Latin America and the United States / Addresses by Elihu Root

by Elihu Root

SOUTH AMERICAN COMMERCE

ADDRESS AT THE NATIONAL CONVENTION FOR THE EXTENSION OF THE FOREIGN COMMERCE OF THE UNITED STATES, WASHINGTON, D. C., JANUARY 14, 1907

I thank you for your cordial greeting, and I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the very kind terms which you have used regarding myself. I have come here with pleasure, not to make a prepared address, or to attempt oratory, but to talk a few minutes about subjects of common interest to us all.

I wish first to express the satisfaction that I feel in the existence of this convention. The process of discussion, consideration, mutual information, and comparison of opinion among the people who are not in office, is the process that puts under the forms of representative government the reality of freedom and of a self-governing people. The discussion which takes place in such meetings as this, and which is stimulated by such meetings as this, in the club, in all the local associations and places where men meet throughout the country, is at once far removed from the secret and selfish devices of the lobbyist and from the stolid indifference which characterizes a people willing to be governed without themselves having a voice in government.

I congratulate you that you have come here to the nation's capital to discuss and consider subjects which are properly of national concern; that you have not come to ask the national government to do anything which you ought to do yourselves at home in your separate states, but to consider the exercise of the great commerce power of the nation, the power which from the beginning of our government has been fittingly placed in the hands of the national administration.

To my view we are advancing, and the whole world is advancing, in the opportunities and in the spirit and method which create opportunities for that kind of commerce which is profitable and beneficial to both parties the world over. Our relations continually grow more reasonable, more sensible and kindly with Europe and all the powers of Europe, with our vigorous and growing neighbor to the north, with our rapidly advancing and developing neighbors to the south, and with the nations that face us on the other side of the Pacific. Little occasions for controversy, little causes for irritation, little incidents of conflicting interests continually arise, as they do among friends and neighbors in the same town, but the general trend of international relations is a trend towards mutual respect, mutual consideration, and substantial good understanding.

Of course our relations to Europe, and our relations to the Orient, and our relations to Canada have long been much discussed and are worthy of discussion; but it seems to me that the subject which at this particular time opens before us with more of an appearance, and just appearance, of new opportunity than any other, is the subject of our relations to the Latin American nations to the south. I am not going to detain you by any extended discussion of that subject. I made a long—perhaps too long—speech about it before the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress at Kansas City a few weeks ago, and that has been printed in various forms and some of you, perhaps, have seen it or will see it. The substance is that just at the time when the United States has reached a point of development in its wonderful resources and accumulation of capital so that it is possible for us to turn our attention from the development of our own internal affairs to reach out into other lands for investment, for the fruits of profitable enterprise, for the expansion and extension of trade—just at that time the great and fertile and immeasurably rich countries of South America are emerging from the conditions of internal warfare, of continual revolution, of disturbed and unsafe property conditions, and are acquiring stability in government, safety for property, capacity to protect enterprise. So that we may look with certainty to an enormous increase of population and of wealth throughout the continent of South America, and we may look with certainty for an enormous increase in purchasing power as a consequence of that increase in population and wealth.

These two things coming together spread before us an opportunity for our trade and our enterprise surpassed by none anywhere in the world or at any time in our history.

It was with this view that last summer I spent three months, in response to the kind invitations of various Governments of South America, in visiting their capitals, in meeting their leading men, in becoming familiar with their conditions, and in trying to represent to them what I believe to be the real relation of respect and kindliness on the part of the people of the United States.

I wish you all could have seen with what genuine reciprocal friendship they accepted the message that I brought to them. We have long been allied to them by political sentiment. Now lies before us the opportunity—with their stable governments and protection for enterprise and property, and our increased capital—now lies before us the opportunity to be allied to them also by the bonds of personal intercourse and profitable trade.