66 "full chief merit of the Agreement to be political and socialreciprocity and steady Americanization"; the Philadelphia Ledger declared the details of no consequence compared with the Continental sentiment underlying the Agreement; the Chicago Record-Herald thought that Canadians fully understood that they were about to choose between the Empire and the Republic"; the Cincinnati Inquirer defined future processes as friendship followed by alliance and then union; the Milwaukee Free Press described the great significance of the Pact as being in its influence upon "the All-American ideal, the future prosperity and ascendency of the Republic." Some of these papers, and others not so pronounced in Annexation views, desired Reciprocity because it would kill Imperialism as a practical policy in Canada and detach the Dominion commercially and fiscally from the Empire. Notably of this view was the Chicago Tribune—which published on June 3rd the result of a poll amongst 10,000 newspapers in 22 States showing 4,303 replies with 4,250 definitely in favour of Reciprocity. The Commercial West of Minneapolis and the New York Times were also strong supporters of this anti-Imperial argu ment. The New York Journal wanted Reciprocity and union because the export trade of the United States between 1897 and 1910 had increased with the Philippines from $94,597 to $17,317,897 and with Cuba from $8,259,776 to $52,858,758 and a like result should now follow. The Spokane Spokesman-Review wanted Reciprocity because within a year or two the United States would insist upon its extension to manufactures or its abrogation; the Boston Herald and Portland Argus because of the great advantages to their respective Ports; the New York Journal of Commerce because it would help the United States through its existing financial troubles. So pronounced and general was the Annexation talk at the Convention of the National Editorial Association in Detroit, which concluded on July 20, that there was much local speculation. as to the reception of the Editors in their ensuing trip to Montreal and Muskoka. There were certain individual expressions of opinion which, while not directly involving Annexation, had a considerable indirect relationship. On Jan. 29th Mr. James J. Hill, the leader of United States transportation interests along the Canadian frontier, stated at St. Paul that "there is no valid objection to a much freer interchange of commodities between the two countries than that provided for by the new Treaty. Both countries gain. But as there are about 93 millions in the United States our measure of gain is much greater." In a Minneapolis address on Feb. 9th he warned his audience that now was the only time to get this measure through as otherwise an Imperial trade policy would forestall future moves. To the Chicago Association of Commerce on Feb. 15th he made an urgent plea: "There ought not to be one vote in Congress or one vote in the country against an arrangement worth more than armies and navies, more in dollars and cents, than the acquisition of other markets for which we are prepared to spend huge sums. Every man in public life either knows or does not know the true value and effect of Reciprocity. If he does not know he is not fit for the responsibility he assumes. If he does know, and yet opposes, he is willing to sacrifice the most important interests of his country and to close the greatest opportunity open to it in years. "" Another argument was adduced at Minneapolis on Feb. 23rd: "Suppose Canada joins a British Trade Federation. As a reasonable differential England might impose our tariff of 15 cents a bushel on wheat, meaning that our wheat-growers would find their product lowered by that much a bushel while England would also take practically all of the $200,000,000 Canada now pays us annually for our manufactures. Then, if you add to that the $600,000,000 worth of goods we export to England, you will find that if we reject Reciprocity and drive Canada into Imperial Federation we will be losing $800,000,000 a year." On Feb. 29th Eugene N. Foss, Governor of Massachusetts, addressed the Produce Exchange of Boston as to the results of Reciprocity. " Our present railroads will increase their facilities and extend their lines to handle the increased business; and the great transcontinental lines of Canada will come to the port of Boston which is the natural port of Eastern Canada as well as New England. New factories in all lines will be established here, for with these conditions our capital will no longer seek Canada for the purpose of building up those factories which it is now forced to build in Canada by unnatural tariff conditions." In Boston on May 24th Henry L. Stimson, an eminent New York lawyer, just appointed (May 22) Secretary for War, said: "Our Government has offered Canada free trade in all commodities; the Canadian Commissioners, representing a younger country, with younger industries to protect, have felt compelled to decline free trade as to these industries. But the step once taken, the tendency toward closer relations will be irresistible." Two independent utterances of a later period may, in conclusion, be quoted here: June 27.-Edmund J. James, President University of Illinois: "I should like to see customs union between Canada and the United States as complete as exists among the various American States. I think such an arrangement would result ultimately in the practical union of the two countries, which would be greatly to the advantage of both peoples, particularly our own." June 27.-David Starr Jordan, President Leland Stanford University, California: "I believe in the removal of the barriers between nations which are not natural barriers. There is nothing whatever in the conditions in Canada which justifies any kind of customs collection between the two countries. I look upon it (Reciprocity) as a step toward the elimination of all customs barriers among the nations of the continent." President Taft's Cam Agreement Meantime the President of the United States who, it must be remembered, was the Leader of his paign for the Party as well as the Chief Executive of his country, had made a continuous and strenuous effort to obtain Congressional and popular support for the Agreement, to prevent the wavering and antagonistic elements in the Republican party from entirely disrupting its organization, to conciliate factions and interests and "lobbies" at Washington, to explain Reciprocity to the commercial, financial and agricultural elements of the community, to hold in check the effervescent talk of Annexation and political union. His first Address to Congress on Jan. 26th was an elaborate preliminary presentation of the issue. So far as Congress was concerned the President took the line that this measure was one above all politics, all questions of tariff, all prejudices as to protection or free-trade. It was a great national issue and Parties could stand or fall but the Agreement must go through. Yet, as a matter of fact, out of $144,000,000 of food-stuffs in crude condition and food animals imported by the United States in 1910 and $181,000,000 of food-stuffs, partly or wholly manufactured, also imported, the Republic only made free $39,800,000 worth and reduced the duties on goods valued at only $7,500,000! Speaking at a banquet in Washington on Jan. 30th President Taft referred to Canada as growing into a great country and nation, as