The American Empire Part 23

"The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have a.s.sumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers."

Monroe continues by pointing out that the United States must view any act which aims to establish European authority in the Americas as "dangerous to our peace and safety."

"The United States will keep her hands off Europe; she will expect Europe to keep her hands off America," was the essence of the doctrine, which has been popularly expressed in the phrase "America for the Americans." The Doctrine was thus a statement of international aloofness,--a declaration of American independence of the remainder of the world.

The Monroe Doctrine soon lost its political character. The southern statesmen who were then guiding the destinies of the United States were looking with longing eyes into Texas, Mexico, Cuba and other potential slave-holding territory. Later, the economic necessities of the northern capitalists led them in the same direction. Professor Roland G. Usher, in his "Pan-Americanism" (New York, The Century Company, 1915, pp.

391-392) insists that the Monroe Doctrine stands "First, for our incontrovertible right of self-defense. In the second place the Monroe Doctrine has stood for the equally undoubted right of the United States to champion and protect its primary economic interest against Europe or America."

Through the course of a century this statement of defensive policy has been converted into a doctrine of economic pseudo-sovereignty. It is no longer a case of keeping Europe out of Latin America but of getting the United States into Latin America.

The United States does not fear political aggression by Europe against the Western Hemisphere. On the contrary, the aggression to-day is largely economic, and the struggle for the markets and the investment opportunities of Latin America is being waged by the capitalists of every great industrial nation, including the United States.

2. _Latin America_

Four of the Latin American countries, viewed from the standpoint of population and of immediately available a.s.sets, rank far ahead of the remainder of Latin America. Mexico, with a population in 1914-1915 of 15,502,000, had an annual government revenue of $72,687,000. The population of Brazil is 27,474,000. The annual revenue (1919) is $183,615,000. Argentine, with a population of 8,284,000, reported annual revenues of $159,000,000 (1918); and Chile, with a population of 3,870,000, had an annual revenue of $77,964,000 (1917). These four states rank in political and economic importance close to Canada.

Great Britain holds a number of strategic positions in the West Indies.

Other nations have minor possessions in Latin America. None of these possessions, however, is of considerable economic or political importance. There remain Bolivia, Uruguay, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela, and the Central American states. The most populous of these countries is Peru (5,800,000 persons). All of the Central American states combined have a population of less than 6,000,000. The annual revenues of Uruguay (population 1,407,000) are $30,453,000 (1918-19).

The combined government revenues of all Central America are less than twenty-five millions. (_Statistical Abstract of the U. S._, 1919, p.

826ff.)

Compared with the hundred million population of the United States; its estimated wealth (1918) of 250 billions; and its federal revenues of a billion and a half in 1916, the Latin American republics cut a very small figure indeed. The United States, bristling with economic surplus and armed with the Monroe Doctrine, as accepted and interpreted in the League Covenant, is free to turn her attention to the rich opportunities offered by the undeveloped territory stretching from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn. What is there to hinder her movements in this direction?

Nothing but the limitation on her own needs and the adherence to her own public policies. This vast area, containing approximately nine million square miles (three times the area of continental United States), has a population of only a little over seventy millions. The entire government revenues of the territory are in the neighborhood of six hundred million, but so widely scattered are the people, so sharp are their nationalistic differences, and so completely have they failed to build up anything like an effective league to protect their common interests, that skillful maneuvering on the part of American economic and political interests should meet with no effectual or thoroughgoing opposition.

The "hands off America" doctrine which the United States has enunciated, and which Europe has accepted, means first that none of the Latin American Republics is permitted to enter into any entangling alliances without the approval of the United States. In the second place it means that the United States is free to treat all Latin American countries in the same way that she has treated Cuba, Hayti and Nicaragua during the past twenty years.

3. _Economic "Latin America"_

The United States is the chief producer--in the Western Hemisphere--of the manufactured supplies needed by the relatively undeveloped countries of Latin America. At the same time, the undeveloped countries of Latin America contain great supplies of ores, minerals, timber and other raw materials that are needed by the expanding manufacturing interests of the United States. The United States is a country with an investible surplus. Latin America offers ample opportunity for the investment of that surplus. Surrounding the entire territory is a Chinese wall in the form of the Monroe Doctrine--intangible but none the less effective.

Before the outbreak of the Great War, European capitalists dominated the Latin American investment market. The five years of struggle did much to eliminate European influence in Latin America.

