Fifty years in Wall Street
consistent course of neutrality. Had the British Government been
unfriendly, it would have jumped at this chance to join France in
recognition and intervention. “By their fruits ye shall know them.”
There is no reason in what I have said, however, for an anti-Russian and
pro-Japanese feeling in the United States, or an anti-American feeling
in Russia; and it is much to be desired that friendly feeling towards
each other should prevail in both countries, but not at the expense of
truth. Even Japan, while fighting Russia, is showing good-will and
generosity towards Russian officers and men, and treating them with
uncommon courtesy and consideration.
My only object in thus writing is to present the matters referred to,
involving the relations of the United States with England, France and
Russia during our Civil War, in a true and proper light, and so to
correct prevailing misapprehensions. Russia’s course in Manchuria,
however, by which she tightened, instead of releasing, her grip upon it,
as she promised to do, sufficiently accounts for our lack of sympathy
with her in her war with Japan.
While professing friendship for the United States, she has acted in bad
faith, and by her restrictions ruined our growing trade there; and all
the specious arguments put forward by Russia through the Russian
Ambassador at Washington will not make the American people believe that
Russian success in this war would be an advantage to the United States.
Hence, American sympathies are not generally on the side of autocratic
and grasping Russia, with its closed door, but with liberal Japan, and
its open door. Moreover, it is to be hoped that Russia will find her
so-called “special position” of exclusiveness and monopoly in Manchuria
untenable, and be compelled to abandon it, to evacuate that country, and
leave its trade open to all the world. Then the now idle and ruined
factories, built there by Americans, could be turned to profitable
account again.
Although our relations with Russia have always been friendly, past
friendship does not justify present injustice. The retention of her
foothold in Manchuria, which she was to have held only until the country
was pacified, and her obvious and avowed designs upon Corea, evidently
aim at the acquisition of their territory, and point to similar ultimate
designs upon China and Japan.
Such being the case, we may well sympathize with Japan in her struggle
with Russia. We owe nothing to Russia because some of her ships came to
New York in 1863; but we are indebted to England for having peremptorily
declined the proposition of France to recognize the Southern
Confederacy.
Moreover, England is our natural ally, as we are allied to her by an
affinity of race, language, religion and free institutions. As for “the
Yellow Peril,” of which so much has been said, especially by the Russian
Ambassador, as something to be feared by the Western nations, it is
purely imaginary and chimerical. There is no more danger of China and
Japan, if successful in war at home, invading and overrunning the rest
of the world at any time in the future, near or remote, than there is of
the man in the moon coming down and invading us with an army of
moonshiners.
August 11th, 1905.
EDITOR New York _Times_, New York City.
DEAR SIR: My attention has been called to an editorial in your
issue of August 10th, entitled “That Gladstone Letter Again,”
the letter in question being the one received by me personally
from Mr. Gladstone. The editorial by its wording seems to bring
in question the authenticity and veracity of the statements
contained therein.
The letter came to me voluntarily from Mr. Gladstone, as the
result of an article written by me, and it should remove any
doubt as to the position of the British Cabinet in connection
with our Civil War. The utterances of some of the individual
members of the Cabinet did doubtless favor the South during a
part of our Civil War, but when Emperor Napoleon’s proposition
for intervention came up in the British Cabinet, the action
taken was exactly as Mr. Gladstone states in his letter to me,
and is borne out by Mr. Gladstone’s speech in the House of
Commons made soon afterwards, and it was largely due to his
speech that Mr. Roebuck’s motion on Napoleon’s proposition was
defeated.
There is an unwritten law in England that the deliberations of
the British Cabinet shall never be revealed by any member except
by consent of the Crown. Mr. Gladstone was known to be a great
stickler for conventions, and his letter to me in which he
expressly says I am at liberty to publish it could not have been
written except by consent of Queen Victoria.
Very truly yours,
HENRY CLEWS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER LXXXI.
THE CRISIS OF 1907 AND ITS CAUSES. WAS PRESIDENT
ROOSEVELT TO BLAME?[9]
Footnote 9:
An address to the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, Cleveland, Ohio,
Tuesday evening, January 28th, 1908, by Henry Clews.
It gives me great pleasure to meet the members of the Chamber of
Commerce of the city of Cleveland.
Next to New York—being from New York I have to make this
distinction—next to New York, I consider Cleveland the home of the most
worthy set of business men in the United States. Your forefathers chose
well when they elected to settle in this beautiful spot. The wisdom
which they displayed is proven by the twenty miles of docks on your
water front and by the fact that your people own the largest tonnage on
the lakes.