not having always been treated by the United States in a conciliatory manner, as now extending the hand of friendship and proposing closer relations with mutual benefit. "The Canadian Agreement, if confirmed by Executive action, will be a fitting close to a century's controversies and will permanently establish good feeling and commercial union between kindred peoples. We shall find a rapidly increasing market for our numerous products among the people of our neighbour. We shall deepen and widen the sources of our food supply in territory close at hand. Our kinship, our common sympathy, our similar moral and social ideas, furnish the strongest reason for supporting this Agreement." The President's southern trip was at this time cancelled and he made a speaking tour of various centres bent on explaining and popularizing the Agreement. At Columbus, Ohio (Feb. 10), he dealt with the need of the people for more land and food and timber. Millions were being spent on reclaiming and irrigating the arid lands of the Western desert. Why, he asked, not bring "within our agricultural resources the great plains of the NorthWest." As to wheat the domestic price was governed by the world price and Canadian competition would not injure the United States farmer. "The greatest reason for adopting this Agreement is the fact that it is going to unite two countries with kindred people, and lying together across a wide continent, in a commercial and social union to the great advantage of both. Such a result does not seem to be justified by a nice balancing of pecuniary profit to each. Its undoubted general benefit will vindicate those who are responsible for it. I say this in order that by arranging the arguments directed to the detailed effect of the Agreement upon different classes of persons I may not be thought to abandon the broad ground upon which the opportunity to confirm this Agreement ought to be seized." In the matter of land values proximity to market was the main consideration and United States farmers would still maintain that superiority. "In other words the advantage we give the Canadian farmer will not hurt our farmer, for the prices will remain the same; but by patronizing our elevators, our flour mills, our railroads, he (the Canadian) will secure admission to the world's market at less cost to himself while we will secure the advantage of increased trade for our elevators, our mills, our railroads and our commission men." At Springfield, Ill., on Feb. 11th, the President addressed the members of the State Legislature and once more appealed to the farmers. "Permitting wheat to come from the Canadian Northwest to Minneapolis and Chicago will steady the price of wheat and provisions, make speculation more difficult and insure against short crops and high prices. It will increase American control of the wheat markets and enable the millers to turn Canadian wheat into flour and send abroad the finished product. The increases in population and farm exports are so rapid that unless the production is greatly increased within our borders we will soon consume all we raise. We need a source of supply like Canada's at our doors. We would be blind if we neglected this opportunity to add to the strength and virility of the country by increasing its supporting capacity." As to Protection the Republican party was, he believed, willing to treat Canada differently from other countries. Conditions were the same in each and the United States Commissioners had been given" the widest latitude" in their recent negotiations. "We have taken up those things that are involved in a Canadian Reciprocity treaty because opportunity offered," declared President Taft in conclusion. "Now is the accepted time. Canada is at the parting of the ways. Shall she be an isolated country, as much separated from us as if she were across the ocean, or shall her people and our people profit by the proximity that our geography furnishes and stimulate the trade across the border that nothing but a useless, illogical and unnecessary tariff wall created." Naturally and inevitably, these and similar arguments from the Leader of a Protectionist party created "standpatters" and insurgents within his organization, while winning and holding Democratic and free-trade support. At the opening of the Pan-America Conference in Washington on Feb. 13th, the President was joined by the Democratic Leader in the House of Representatives (Mr. Champ Clark) in his advocacy of Reciprocity. Speaking of the Agreement the latter said: "That's a document which the President and myself own in partnership, but speaking for myself, not for President Taft or anyone else, I am for reciprocity not only with Canada but all the south and central American republics." Following Mr. Clark's famous Annexation utterance of the next day the Secretary of State* (P. C. Knox) addressed the Chicago Association of Commerce in a careful, clever analysis of the Agreement as being purely economic and not political. A rather curious commentary upon this address and upon the really small commercial issues involved, so far as the United States was concerned, is found in Mr. Secretary Knox's further speech at Pittsburg on Feb. 18th: "The largest question now before the people for their consideration, or that has been for many generations, a question affecting the interests, not only of all the citizens of the United States but of all the inhabitants of the North American Continent, a matter which in all of its bearings looks large, and the consequence of which will be tremendous, is the question now before the American people, before the American Congress, the question of reciprocal commercial relations with the Dominion of Canada." To a Masonic gathering in Washington on Feb. 20 the President reiterated his view of the Annexation question: "I really believe that with the consummation of the Canadian Reciprocity Agreement there will be a drawing together of great nations; but a drawing together by closer business and social relations and not by political union." Speaking at great length before the Southern Commercial Congress in Atlanta, Ga., on Mch. 10 Mr. Taft again, and in his usual explicit terms, differentiated Canada from Great Britain and the Empire: "Against her alone, of all the powerful nations of the world, we have felt under no necessity to establish a navy or fortify our frontier. For nearly a hundred years, under an agreement that has attracted the admiration of all promoters of international peace, we have had no battleships and no forts between us and her." And then followed the inevitable reference to the common interests of the Continent: " Canada is at the parting of the ways. If we now reject this opportunity to bring about closer business and trade relations and insist upon the continuance of an artificial wall between the two countries-which differ no more in conditions of labour and production than do Kentucky and Tennessee or Georgia and Alabama-we shall throw away an opportunity for benefit not likely to recur." Following this came the speech which really helped to decide the issue in Canada. It was not greatly different from many others; from opinions expressed in Congress and the press and endorsed by J. J. Hill and many other public men; but it happened to catch the Canadian ear. The address was delivered at a ban NOTE.-Members of the U. S. Cabinet are appointed and hold office at the will of the President. |