The situation was reviewed at length in a publication of the United States Department of Commerce "Investments in Latin America and the British West Indies," by Frederick M. Halsey (Was.h.i.+ngton Government Printing Office, 1918):

"Concerning the undeveloped wealth of various South American countries,"

writes Mr. Halsey, "it may be said that minerals exist in all the Republics, that the forest resources of all (except possibly Uruguay) are very extensive, that oil deposits have been found in almost every country and are worked commercially in Argentine, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, and that there are lands available for the raising of live stock and for agricultural purposes" (p. 20).

As to the pre-war investments, Mr. Halsey points out that "Great Britain has long been the largest investor in Latin America" (p. 20). The total of British investments he places at 5,250 millions of dollars. A third of this was invested in Argentine, a fifth in Brazil and nearly a sixth in Mexico. French investments are placed at about one and a half billions of dollars. The German investments were extensive, particularly in financial and trading inst.i.tutions. United States investments in Latin America before the war "were negligible" (p. 19) outside of the investments in the mining industry and in the packing business.

Just how much of a s.h.i.+ft the war has occasioned in the owners.h.i.+p of Latin American railways, public utilities, mines, etc., it is impossible to say. Some such change has occurred, however, and it is wholly in the interest of the United States.

Generalizations which apply to Latin America have no force in respect to Canada. The capitalism of Canada is closely akin to the capitalism of the United States.

Canada possesses certain important resources which are highly essential to the United States. Chief among them are agricultural land and timber.

There are two methods by which the industrial interests of the United States might normally proceed with relations to the Canadian resources.

One is to attack the situation politically, the other is to absorb it economically. The latter method is being pursued at the present time. To be sure there is a large annual emigration from the United States into Canada (approximately 50,000 in 1919) but capital is migrating faster than human beings.

The Canadian Bureau of Statistics reports (letter of May 20, 1920) on "Stocks, Bonds and other Securities held by incorporated and joint stock Companies engaged in manufacturing industries in Canada, 1918," as owned by 8,130,368 individual holders, distributed geographically as follows: Canada, $945,444,000; Great Britain, $153,758,000; United States, $555,943,000, and other countries, $17,221,322. Thus one-third of this form of Canadian investment is held in the United States.

4. _American Protectorates_

The close economic inter-relations that are developing in the Americas, naturally have their counter-part in the political field. As the business interests reach southward for oil, iron, sugar, and tobacco they are accompanied or followed by the protecting arm of the State Department in Was.h.i.+ngton. Few citizens of the United States realize how thoroughly the conduct of the government, particularly in the Caribbean, reflects the conduct of the bankers and the traders.

Professor Hart in his "New American History" (American Book Co., 1917, p. 634) writes, "In addition the United States between 1906 and 1916 obtained a protectorate over the neighboring Latin American States of Cuba, Hayti, Panama, Santo Domingo and Nicaragua. All together these five states include 157,000 square miles and 6,000,000 people."

Professor Hart makes this statement under the general topic, "What America Has Done for the World."

The Monroe Doctrine, logically applied to Latin America, can have but one possible outcome. Professor Chester Lloyd Jones characterizes that outcome in the following words, "Steadily, quietly, almost unconsciously the extension of international responsibility southward has become practically a fixed policy with the State Department. It is a policy which the record of the last sixteen years shows is followed, not without protest from influential factions, it is true, but none the less followed, by administrations of both parties and decidedly different shades within one of the parties.... Protests will continue but the logic of events is too strong to be overthrown by traditional argument or prejudice." ("Caribbean Interests." New York, Appleton, 1916, p.

125.)

Latin America is in the grip of the Monroe Doctrine. Whether the individual states wish it or not they are the victims of a principle that has already shorn them of political sovereignty by making their foreign policy subject to veto by the United States, and that will eventually deprive them of control over their own internal affairs by placing the management of their economic activities under the direction of business interests centering in the United States. The protectorate which the United States will ultimately establish over Latin America was forecast in the treaty which "liberated" Cuba. The resolution declaring war upon Spain was prefaced by a preamble which demanded the independence of Cuba. Presumably this independence meant the right of self-government. Actually the sovereignty of Cuba is annihilated by the treaty of July 1, 1904, which provides:

"Article I. The Government of Cuba shall never enter into any treaty or compact with any foreign power or powers which will impair or tend to impair the independence of Cuba, nor in any matter authorize or permit any foreign power or powers to obtain by colonization or for military or naval purposes, or otherwise, lodgement in, or control over any portion of said island."

The most drastic limitations upon Cuba's sovereignty are contained in Article 3 which reads, "the Government of Cuba consents that the United States may exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property and individual liberty, and for discharging the obligation with respect to Cuba imposed by the Treaty of Paris on the United States now to be a.s.sumed and undertaken by the Government of Cuba." Under this article, the United States, at her discretion, may intervene in Cuba's internal affairs.

