Government over business enterprises. This supervision should not take the form of violent and ill-advisedinterference; and assuredly there is danger lest it take such form if the business leaders of the business community confine themselves to trying to thwart the effort at regulation instead of guiding it aright. Such men as the members of this club should lead in the effort to secure proper supervision and regulation of corporate activity by the Government, not only because it is for the interest of the community as a whole that there should be this supervision and regulation, but because in the long run it will be in the interest above all of the very people who often betray alarm and anger when the proposition is first made.
Neither this people nor any other free people will permanently tolerate the use of the vast power conferred by vast wealth, and especially by wealth in its corporate form, without lodging somewhere in the Government the still higher power of seeing that this power, in addition to being used in the interest of the individual or individuals possessing it, is also used for and not against the interests of the people as a whole. Our peculiar form of government, a Government in which the Nation is supreme throughout the Union in certain respects, while each of nearly half a hundred States is supreme in its part of the Union in certain other respects, renders the task of dealing with these conditions especially difficult. No finally satisfactory result can be expected from merely State action. The action must come through the Federal Government. The business of the country is now carriedon in a way of which the founders of our Constitution could by no possibility have had any idea.
All great business concerns are engaged in interstate commerce, and it was beyond question the intention of the founders of our Government that interstate commerce in all its branches and aspects should be under national and not State control. If the courts decide that this intention was not carried out and made effective in the Constitution as it now stands, then in the end the Constitution, if not construed differently, will have to be amended so that the original undoubted intention may be made effective. But, of course, a constitutional amendment is only to be used as a last resort, if every effort of legislation and administration shall have been proved inadequate.
Meanwhile the men in public life and the men who direct the great business interests of the country should work not in antagonism but in harmony toward this given end. In entering a field where the progress must of necessity be so largely experimental it is essential that the effort to make progress should be tentative and cautious. We must grow by evolution, not by revolution. There must be no hurry, but there must also be no halt; and those who are anxious that there should be no sudden and violent changes must remember that precisely these sudden and violent changes will be rendered likely if we refuse to make the needed changes in cautious and moderate manner.
At the present moment the greatest need is foran increase in the power of the National Government to keep the great highways of commerce open alike to all on reasonable and equitable terms. Less than a century ago these highways were still, as they had been since the dawn of history, either waterways, natural or artificial, or else ordinary roads for wheel vehicles drawn by animal power. The railroad, which was utterly unknown when our Government was formed and when the great principles of our jurisprudence were laid down, has now become almost everywhere the most important, and, in many large regions, the only form of highway for commerce. The man who controls its use can not be permitted to control it in his own interest alone.
It is not only just, but it is in the interest of the public, that this man should receive the amplest payment for the masterful business capacity which enables him to benefit himself while benefiting the public; but in return he must himself recognize his duty to the public. He will not and can not do this if our laws are so defective that in the sharp competition of the business world the conscientious man is put at a disadvantage by his less scrupulous fellows. It is in the interest of the conscientious and public-spirited railway man that there should be such governmental supervision of the railway traffic of the country as to require from his less scrupulous competitors, and from unscrupulous big shippers as well, that heed to the public welfare which he himself would willingly give, and whichis of vital consequence to the small shipper. Every important railroad is engaged in interstate commerce. Therefore, this control over the railroads must come through the National Government.
The control must be exercised by some governmental tribunal, and it must be real and effective. Doubtless there will be risk that occasionally, if an unfit President is elected, this control will be abused; but this is only another way of saying that any adequate governmental power, from the power of taxation down, can and will be abused if the wrong men get control of it.
The details must rest with the lawmakers of the two Houses of Congress; but about the principle there can be no doubt. Hasty or vindictive action would merely work damage; but in temperate, resolute fashion, there must be lodged in some tribunal the power over rates, and especially over rebates—whether secured by means of private cars, of private tracks, in the form of damages, or commissions, or in any other manner—which will protect alike the railroad and the shipper, and put the big shipper and the little shipper on an equal footing. Doubtless no law would accomplish all that enthusiasts hope; there is always disappointment over results of such a law among the oversanguine; but very real and marked good has come from the legislation and administration of the last few years; and now, as part of a coherent plan, it is entirely possible, and, indeed, necessary to enact an additional law which will mean further progress alongthe same lines of definite achievement in the direction of securing fair dealing as between man and man.
In some such body as the Interstate Commerce Commission there must be lodged in effective shape the power to see that every shipper who uses the railroads and every man who owns or manages a railroad shall on the one hand be given justice and on the other hand be required to do justice. Justice—so far as it is humanly possible to give and to get justice—is the foundation of our Government. We are not trying to strike down the rich man; on the contrary, we will not tolerate any attack upon his rights. We are not trying to give an improper advantage to the poor man because he is poor, to the man of small means because he has not larger means; but we are striving to see that the man of small means has exactly as good a chance, so far as we can obtain it for him, as the man of larger means; that there shall be equality of opportunity for the one as for the other.
