It is a great pleasure to represent here in this great commercial city
the best and largest customer you have. The United States of America
bought in the last fiscal year, the statistics of which have been made
public, from the United States of Brazil about $99,000,000 worth of
goods, and we sold to Brazil about $11,000,000 worth of goods. I should
like to see the trade more even; I should like to see the prosperity of
Brazil so increase that the purchasing power of Brazil will grow; and I
should like to see the activity of that purchasing power turned towards
the markets of the North American republic. I am well aware that the
course of trade cannot be controlled by sentiment or by governments. It
follows its own immutable laws and is drawn solely in the direction of
profit. But there are many ways in which the course of trade can be
facilitated, can be stimulated, can be induced and increased. Mutual
knowledge leads to trade. All the advertisement in the world which pays
is but the means of carrying information, knowledge, and suggestion to
the mind that reads the advertisement. Mutual knowledge as between the
people of North America and the people of Brazil--knowledge as between
the individual people--will increase the trade. Our people will buy more
coffee and more sugar and more rubber from the people they know, from
the various trading concerns that they know about, than they will from
strangers. Mutual knowledge cannot exist without mutual respect. I
believe so much in the goodness of humanity that I think no two people
can know each other without respecting each other.
There is the friendliest feeling in the United States of America for the
people of Brazil, and we believe that there is great friendliness in
this country for the people of the United States. We wish to be good
friends and ever better friends; to enlarge our mutual trade to the
advantage of both; and it is to express that feeling to you from my
people with all the kindliness and friendship possible, that I am here
in Brazil. It has been a great privilege to see something of your great
coffee production--from the coffee plant on its red platform of the
peculiar soil of Sao Paulo to the bags of coffee being carried to the
steamer in which it is to be transported to the markets of the world. It
is pleasing to me to see that the great commercial port of Santos has by
the improvement of its harbor facilities become more and more great, and
has done away with the unhealthiness that once existed. I congratulate
you upon the fact that you have made your port and your city so healthy
that yellow fever no longer exists.
This is probably the last word I shall utter in public before I leave
the coast of Brazil, and as I pass from among you, I shall endeavor to
make my last word an expression of grateful appreciation for all the
courtesy, the kindliness, and the friendliness which has surrounded me
every hour, from the moment I first landed at Para three weeks ago
today. My reception and that of all my family--the attentions that have
been paid to us, the kindness that has been exhibited--far exceed
anything that I anticipated or had hoped for; and I beg you to believe
that we shall never forget it. We shall make it known to our people when
we return home. I believe that it will increase the friendship they feel
for the people of Brazil; and it is with the greatest satisfaction that
I shall feel entitled upon my return to say to the people of the United
States that I have found in the republic of Brazil a country to which
the laborers of the world may come to make new homes and to rear their
families in prosperity and in happiness; that I may say to my people
that I have found in the republic of Brazil a country where capital is
secure, where the rights of man are held sacred, and the rewards of
enterprise may be reaped without hindrance. I shall go from you with the
hope that in my weak way I may do what it is possible for one man to do
in return for all the friendship that you have shown me throughout
Brazil--may give my evidence to aid in turning towards your vast and
undeveloped resources that immigration and that capital which have been
the means of building up and developing the vast riches of my own
country. I hope that the same brilliant and prosperous success that has
blessed my own land may for many generations visit the people of Brazil.
I hope that for many a year to come the two peoples, so similar in their
laws, their institutions, their purposes, and the great task of
development that lies before them, may continue to grow in friendship
and in mutual help. And so, gentlemen, I make to you, and through you to
the people of Brazil, my grateful and appreciative farewell.