Under these treaty provisions the Cuban Government is not only prevented from exercising normal governmental functions in international matters, but if a change of internal government should take place which in the opinion of the United States jeopardized "life, property and individual liberty" such a government could be suppressed by the armed forces of the United States and a government established in conformity with her wishes. Theoretically, Cuba is an independent nation. Practically, Cuba has signed away in her treaty with the United States every important attribute of sovereignty.

The fact that Cuba was a war-prize of the United States might be advanced as an explanation of her anomalous position, were it not for the relations now existing between the Dominican Republic, Hayti and Nicaragua on the one hand and the United States on the other. The United States has never been at war with any of these countries, yet her authority over them is complete.

The Convention between the United States and the Dominican Republic, proclaimed July 25, 1907, gave the United States the right to appoint a receiver of Dominican customs in order that the financial affairs of the Republic might be placed on a sound basis. This appointment was followed in 1916 by the landing of the armed forces of the United States in the territory of the Dominican Republic. On November 29, 1916, a military government was set up by the United States Marine Corps under a proclamation approved by the President. "This military government at present conducts the administration of the government" (Letter from State Department, September 29, 1919).

The proclamation issued by the Commander of the United States Marine Corps and approved by the President, cited the failure of the Dominican government to live up to its treaty obligations because of internal dissensions and stated that the Republic is made subject to military government and to the exercise of military law applicable to such occupation. Dominican statutes "will continue in effect insofar as they do not conflict with the objects of the Occupation or necessary relations established thereunder, and their lawful administration will continue in the hands of such duly authorized Dominican officials as may be necessary, all under the oversight and control of the United States forces exercising Military Government." The proclamation further announces that the Military Government will collect the revenues and hold them in trust for the Republic.

Following this proclamation Captain H. S. Knapp issued a drastic order providing for a press censors.h.i.+p. "Any comment which is intended to be published on the att.i.tude of the United States Government, or upon anything connected with the Occupation and Military Government of Santo Domingo must first be submitted to the local censor for approval. In case of any violation of this rule the publication of any newspaper or periodical will be suspended; and responsible persons,--owners, editors, or others--will further be liable to punishment by the Military Government. The printing and distribution of posters, handbills, or similar means of propaganda in order to disseminate views unfavorable to the United States Government or to the Military Government in Santo Domingo is forbidden." (Order secured from the Navy Department and published by The American Union against Militarism, Dec. 13, 1916.)

A similar situation exists in Hayti. The treaty of May 3, 1916, provides that "The Government of the United States will, by its good officers, aid the Haitian Government in the proper and efficient development of its agricultural, mineral and commercial resources and in the establishment of the finances of Hayti on a firm and solid basis."

(Article I) "The President of Hayti shall appoint upon nomination by the President of the United States a general receiver and such aids and employees as may be necessary to manage the customs. The President of Hayti shall also appoint a nominee of the President of the United States as 'financial adviser' who shall 'devise an adequate system of public accounting, aid in increasing revenues' and take such other steps 'as may be deemed necessary for the welfare and prosperity of Hayti.'"

(Article II.) Article III guarantees "aid and protection of both countries to the General Receiver and the Financial Adviser." Under Article X "The Haitian Government obligates itself ... to create without delay an efficient constabulary, urban and rural, composed of native Haitians. This constabulary shall be organized and officered by Americans." The Haitian Government under Article XI, agrees not to "surrender any of the territory of the Republic by sale, lease or otherwise, or jurisdiction over such territory, to any foreign government or power" nor to enter into any treaty or contract that "will impair or tend to impair the independence of Hayti." Finally, to complete the subjugation of the Republic, Article XIV provides that "should the necessity occur, the United States will lend an efficient aid for the preservation of Haitian independence and the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property and individual liberty."

A year later, on August 20, 1917, the _New York Globe_ carried the following advertis.e.m.e.nt:--

FORTUNE IN SUGAR

"The price of labor in practically all the cane sugar growing countries has gone steadily up for years, except in Hayti, where costs are lowest in the world.

"_Hayti now is under U. S. Control._

"The Haitian-American corporation owns the best sugar lands in Hayti, owns railroads, wharf, light and power-plants, and is building sugar mills of the most modern design. There is a.s.sured income in the public utilities and large profits in the sugar business. We recommend the purchase of the stock of this corporation. Proceedings are being taken to list this stock on the New York Stock Exchange.

"Interesting story 'Sugar in Hayti' mailed on request.

"P. W. Chapman & Co., 53 William St., N. Y. C."