We do not intend that this Republic shall ever fail as those republics of olden times failed, in which there finally came to be a government by classes, which resulted either in the poor plundering the rich or in the rich exploiting and in one form or another enslaving the poor; for either event means the destruction of free institutions and of individual liberty. Ours is not a Government which recognizes classes. It is based on the recognition of the individual. We are not for the poorman as such, nor for the rich man as such. We are for every man, rich or poor, provided he acts justly and fairly by his fellows, and if he so acts the Government must do all it can to see that inasmuch as he does no wrong, so he shall suffer no wrong.
Mr. President, and you, my Fellow-Members of the Republican Club, and you, my Fellow-Guests of the Republican Club:
In his second inaugural, in a speech which will be read as long as the memory of this Nation endures, Abraham Lincoln closed by saying:
“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; ... to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”
“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; ... to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”
Immediately after his re-election he had already spoken thus:
“The strife of the election is but human nature practically applied to the facts of the case. What has occurred in this case must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In anyfuture great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged.... May not all having a common interest reunite in a common effort to (serve) our common country? For my own part, I have striven and shall strive to avoid placing any obstacle in the way. So long as I have been here I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man’s bosom. While I am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a re-election, and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God for having directed my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their own good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed or pained by the result.“May I ask those who have not differed with me to join with me in this same spirit toward those who have?”
“The strife of the election is but human nature practically applied to the facts of the case. What has occurred in this case must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In anyfuture great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged.... May not all having a common interest reunite in a common effort to (serve) our common country? For my own part, I have striven and shall strive to avoid placing any obstacle in the way. So long as I have been here I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man’s bosom. While I am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a re-election, and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God for having directed my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their own good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed or pained by the result.
“May I ask those who have not differed with me to join with me in this same spirit toward those who have?”
This is the spirit in which mighty Lincoln sought to bind up the Nation’s wounds when its soul was yet seething with fierce hatreds, with wrath, with rancor, with all the evil and dreadful passions provoked by civil war. Surely this is the spirit which all Americans should show now, when there is so little excuse for malice or rancor or hatred, when there is so little of vital consequence to divide brother from brother.
Lincoln, himself a man of Southern birth, didnot hesitate to appeal to the sword when he became satisfied that in no other way could the Union be saved, for high though he put peace he put righteousness still higher. He warred for the Union; he warred to free the slave; and when he warred he warred in earnest, for it is a sign of weakness to be half-hearted when blows must be struck. But he felt only love, a love as deep as the tenderness of his great and sad heart, for all his countrymen alike in the North and in the South, and he longed above everything for the day when they should once more be knit together in the unbreakable bonds of eternal friendship.
We of to-day, in dealing with all our fellow-citizens, white or colored, North or South, should strive to show just the qualities that Lincoln showed: His steadfastness in striving after the right, and his infinite patience and forbearance with those who saw that right less clearly than he did; his earnest endeavor to do what was best, and yet his readiness to accept the best that was practicable when the ideal best was unattainable; his unceasing effort to cure what was evil, coupled with his refusal to make a bad situation worse by any ill-judged or ill-timed effort to make it better.
The great Civil War in which Lincoln towered as the loftiest figure left us not only a reunited country, but a country which has the proud right to claim as its own glory won alike by those who wore the blue and by those who wore the gray, by those who followed Grant and by those who followed Lee; forboth fought with equal bravery and with equal sincerity of conviction, each striving for the light as it was given him to see the light; though it is now clear to all that the triumph of the cause of freedom and of the Union was essential to the welfare of mankind. We are now one people, a people with failings which we must not blink, but a people with great qualities in which we have the right to feel just pride.
All good Americans who dwell in the North must, because they are good Americans, feel the most earnest friendship for their fellow-countrymen who dwell in the South, a friendship all the greater because it is in the South that we find in its most acute phase one of the gravest problems before our people: the problem of so dealing with the man of one color as to secure him the rights that no one would grudge him if he were of another color. To solve this problem it is, of course, necessary to educate him to perform the duties a failure to perform which will render him a curse to himself and to all around him.
Most certainly all clear-sighted and generous men in the North appreciate the difficulty and perplexity of this problem, sympathize with the South in the embarrassment of conditions for which she is not alone responsible, feel an honest wish to help her where help is practicable, and have the heartiest respect for those brave and earnest men of the South who, in the face of fearful difficulties, are doing all that men can do for the betterment alike of whiteand of black. The attitude of the North toward the negro is far from what it should be and there is need that the North also should act in good faith upon the principle of giving to each man what is justly due him, of treating him on his worth as a man, granting him no special favors, but denying him no proper opportunity for labor and the reward of labor. But the peculiar circumstances of the South render the problem there far greater and far more acute.
Neither I nor any other man can say that any given way of approaching that problem will present in our time even an approximately perfect solution, but we can safely say that there can never be such solution at all unless we approach it with the effort to do fair and equal justice among all men; and to demand from them in return just and fair treatment for others. Our effort should be to secure to each man, whatever his color, equality of opportunity, equality of treatment before the law. As a people striving to shape our actions in accordance with the great law of righteousness we can not afford to take part in or be indifferent to the oppression or maltreatment of any man who, against crushing disadvantages, has by his own industry, energy, self-respect, and perseverance struggled upward to a position which would entitle him to the respect of his fellows, if only his skin were of a different hue.
