Latin America and the United States / Addresses by Elihu Root

by Elihu Root

The opportunities are so large that figures fail to convey them. The area of this newly awakened continent is 7,502,848 square miles—more than two and one half times as large as the United States without Alaska, and more than double the United States including Alaska. A large part of this area lies within the temperate zone, with an equable and invigorating climate, free from extremes of either heat or cold. Farther north in the tropics are enormous expanses of high table-lands, stretching from the Atlantic to the foothills of the Andes, and lifted far above the tropical heats; the fertile valleys of the western cordilleras are cooled by perpetual snows even under the equator; vast forests grow untouched from a soil of incredible richness. The plains of Argentina, the great uplands of Brazil, the mountain valleys of Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Colombia are suited to the habitation of any race, however far to the north its origin may have been; hundreds of millions of men can find healthful homes and abundant sustenance in this great territory.

The population in 1900 was only 42,461,381, less than six to the square mile. The density of population was less than one-eighth of that in the state of Missouri, less than one-sixtieth of that in the state of Massachusetts, less than one-seventieth of that in England, less than one per cent of that in Belgium.

With this sparse population the production of wealth is already enormous. The latest trade statistics show exports from South America to foreign countries of $745,530,000, and imports of $499,858,600. Of the five hundred millions of goods that South America buys, we sell them but $63,246,525, or 12.6 per cent. Of the seven hundred and forty-five millions that South America sells, we buy $152,092,000, or 20.4 per cent—nearly two and a half times as much as we sell.

Their production is increasing by leaps and bounds. In eleven years the exports of Chile have increased forty-five per cent, from $54,030,000 in 1894 to $78,840,000 in 1905. In eight years the exports of Peru have increased one hundred per cent, from $13,899,000 in 1897 to $28,758,000 in 1905. In ten years the exports of Brazil have increased sixty-six per cent, from $134,062,000 in 1894 to $223,101,000 in 1905. In ten years the exports of Argentina have increased one hundred and sixty-eight per cent, from $115,868,000 in 1895 to $311,544,000 in 1905.

This is only the beginning; the coffee and rubber of Brazil, the wheat and beef and hides of Argentina and Uruguay, the copper and nitrates of Chile, the copper and tin of Bolivia, the silver and gold and cotton and sugar of Peru, are but samples of what the soil and mines of that wonderful continent are capable of yielding.

Ninety-seven per cent of the territory of South America is occupied by ten independent republics living under constitutions substantially copied or adapted from our own. Under the new conditions of tranquillity and security which prevail in most of them, their eager invitation to immigrants from the Old World will not long pass unheeded. The pressure of population abroad will inevitably turn its streams of life and labor towards those fertile fields and valleys. The streams have already begun to flow; more than two hundred thousand immigrants entered the Argentine Republic last year; they are coming this year at the rate of over three hundred thousand. Many thousands of Germans have already settled in southern Brazil. They are most welcome in Brazil; they are good and useful citizens there, as they are here; I hope that many more will come to Brazil and every other South American country, and add their vigorous industry and good citizenship to the upbuilding of their adopted home.

With the increase of population in such a field, under free institutions, with the fruits of labor and the rewards of enterprise secure, the production of wealth and the increase of purchasing power will afford a market for the commerce of the world worthy to rank even with the markets of the Orient, as the goal of business enterprise. The material resources of South America are in some important respects complementary to our own; that continent is weakest where North America is strongest as a field for manufactures; it has comparatively little coal and iron. In many respects the people of the two continents are complementary to each other; the South American is polite, refined, cultivated, fond of literature and of expression and of the graces and charms of life, while the North American is strenuous, intense, utilitarian. Where we accumulate, they spend. While we have less of the cheerful philosophy which finds sources of happiness in the existing conditions of life, they have less of the inventive faculty which strives continually to increase the productive power of man and lower the cost of manufacture. The chief merits of the peoples of the two continents are different; their chief defects are different. Mutual intercourse and knowledge cannot fail greatly to benefit both. Each can learn from the other; each can teach much to the other, and each can contribute greatly to the development and prosperity of the other. A large part of their products find no domestic competition here; a large part of our products will find no domestic competition there. The typical conditions exist for that kind of trade which is profitable, honorable, and beneficial to both parties.

The relations between the United States and South America have been chiefly political rather than commercial or personal. In the early days of the South American struggle for independence, the eloquence of Henry Clay awakened in the American people a generous sympathy for the patriots of the south as for brethren struggling in the common cause of liberty. The clear-eyed, judicious diplomacy of Richard Rush, the American minister at the Court of St. James, effected a complete understanding with Great Britain for concurrent action in opposition to the designs of the Holy Alliance, already contemplating the partition of the southern continent among the great powers of continental Europe. The famous declaration of Monroe arrayed the organized and rapidly increasing power of the United States as an obstacle to European interference and made it forever plain that the cost of European aggression would be greater than any advantage which could be won even by successful aggression.

That great declaration was not the chance expression of the opinion or the feeling of the moment; it crystallized the sentiment for human liberty and human rights which has saved American idealism from the demoralization of narrow selfishness, and has given to American democracy its true world power in the virile potency of a great example. It responded to the instinct of self-preservation in an intensely practical people. It was the result of conference with Jefferson and Madison and John Quincy Adams and John C. Calhoun and William Wirt—a combination of political wisdom, experience, and skill not easily surpassed. The particular circumstances which led to the declaration no longer exist; no Holy Alliance now threatens to partition South America; no European colonization of the west coast threatens to exclude us from the Pacific. But those conditions were merely the occasion for the declaration of a principle of action. Other occasions for the application of the principle have arisen since; it needs no prophetic vision to see that other occasions for its application may arise hereafter. The principle declared by Monroe is as wise an expression of sound political judgment today, as truthful a representation of the sentiments and instincts of the American people today, as living in its force as an effective rule of conduct whenever occasion shall arise, as it was on December 2, 1823.

These great political services to South American independence, however, did not and could not in the nature of things create any relation between the people of South America and the people of the United States except a relation of political sympathy.