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