Every generous impulse in us revolts at the thought of thrusting down instead of helping upsuch a man. To deny any man the fair treatment granted to others no better than he is to commit a wrong upon him—a wrong sure to react in the long run upon those guilty of such denial. The only safe principle upon which Americans can act is that of “all men up,” not that of “some men down.” If in any community the level of intelligence, morality, and thrift among the colored men can be raised, it is, humanly speaking, sure that the same level among the whites will be raised to an even higher degree; and it is no less sure that the debasement of the blacks will in the end carry with it an attendant debasement of the whites.
The problem is so to adjust the relations between two races of different ethnic type that the rights of neither be abridged nor jeoparded; that the backward race be trained so that it may enter into the possession of true freedom, while the forward race is enabled to preserve unharmed the high civilization wrought out by its forefathers. The working out of this problem must necessarily be slow; it is not possible in offhand fashion to obtain or to confer the priceless boons of freedom, industrial efficiency, political capacity, and domestic morality. Nor is it only necessary to train the colored man; it is quite as necessary to train the white man, for on his shoulders rests a wellnigh unparalleled sociological responsibility. It is a problem demanding the best thought, the utmost patience, the most earnest effort, the broadest charity, of the statesman, the student, the philanthropist; of the leadersof thought in every department of our national life. The Church can be a most important factor in solving it aright. But above all else we need for its successful solution the sober, kindly, steadfast, unselfish performance of duty by the average plain citizen in his everyday dealings with his fellows.
The ideal of elemental justice meted out to every man is the ideal we should keep ever before us. It will be many a long day before we attain to it, and unless we show not only devotion to it, but also wisdom and self-restraint in the exhibition of that devotion, we shall defer the time for its realization still further. In striving to attain to so much of it as concerns dealing with men of different colors, we must remember two things.
In the first place, it is true of the colored man, as it is true of the white man, that in the long run his fate must depend far more upon his own effort than upon the efforts of any outside friend. Every vicious, venal, or ignorant colored man is an even greater foe to his own race than to the community as a whole. The colored man’s self-respect entitles him to do that share in the political work of the country which is warranted by his individual ability and integrity and the position he has won for himself. But the prime requisite of the race is moral and industrial uplifting.
Laziness and shiftlessness, these, and above all, vice and criminality of every kind, are evils more potent for harm to the black race than all acts of oppression of white men put together. The coloredman who fails to condemn crime in another colored man, who fails to co-operate in all lawful ways in bringing colored criminals to justice, is the worst enemy of his own people, as well as an enemy to all the people. Law-abiding black men should, for the sake of their race, be foremost in relentless and unceasing warfare against law-breaking black men. If the standards of private morality and industrial efficiency can be raised high enough among the black race, then its future on this continent is secure. The stability and purity of the home is vital to the welfare of the black race, as it is to the welfare of every race.
In the next place the white man who, if only he is willing, can help the colored man more than all other white men put together, is the white man who is his neighbor, North or South. Each of us must do his whole duty without flinching, and if that duty is national it must be done in accordance with the principles above laid down. But in endeavoring each to be his brother’s keeper it is wise to remember that each can normally do most for the brother who is his immediate neighbor. If we are sincere friends of the negro let us each in his own locality show it by his action therein, and let us each show it also by upholding the hands of the white man, in whatever locality, who is striving to do justice to the poor and the helpless, to be a shield to those whose need for such a shield is great.
The heartiest acknowledgments are due to the ministers, the judges and law officers, the grandjuries, the public men, and the great daily newspapers in the South, who have recently done such effective work in leading the crusade against lynching in the South; and I am glad to say that during the last three months the returns, as far as they can be gathered, show a smaller number of lynchings than for any other three months during the last twenty years. Let us uphold in every way the hands of the men who have led in this work, who are striving to do all their work in this spirit. I am about to quote from the address of the Right Reverend Robert Strange, Bishop Coadjutor of North Carolina, as given in the “Southern Churchman” of October 8, 1904.
The bishop first enters an emphatic plea against any social intermingling of the races; a question which must, of course, be left to the people of each community to settle for themselves, as in such a matter no one community—and indeed no one individual—can dictate to any other; always provided that in each locality men keep in mind the fact that there must be no confusing of civil privileges with social intercourse. Civil law can not regulate social practices. Society, as such, is a law unto itself, and will always regulate its own practices and habits. Full recognition of the fundamental fact that all men should stand on an equal footing, as regards civil privileges, in no way interferes with recognition of the further fact that all reflecting men of both races are united in feeling that race purity must be maintained. The bishop continues:
“What should the white men of the South do for the negro? They must give him a free hand, a fair field, and a cordial Godspeed, the two races working together for their mutual benefit and for the development of our common country. He must have liberty, equal opportunity to make his living, to earn his bread, to build his home. He must have justice, equal rights, and protection before the law. He must have the same political privileges; the suffrage should be based on character and intelligence for white and black alike. He must have the same public advantages of education; the public schools are for all the people, whatever their color or condition. The white men of the South should give hearty and respectful consideration to the exceptional men of the negro race, to those who have the character, the ability and the desire to be lawyers, physicians, teachers, preachers, leaders of thought and conduct among their own men and women. We should give them cheer and opportunity to gratify every laudable ambition, and to seek every innocent satisfaction among their own people. Finally, the best white men of the South should have frequent conferences with the best colored men, where, in frank, earnest, and sympathetic discussion they might understand each other better, smooth difficulties, and so guide and encourage the weaker race.”