The natural resources of your surroundings have made you masters of
trade in coal, iron, and petroleum. Your harbors are commodious, and
what they lacked in natural formation you have supplied by the famous
breakwaters which have been built. Your city is not only a natural
business center, but also a railroad center.
Your Euclid Avenue is spoken of in the East as a model to be copied by
the lovers of beauty.
Fifty years ago Cleveland was a village. If you continue to thrive as
you have, where will you be fifty years hence?
It was in the soil of Cleveland that the seed was planted that has grown
and developed into the greatest business plant in the world. To-day the
Standard Oil Company commands trade in every country on the face of the
globe, and as a body are the greatest merchants that the world has ever
known.
Ohio has robbed Virginia of the right to be known as “the mother of
Presidents,” and I predict that the Republican Convention to be held
this summer will present as its candidate your most famous and honored
citizen, Hon. William H. Taft, who will be elected by an overwhelming
majority. I suggest that he and Mr. Roosevelt change places—Taft as
President and Roosevelt as Secretary of War, or still better, Secretary
of the Navy. Then we will be ever alertful and prepared for
eventualities both on our Atlantic and Pacific coasts. In this way we
will retain the services of both.
I will begin by saying that the elimination of the Godly Motto on our
gold coin many people may think means-“In President Roosevelt we trust,
but in God we distrust”; but I am sure the great mass of the Americans
do not think that way. They believe in trusting both God and the
President, and if the President will put back “God” on the American coin
they will put him back in the White House after his present term—thus
making our Motto: God first, our Country second, Theodore Roosevelt
third (term). The Three together one and inseparable for the next four
years.
It is my belief that there is not an intelligent man in the United
States who sincerely questions the “honesty of Theodore Roosevelt’s
motives.” Whatever he has done he has done to promote the public good
and the nation’s welfare, whether his speeches have helped to cause
distrust or not. He is an honest man, and an honest man is said to be
the noblest work of God. But, of course, as we cannot expect perfection
even in honest men, they may sometimes make mistakes in their judgment
of consequences, however good their intentions are. That we all allow
for.
You ask the question: Is President Roosevelt’s policy towards capital
sound? In other words, has he, in denouncing and instigating the
prosecution of law-breaking railway corporations, and industrial Trusts,
menaced the prosperity of the country? I contend that he has not. He
certainly had no intention to do so, for, while he was instrumental in
turning on the light, he was not responsible for the abuses of power
that the light revealed, and it is the revelation of graft and illegal
methods, on the part of certain railway and other corporations, through
the acts of their responsible managers, and controlling capitalists,
that has undermined public confidence in many of them.
It is true that the marked change in conditions and public sentiment,
especially in the stock market,—from the great optimism, buoyancy and
high prices of last year to the great depression and low prices of this
year of panics,—has caused many unthinking critics of the situation to
ascribe it to the influence of President Roosevelt. The speculative
capitalists and Trust magnates who have lost heavily by the depression
in stocks have this impression of the effect of his policy and speeches
in exposing corporate wrongdoing.
But it is an idea that needs to be controverted, or at least is open to
question, and his course is generally approved by popular opinion all
over the country. In other words the people generally are in favor of
the policy represented by all that the President has done to correct
corporate abuses and illegal methods and raise the standard of business
morality.
Before entering further into the subject, however, I will say that
gatherings of this kind, where the burning questions of the day are
discussed in a frank and friendly way, are productive of good
fellowship, and good results. Different minds view important events from
different standpoints, and any association that meets for this purpose
with a desire to obtain by mutual discussion, the fairest and best
understanding relating to public measures, is doing a patriotic service,
and is worthy of the highest commendation. It is particularly so at a
time like this, in view of the prevailing depression and distrust.
It is very fortunate that a presidential election did not take place
last year, as the people were in such a state of uncertainty and
apprehension that many well-meaning men would not, I fear, have voted
with a desire for their country’s good, but be biased by personal
interest or a determination to obtain revenge for what they have lost by
the great and prolonged decline in the stock market and the disturbance
of credits.
It is, of course, greatly to be deplored that some of the men high in
command in the industrial and railroad companies have abused the trust
reposed in them and made it imperative for the President to instruct the
attorneys of the national government to investigate their doings, and
prosecute those corporations and their officers charged with using their
corporate powers to do illegal acts, like rebating, and such chicanery
as that of the Chicago & Alton reorganization. The fact that, in nearly
every such instance of Government prosecution, the guilt of the parties
accused has been proved on their trial, justifies President Roosevelt in
his action.
While capital may continue timid until the whole truth is known and
confidence in corporate management restored, the agitation, will, in the