On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Commercial Association of
Santos, I bid you welcome.
The men gathered in this hall to greet you are cosmopolitan in
character--Americans, Europeans, and Brazilians--men who have united
their best efforts in the great movement of distributing coffee
throughout the whole world.
Coffee is our staple product, and for many years to come is bound to be
the backbone of our financial system.
The value of this great product is, however, much greater than is shown
by the simple figures of statistics.
In order to understand its true value, we must add to it the other
articles which are produced with it, and which are unknown to the
commercial world.
Coffee also means corn, beans, rice, cattle, etc., which are abundantly
raised by our coffee planters; coffee means also all of our infant
industries, and those prosperous towns which dot the romantic shores of
the Tiete, Paranahyba, and the Mogy-Guasu. For us, sir, coffee means
plenty, prosperity, and perhaps greatness.
It is therefore easy to see how deeply we are interested in the growth
of American commerce and civilization. The American people need for
their trade nearly eleven million bags of coffee per annum, or almost
all of an average crop of the state of Sao Paulo.
It is not necessary to lay special stress on this main fact, production
and consumption; one is the complement of the other, and the development
of both our activities and interests are so identified that we cannot
talk of coffee without thinking of its greatest consumer, the American
people.
Seventeen years ago, in 1889, James G. Blaine, one of your most
distinguished statesmen, called together the first Pan American Congress
in Washington. It is a long time for us business men to wait. We feel,
however, that the ideals of that great statesman have not yet been
realized. The great distance which separates us is perhaps somewhat
responsible for the want of closer relations between our peoples; and
when your visit to our shores was first announced, we Brazilians all
felt that your presence in Brazil meant a new departure in
American-Brazilian relations.
We are looking forward with eagerness for the results of the sessions of
the Pan American Congress in Rio; and this interest has been greatly
augmented by the high honor you confer upon us in selecting this
opportunity to visit our people and our country, thus strengthening the
ties of friendship between Americans and Brazilians; and though we
belong to a class accustomed to consider only facts and cold figures, we
are deeply touched by this high distinction, and, representing the
Santos Board of Trade and the coffee planters of Sao Paulo--the greatest
coffee producers of the world--I offer most hearty greetings to you, and
through you to the great American people, the chief consumers of coffee
in the world.