“What should the white men of the South do for the negro? They must give him a free hand, a fair field, and a cordial Godspeed, the two races working together for their mutual benefit and for the development of our common country. He must have liberty, equal opportunity to make his living, to earn his bread, to build his home. He must have justice, equal rights, and protection before the law. He must have the same political privileges; the suffrage should be based on character and intelligence for white and black alike. He must have the same public advantages of education; the public schools are for all the people, whatever their color or condition. The white men of the South should give hearty and respectful consideration to the exceptional men of the negro race, to those who have the character, the ability and the desire to be lawyers, physicians, teachers, preachers, leaders of thought and conduct among their own men and women. We should give them cheer and opportunity to gratify every laudable ambition, and to seek every innocent satisfaction among their own people. Finally, the best white men of the South should have frequent conferences with the best colored men, where, in frank, earnest, and sympathetic discussion they might understand each other better, smooth difficulties, and so guide and encourage the weaker race.”
Surely we can all of us join in expressing our substantial agreement with the principles thus laiddown by this North Carolina bishop, this representative of the Christian thought of the South.
I am speaking on the occasion of the celebration of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, and to men who count it their peculiar privilege that they have the right to hold Lincoln’s memory dear, and the duty to strive to work along the lines that he laid down. We can pay most fitting homage to his memory by doing the tasks allotted to us in the spirit in which he did infinitely greater and more terrible tasks allotted to him.
Let us be steadfast for the right; but let us err on the side of generosity rather than on the side of vindictiveness toward those who differ from us as to the method of attaining the right. Let us never forget our duty to help in uplifting the lowly, to shield from wrong the humble; and let us likewise act in a spirit of the broadest and frankest generosity toward all our brothers, all our fellow-countrymen; in a spirit proceeding not from weakness but from strength, a spirit which takes no more account of locality than it does of class or of creed; a spirit which is resolutely bent on seeing that the Union which Washington founded and which Lincoln saved from destruction shall grow nobler and greater throughout the ages.
I believe in this country with all my heart and soul. I believe that our people will in the end rise level to every need, will in the end triumph over every difficulty that rises before them. I could not have such confident faith in the destiny of thismighty people if I had it merely as regards one portion of that people. Throughout our land things on the whole have grown better and not worse, and this is as true of one part of the country as it is of another. I believe in the Southerner as I believe in the Northerner. I claim the right to feel pride in his great qualities and in his great deeds exactly as I feel pride in the great qualities and deeds of every other American. For weal or for woe we are knit together, and we shall go up or go down together; and I believe that we shall go up and not down, that we shall go forward instead of halting and falling back, because I have an abiding faith in the generosity, the courage, the resolution, and the common-sense of all my countrymen.
The Southern States face difficult problems; and so do the Northern States. Some of the problems are the same for the entire country. Others exist in greater intensity in one section; and yet others exist in greater intensity in another section. But in the end they will all be solved; for fundamentally our people are the same throughout this land; the same in the qualities of heart and brain and hand which have made this Republic what it is in the great to-day; which will make it what it is to be in the infinitely greater to-morrow. I admire and respect and believe in and have faith in the men and women of the South as I admire and respect and believe in and have faith in the men and women of the North. All of us alike, Northerners and Southerners, Easterners and Westerners, can best proveour fealty to the Nation’s past by the way in which we do the Nation’s work in the present; for only thus can we be sure that our children’s children shall inherit Abraham Lincoln’s single-hearted devotion to the great unchanging creed that “righteousness exalteth a nation.”
Mr. President, and you, my Fellow-Americans:
It is a peculiar pleasure to me to be with you this evening; and in greeting my hosts of the Hungarian Republican Club, I give utterance to the thought of my fellow-guest, Congressman Sulzer, when I say that whatever our differences before election, when once the election has taken place, all of us in public life or in private life, President, Congressmen, judges, legislators, alike are American citizens and nothing else.
It is nearly ten years ago that I first took dinner here in the immediate neighborhood of where I am dining now, and at that time, I remember perfectly, when I was first brought up here, it was by Mr. Jacob Riis and Mr. Jim Reynolds, and I was told that I would get a very good dinner and hear some very good music, and both prophecies proved true. It was about that time that I grew to be acquainted with so many of my hosts and fellow-guests of this evening. Others I had known before. With one of my fellow-guests, General Grant, I was thenworking, and at different times I spoke at meetings presided over or held in the clubhouses of various of the gentlemen here present, sometimes on political subjects, much more often on matters of good citizenship affecting us all as good citizens.
