Self-Determining Haiti / Four articles reprinted from The Nation embodying a report of an investigation made for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

by James Weldon Johnson

The Businessmen's Protest

THE protest printed below, against Article 15 of the Contract of Withdrawal, was sent to the Haitian Secretary of Finance on July 30.

The undersigned bankers, merchants, and representatives of the various branches of the financial and commercial activities in Haiti have the honor to submit to the high appreciation of the Secretary of State for Finance the following consideration:

They have been advised from certain sources that pressing recommendations have been made to the Government of Haiti.

1. That a law be immediately voted by which would be prohibited the importation or exportation of all money not Haitian, except that quantity of foreign money which, in the opinion of the Financial Adviser, would be sufficient for the needs of commerce.

2. That in the charter of the Banque Nationale de la Republique d'Haiti there be inserted an article giving power to the Financial Adviser together with the Banque Nationale de la Republique d'Haiti to take all measures concerning the importation or exportation of non-Haitian monies.

The undersigned declare that the adoption of such a measure, under whatever form it may be, would be of a nature generally contrary to the collective interests of the Haitian people and the industry of Haiti. It would be dangerous to substitute the will of a single man, however eminent he might be, however honorable, however infallible, for a natural law which regulates the movements of the monetary circulation in a country.

It would be more dangerous yet to introduce in the contract of the Banque Nationale de la Republique d'Haiti a clause which would assure this establishment a sort of monopoly in the foreign money market, which constitutes the principal base of the operations of high commerce, when it has already the exclusive privilege of emission of bank notes. Such a clause would make of all other bankers and merchants its humble tributaries, obeying its law and its caprices....

(Signed) The Royal Bank of Canada; American Foreign Banking Corporation; Haitian American Sugar Co.; Raporel S.S. Line; P. C. S.; Electric Light Co.; Panama Line; Ed. Esteve & Co.; Clyde Line; Comptoir Commercial; Gebara & Co.; Alfred Vieux; V. G. Makhlouf; N. Silvera; Simmonds Freres; Roberts, Dutton & Co.; West Indies Trading Co.; J. Fadoul & Co.; R. Brouard; A. de Matteis & Co.; J. M. Richardson & Co.; Comptoir Francais; H. Dereix; E. Robelin; F. Cheriez; I. J. Bigio, and Geo. H. MacFadden.

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