Aside from the reciprocity treaty with France, none of the treaties was considered by the Senate itself. I pressed them as best I could, but Senator Aldrich, Senator Hanna, and other advocates of high protection, were so bitterly opposed to them—no one in the Senate aside from myself seeming to have much interest in them— that they were dropped and allowed to expire by their own terms. I particularly regretted that the Kasson treaties were not ratified.
Had the Senate ratified those treaties, a large number of other treaties probably would have been negotiated, and we would not have been compelled to go through the long struggle and agitation over the passage of the Aldrich-Payne Tariff Bill. There would have been no tariff revision necessary. At the same time, we could not possibly help vastly increasing our foreign commerce. It was a very short-sighted policy on the part of Senator Aldrich and others in the Senate when they insisted that those treaties should be killed. After it was determined, and it became so known to the country that it would be impossible to secure the ratification of reciprocity treaties, the agitation for tariff revision commenced, and finally culminated in the act of 1909, which resulted in the election of a Democratic House of Representatives.
The committee did favorably report, and the Senate ratify, a reciprocity treaty with Cuba. This was the treaty of December 11, 1902, and it was the third reciprocal agreement in all our history ratified, proclaimed, and placed in effect. The first one was the treaty of 1854, providing for reciprocity with Canada. The second was the treaty of 1875, with the Hawaiian Islands, and the third and the only one now in effect is the treaty with Cuba.
That treaty would never have been ratified, and would have suffered the same fate as the Kasson treaties, had it not been for the determined, vigorous fight made by President Roosevelt for its ratification, and had not Cuba stood in a relation to us entirely different from any other country. We bound her to us by insisting that the Platt amendments be made a part of her Constitution, and in addition that a treaty be made between the two countries embodying those amendments.
This treaty with Cuba and the law carrying it into effect were the occasion of a very bitter struggle in both Senate and House. The sugar and tobacco interests used all the power at their command to defeat, first the treaty, and then the law carrying the treaty into effect. The beet-sugar people asserted that it would ruin that industry, and that a reduction of twenty per cent on Cuban sugar would enable the Cubans to ship their sugar into the United States and undersell the beet sugar. I never could see that there was any force in their contention, because the United States does not produce more than half the sugar we consume, and it was absolutely necessary to import sugar from Cuba and other sugar-producing countries.
When the treaty was before the committee for consideration, it was amended by inserting the following proviso:
"Provided that while this convention is in force, no sugar exported from the Republic of Cuba and being the product of the soil or industry of the Republic of Cuba, shall be admitted to the United States at a reduction of duty greater than twenty per centum of the rates of duty thereon as provided by the tariff act of the United States, approved July 24, 1897; and no sugar, the product of any other foreign country, shall be admitted by treaty or convention into the United States, while this convention is in force, at a lower rate of duty than that provided by the tariff act of the United States, approved July 24, 1897."
The effect of this amendment was not only to prevent a greater reduction being made on Cuban sugar, but it had a more important effect that it made reciprocity treaties with the sugar-producing countries, including the West Indies, impossible so long as the Cuban treaty remains in force.
I had charge of this treaty in the Senate, and addressed the Senate at considerable length explaining its provisions.
There was a spirited contest in the Senate over the ratification of the treaty, but there was more of a contest both in the Senate and the House when the bill to carry the treaty into effect came up at the next session of Congress, it first having been considered at a special session called by President Roosevelt in November, 1903. A provision was inserted in the treaty (which I opposed, as I thought it was unnecessary), that it should not go into effect until it was approved by the Congress. The bill was passed in the House and came to the Committee on Foreign Relations, was considered there, and favorably reported to the Senate. The bill, of course, was considered in open session, and I again made some remarks, probably more in the nature of a report than a speech, trying to show where the treaty was not only absolutely necessary, if Cuba was to be prosperous at all, but that it would open a considerable market for American products.