I grew in those years, gentlemen, to have a very close feeling of sympathy and affection and regard for the men and women of the great East Side of this city. I needed no urging when I was invited to come and be a guest at a club of the East Side this evening. President Braun has described how the preliminary invitation took place. It was six years ago that this club gave me a dinner after I had been elected Governor, and they then said that they “intended to elect me President and that I must then come and take dinner with them again.” I told them that if they would carry out their part of the contract I would carry out my part. I am not perfectly certain that they anticipated that their offer would be closed with so soon, but you see, gentlemen, I have closed with it.
To-night I wish to greet you most warmly and to say that I doubt if we could find a more typically American gathering than this, for Americanism is not a matter of birthplace, of ancestry, of creed, of occupation. Americanism is a matter of the spirit that is within, of a man’s soul. From the time when we first became an independent Nation to the present moment there has never been a generation in which some of our most distinguished and most useful men were not born on the other side of the Atlantic.It is peculiarly appropriate, and to me peculiarly pleasant that, in addressing this club of the men upon whose efforts so much of the future welfare of this city, of this State, of this Nation, depends, I should be addressing men who show by their actions that they know no difference between Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant, native-born and foreign-born, provided only that the man, whatever his creed, whatever his birthplace, strives to live so as to do his full duty by his neighbor and by the community as a whole.
We can not keep too clearly before our minds the fact that for the success of our civilization what is needed is, not so much brilliant ability, not so much unusual genius, as the possession by the average man of the plain homely workaday virtues that make that man a good father, a good husband, a good friend and neighbor, a decent man with whom to deal in all relations of life. We need good laws. We need honest administration of the laws. And we can not afford to be contented with less. But more than all else we need that the average man shall have in him the root of righteous living; that the average man shall have in him the feeling that will make him ashamed to do wrong or to submit to wrong, and that will make him feel his bounden duty to help those that are weaker, to help those especially that are in any way dependent upon him, and while not in any way losing his power of individual initiative, to cultivate the further power of acting in combination with his fellows for thecommon end of social uplifting and good government.
I shall not keep you very long this evening. I have come here not to make you a set speech, but if you will allow me to say so to speak as an old friend among his old friends. I have seen a good deal of your lives. I know the effort, the toil, the sorrow, the happiness, and the success. I have endeavored when I have been brought in contact with the East Side in the course of any work in which I have been engaged so to handle myself that the East Side might be a little better for it. I do not know whether I succeeded or not, but I do know that I have always been better myself for contact with it.
In closing I want to say one word upon success in life, upon the success that each of us should strive for. It is a great mistake, oh, such a great mistake, to measure success merely by that which glitters from without, or to speak of it in terms which will mislead those about us, and especially the younger people about us, as to what success really is. There must, of course, be for success a certain material basis. I should think ill of any man here who did not wish to leave his children a little better off and not a little worse off materially than he was. I should not feel that he was doing his duty by them; and if he can not do his duty by his own children he is not going to do his duty by any one else. But after that certain amount of material prosperity has been gained then the things that really count most are the things of the soul rather than the things ofthe body, and I am sure that each of you here, if he will really think of what it is that has made him most happy, of what it is that has made him most respect his neighbors, will agree with me. Look back in your own lives; see what the things are that you are proudest of as you look back, and you will in almost every case find that those memories of pride are associated not with days of ease but with days of effort, with the day when you had to do all that was in you for some worthy end, and the worthiest of all worthy ends is to make those that are closest and nearest to you, your wife and children and those near you, happy and not sorry that you are alive; and after that has been done to be able so to handle yourself that you can feel when the end comes that on the whole your country, your fellow-men are a little better off and not a little worse off because you have lived. This kind of success is open to every one of us. The great prizes come more or less by accident, and no human being knows that better than the man who has won any of them. The great prizes come more or less by accident, but to each man there comes normally the chance so to lead his life that at the end of his days his children, his wife, those that are dear to him, shall rise up and call him blessed, and so that his neighbors and those brought into intimate association with him may feel that he has done his part as a man in a world which sadly needs that each man should play his part well.
Now, gentlemen, I have to say good-night. Thishas been such a delightful dinner that I already find I am staying pretty nearly as late as I can stay and catch the train that is to take me back to my regular work at Washington. I thank you for your greeting, and I assure you that not one meeting which I have attended since I have been President has given me greater pleasure to attend than this dinner.
To the Senate:
I submit herewith a protocol concluded between the Dominican Republic and the United States.
The conditions in the Republic of Santo Domingo have been growing steadily worse for many years. There have been many disturbances and revolutions, and debts have been contracted beyond the power of the Republic to pay. Some of these debts were properly contracted and are held by those who have a legitimate right to their money. Others are without question improper or exorbitant, constituting claims which should never be paid in full and perhaps only to the extent of a very small portion of their nominal value.
Certain foreign countries have long felt themselvesaggrieved because of the non-payment of debts due their citizens. The only way by which foreign creditors could ever obtain from the Republic itself any guaranty of payment would be either by the acquisition of territory outright or temporarily, or else by taking possession of the custom-houses, which would of course in itself, in effect, be taking possession of a certain amount of territory.
It has for some time been obvious that those who profit by the Monroe Doctrine must accept certain responsibilities along with the rights which it confers; and that the same statement applies to those who uphold the doctrine. It can not be too often and too emphatically asserted that the United States has not the slightest desire for territorial aggrandizement at the expense of any of its southern neighbors, and will not treat the Monroe Doctrine as an excuse for such aggrandizement on its part. We do not propose to take any part of Santo Domingo, or exercise any other control over the island save what is necessary to its financial rehabilitation in connection with the collection of revenue, part of which will be turned over to the Government to meet the necessary expense of running it, and part of which will be distributed pro rata among the creditors of the Republic upon a basis of absolute equity. The justification for the United States taking this burden and incurring this responsibility is to be found in the fact that it is incompatible with international equity for the United States to refuse to allow other powers to take the only means attheir disposal of satisfying the claims of their creditors and yet to refuse, itself, to take any such steps.
An aggrieved nation can without interfering with the Monroe Doctrine take what action it sees fit in the adjustment of its disputes with American States, provided that action does not take the shape of interference with their form of government or of the despoilment of their territory under any disguise. But, short of this, when the question is one of a money claim, the only way which remains, finally, to collect it is a blockade, or bombardment, or the seizure of the custom-houses, and this means, as has been said above, what is in effect a possession, even though only a temporary possession, of territory. The United States then becomes a party in interest, because under the Monroe Doctrine it can not see any European power seize and permanently occupy the territory of one of these Republics; and yet such seizure of territory, disguised or undisguised, may eventually offer the only way in which the power in question can collect any debts, unless there is interference on the part of the United States.
One of the difficult and increasingly complicated problems, which often arise in Santo Domingo, grows out of the violations of contracts and concessions, sometimes improvidently granted, with valuable privileges and exemptions stipulated for upon grossly inadequate considerations which were burdensome to the State, and which are not infrequently disregarded and violated by the governing authorities. Citizens of the United States and ofother Governments holding these concessions and contracts appeal to their respective Governments for active protection and intervention. Except for arbitrary wrong, done or sanctioned by superior authority, to persons or to vested property rights, the United States Government, following its traditional usage in such cases, aims to go no further than the mere use of its good offices, a measure which frequently proves ineffective. On the other hand, there are Governments which do sometimes take energetic action for the protection of their subjects in the enforcement of merely contractual claims, and thereupon American concessionaries, supported by powerful influences, make loud appeal to the United States Government in similar cases for similar action. They complain that in the actual posture of affairs their valuable properties are practically confiscated, that American enterprise is paralyzed, and that unless they are fully protected even by the enforcement of their merely contractual rights, it means the abandonment to the subjects of other Governments of the interests of American trade and commerce through the sacrifice of their investments by excessive taxes imposed in violation of contract, and by other devices, and the sacrifice of the output of their mines and other industries, and even of their railway and shipping interests, which they have established in connection with the exploitation of their concessions. Thus the attempted solution of the complex problem by the ordinary methods of diplomacy reacts injuriously upon the UnitedStates Government itself, and in a measure paralyzes the action of the Executive in the direction of a sound and consistent policy. The United States Government is embarrassed in its efforts to foster American enterprise and the growth of our commerce through the cultivation of friendly relations with Santo Domingo, by the irritating effects on those relations, and the consequent injurious influence upon that commerce, of frequent interventions. As a method of solution of the complicated problem arbitration has become nugatory, inasmuch as, in the condition of its finances, an award against the Republic is worthless unless its payment is secured by the pledge of at least some portion of the customs revenues. This pledge is ineffectual without actual delivery over of the custom-houses to secure the appropriation of the pledged revenues to the payment of the award. This situation again reacts injuriously upon the relations of the United States with other nations. For when an award and such security are thus obtained, as in the case of the Santo Domingo Improvement Company, some foreign Government complains that the award conflicts with its rights, as a creditor, to some portion of these revenues under an alleged prior pledge; and still other Governments complain that an award in any considerable sum, secured by pledges of the customs revenues, is prejudicial to the payment of their equally meritorious claims out of the ordinary revenues; and thus controversies are begotten between the United States and other creditor nations because ofthe apparent sacrifice of some of their claims, which may be just or may be grossly exaggerated, but which the United States Government can not inquire into without giving grounds of offence to other friendly creditor nations. Still further illustrations might easily be furnished of the hopelessness of the present situation growing out of the social disorders and the bankrupt finances of the Dominican Republic, where for considerable periods during recent years the bonds of civil society have been practically dissolved.
Under the accepted law of nations foreign Governments are within their right, if they choose to exercise it, when they actively intervene in support of the contractual claims of their subjects. They sometimes exercise this power, and on account ofcommercialrivalries there is a growing tendency on the part of other Governments more and more to aid diplomatically in the enforcement of the claims of their subjects. In view of the dilemma in which the Government of the United States is thus placed, it must either adhere to its usual attitude of non-intervention in such cases—an attitude proper under normal conditions, but one which in this particular kind of case results to the disadvantage of its citizens in comparison with those of other States—or else it must, in order to be consistent in its policy, actively intervene to protect the contracts and con cessions of its citizens engaged in agriculture, commerce, and transportation in competition with the subjects and citizens of other States. This coursewould render the United States the insurer of all the speculative risks of its citizens in the public securities and franchises of Santo Domingo.
Under the plan in the protocol herewith submitted to the Senate, ensuring a faithful collection and application of the revenues to the specified objects, we are well assured that this difficult task can be accomplished with the friendly co-operation and goodwill of all the parties concerned, and to the great relief of the Dominican Republic.
The conditions in the Dominican Republic not only constitute a menace to our relations with other foreign nations, but they also concern the prosperity of the people of the island, as well as the security of American interests, and they are intimately associated with the interests of the South Atlantic and Gulf States, the normal expansion of whose commerce lies in that direction. At one time, and that only a year ago, three revolutions were in progress in the island at the same time.
It is impossible to state with anything like approximate accuracy the present population of the Dominican Republic. In the report of the Commission appointed by President Grant in 1871, the population was estimated at not over 150,000 souls, but according to the Statesman’s Yearbook for 1904, the estimated population in 1888 is given as 610,000. The Bureau of the American Republics considers this the best estimate of the present population of the Republic. As shown by the unanimous report of the Grant Commission the public debt ofthe Dominican Republic, including claims, was $1,565,831.59¼. The total revenues were $772,684.75¼. The public indebtedness of the Dominican Republic, not including all claims, was on September 12 last, as the Department of State is advised, $32,280,000; the estimated revenues under Dominican management of custom-houses were $1,850,000; the proposed budget for current administration was $1,300,000, leaving only $550,000 to pay foreign and liquidated obligations, and payments on these latter will amount during the ensuing year to $1,700,000, besides $900,000 of arrearages of payments overdue, amounting in all to $2,600,000. It is therefore impossible under existing conditions, which are chronic, and with the estimated yearly revenues of the Republic, which during the last decade have averaged approximately $1,600,000, to defray the ordinary expenses of the Government and to meet its obligations.
The Dominican debt owed to European creditors is about $22,000,000, and of this sum over $18,000,000 is more or less formally recognized. The representatives of European Governments have several times approached the Secretary of State setting forth the wrongs and intolerable delays to which they have been subjected at the hands of the successive Governments of Santo Domingo in the collection of their just claims, and intimating that unless the Dominican Government should receive some assistance from the United States in the way of regulating its finances, the creditor Governmentsin Europe would be forced to resort to more effective measures of compulsion to secure the satisfaction of their claims.
If the United States Government declines to take action and other foreign Governments resort to action to secure payment of their claims, the latter would be entitled, according to the decision of The Hague tribunal in the Venezuelan cases, to the preferential payment of their claims; and this would absorb all the Dominican revenues and would be a virtual sacrifice of American claims and interests in the island. If moreover, any such action should be taken by them, the only method to enable them to secure the payment of their claims would be to take possession of the custom-houses, and considering the state of the Dominican finances this would mean a definite and very possibly permanent occupation of Dominican territory, for no period could be set to the time which would be necessarily required for the payment of their obligations and unliquidated claims. The United States Government could not interfere to prevent such seizure and occupation of Dominican territory without either itself proposing some feasible alternative in the way of action, or else virtually saying to European Governments that they would not be allowed to collect their claims. This would be an unfortunate attitude for the Government of the United States to be forced to maintain at present. It can not with propriety say that it will protect its own citizens and interests, on the one hand, and yet on the otherhand refuse to allow other Governments to protect their citizens and interests.
The actual situation in the Dominican Republic can not, perhaps, be more forcibly stated than by giving a brief account of the case of the Santo Domingo Improvement Company.
From 1869 to 1897 the Dominican Government issued successive series of bonds, the majority of which were in the hands of European holders. Successive issues bore interest at rates ranging from 2¾ to 6 per cent, and what with commissions and other deductions and the heavy discount in the market the Government probably did not receive over 50 to 75 per cent of their nominal value. Other portions of the debt were created by loans, for which the Government received only one-half of the amount it was nominally to repay, and these obligations bore interest at the rateof1 to 2 per cent a month on their face, some of them compounded monthly.
The improvidence of the Government in its financial management was due to its weakness, to its impaired credit, and to its pecuniary needs occasioned by frequent insurrections and revolutionary changes, and by its inability to collect its revenues.
In 1888 the Government, in order to secure the payment of an issue of bonds, placed the custom-houses and the collection of its customs duties, which are substantially the only revenues of the Republic, in the hands of the Westendorps, bankers of Amsterdam, Holland. But the national debtcontinued to grow and the Government finally intrusted the collection of its revenues to an American corporation, the Santo Domingo Improvement Company, which was to take over the bonds of the Westendorps. The Dominican Government finally became dissatisfied with this arrangement, and, in 1901, ousted the Improvement Company from its custom-houses and took into its own hands the collection of its revenues. The company thereupon appealed to the United States Government to maintain them in their position, but their request was refused. The Dominican Government then sent its minister of foreign affairs to Washington to negotiate a settlement. He admitted that the Improvement Company had equities which ought not to be disregarded, and the Department of State suggested that the Dominican Government and the Improvement Company should effect, by private negotiation, a satisfactory settlement between them. They accordingly entered into an arrangement for a settlement, which was mutually satisfactory to the parties. A similar arrangement was likewise made between the Dominican Government and the European bondholders. The latter arrangement was carried into execution by the Dominican Government and payments made toward the liquidation of the bonds held by the European holders. The Dominican Congress refused to ratify the similar arrangement made with the Improvement Company, and the Government refused to provide for the payment of the American claimants. In thisstate of the case it was evident that a continuance of this treatment of the American creditors, and its repetition in other cases, would, if allowed to run its course, result in handing over the island to European creditors, and in time would ripen into serious controversies between the United States and other Governments, unless the United States should deliberately and finally abandon its interests in the island.
The Improvement Company and its allied companies held, besides bonds, certain banking and railway interests in the island. The Dominican Government, desirous to own and possess these properties, agreed with the companies that the value of their bonds and properties was $4,500,000, and they submitted to arbitration the question as to the instalments in which this sum should be paid and the security that should be given. The Hon. George Gray, judge of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Hon. Manuel de J. Galvan, both named by the Dominican Republic, and the Hon. John G. Carlisle, named by the United States, were the arbitrators, and rendered their award on July 14, 1904. By its terms the Dominican Government was to pay the above-mentioned sum of $4,500,000, with 4 per cent interest per annum, in monthly instalments of $37,500 each during two years and of $41,666.66 each month thereafter, beginning with the month of September, 1904, said award to be secured by the customs revenues and port dues of all the ports on the northern coast of Santo Domingo.The award further provides for the appointment of a financial agent of the United States, who was authorized, in case of failure during any month to receive the sum then due, to enter into possession of the custom-house at Puerto Plata in the first instance and assume charge of the collection of customs duties and port dues, and to fix and determine these duties and dues and secure their payment; in case the sums collected at Puerto Plata should at any time be insufficient for the payment of the amounts due under the award, or in case of any other manifest necessity, or in case the Dominican Government should so request, the financial agent of the United States was authorized to have and exercise at any and all of the other ports above described all the rights and powers vested in him by the award in respect of Puerto Plata. Under the award the financial agent could only apply the revenues collected toward its payment after he had first paid the expenses of collection and certain other obligations styled “aparods,” which constituted prior charges on the revenues assigned. These prior charges are specified in the award. The Dominican Government defaulted in their payments; and in virtue of the award and the authority conferred by the Dominican Government, and at its request, possession was delivered of the custom-house of Puerto Plata to the fiscal agent appointed by the United States to collect the revenues assigned by the arbitrators for the payment of the award; and in virtue of the same authority possession of the custom-houseof Monte Cristi has also been handed over. I submit herewith a report of Mr. John B. Moore, agent of the United States in this case, and a copy of the award of the arbitrators.
During the past two years the European claimants except the English, whose interests were embraced in those of the American companies, have, with the support of their respective Governments, been growing more and more importunate in pressing their unsatisfied demands. The French and the Belgians, in 1901, had entered into a contract with the Dominican Government, but, after a few payments were made on account, it fell into neglect. Other Governments also obliged the Dominican Government to enter into arrangements of various kinds by which the revenues of the Republic were in large part sequestrated, and under one of the agreements, which was concluded with Italy in 1903, the minister of that Government was empowered directly to collect from the importers and exporters that portion of the customs revenues assigned to him as security. As the result of chronic disorders attended with a constant increase of debt, the state of things in Santo Domingo has become hopeless, unless the United States or some other strong Government shall interpose to bring order out of the chaos. The custom-houses, with the exception of the two in the possession of the financial agent appointed by the United States, have become unproductive for the discharge of indebtedness, except as to persons making emergency loansto the Government or to its enemies for the purpose of carrying on political contests by force. They have, in fact, become the nuclei of the various revolutions. The first effort of revolutionists is to take possession of a custom-house so as to obtain funds, which are then disposed of at the absolute discretion of those who are collecting them. The chronic disorders prevailing in Santo Domingo have, moreover, become exceedingly dangerous to the interests of Americans holding property in that country. Constant complaints have been received of the injuries and inconveniences to which they have been subjected. As an evidence of the increasing aggravation of conditions, the fact may be mentioned that about a year ago the American railway, which had previously been exempt from such attacks, was seized, its tracks torn up, and a station destroyed by revolutionary bands.