LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 University of California. 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Class 
 
X 
 
 Chamber or GommarcBBuilding.NBW York. 
 
OPENING OF THE BUILDING 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 
 
 OP THE 
 
 STATE OF NEW-YORK 
 
 B -^ isr Q TJ E T 
 
 IK 
 
 Honor of the Gub:sts who attended the Dedicatory 
 Ceremonies, November ii, 1902, together with a 
 Brief History of the Chamber from 1768 to 1902. 
 
 COMPILED BY eEOROE WILSON, SECRETARY. 
 
 ilTY 
 
 or THE ^ 
 
 UNIVtr^SITY > 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 PRESS OF THE CHAMBER OP COMMERCE. 
 
 19 2. 
 
 yHth the Complimenh of 
 
 George wilsoM, 
 
 Secretary. 
 

 i^^-<^' 
 
 r\- 
 
COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS. 
 
 Chables S. 
 Morris K. Jesup, 
 Samxtel D. Babcock, 
 
 AliEXAITDEB E. OBB, 
 
 Cornelius N. Bliss, 
 John Crosby Brown, 
 John S. BLennedy, 
 Abram S. Hewitt, 
 Charles S. Fairchild, 
 Jacob H. Schiff, 
 J. Edward Simmons, 
 William E. Dodge, 
 Levi P. Morton, 
 J. PiERPONT Morgan, 
 John D. Rockefeller, 
 Andrew Carnegie, 
 John T. Terry, 
 James T. Woodward, 
 
 Smith, Chairman. 
 
 John Claflin, 
 James 0. Cannon, 
 Qeorge Wilson, 
 IsiDOR Straus, 
 Charles A. Schieren, 
 William Butler Duncan, 
 Clement A. Griscom, 
 Charles Lanier, 
 James Speyer, 
 A. Foster ELiqgins, 
 A. Barton Hepburn, 
 John I. Waterbury, 
 Levi C. Weir, 
 William H. Parsons, 
 George Gray Ward, 
 Vbbnon H. Brown, 
 Francis R. Apfleton. 
 
 1 *> '' 
 
 24 (> 
 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Pack 
 
 Introdactorj Note, 1 
 
 Opening of the Building of the Chamber of Commerce, ,17 
 
 The Guests of the Chamber of Commerce, . . . .18 
 Prayer by the Reverend Morgak Dix, D. D., . .20 
 
 Address by Mr. Morbis K. Jesup, President of the Chamber of 
 
 Commerce, 22 
 
 Address by the Honorable Groter Clktelakd, Ex-President 
 
 of the United States, 28 
 
 Speech by Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United 
 
 States, 36 
 
 Speech by the Honorable Seth Low, Mayor of the City of 
 
 New- York, 87 
 
 Benediction by the Reverend Moroait Dix, D. D., . .40 
 
 Banquet in Honor of the Guests who Attended the Opening of the 
 
 Building of the Chamber of Commerce, 41 
 
 The Decorations of the Banquet Hall, 41 
 
 The Menu 48 
 
 The Medal, 44 
 
 The Guests of the Chamber of Commerce, .... 44 
 
 Speech by Mr. Morris K. Jesup, President of the Chamber of 
 
 Commerce, • 48 
 
 Telegram from Count Ca8Si:m. Ambassador Extraordinary and 
 
 Plenipotentiary of Russia, 49 
 
 Cablegrams from Chambers of Commerce Abroad, . . .60 
 
u 
 
 Pasx 
 Banquet in Honor of the Guests who attended the Opening of the 
 Building of the Chamber of Commerce — Continued : 
 
 Speech by Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United 
 
 States, 51 
 
 Speech by His Excellency M. Jules Cambon, Ambassador 
 
 Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of France, 57 
 Speech by Sir Michael Henry Herbert, Ambassador Extra- 
 ordinary and Plenipotentiary of Great Britain, . . .58 
 Speech by Prince Hans Heinrich von Pless, . . ,59 
 Speech by Sir Albert K. Rollit, D. C. L., LL. D., M. P., 
 Chairman of the Delegation of the London Chamber of 
 
 Commerce, 62 
 
 Speech by Mr. V. Hugot, Delegate of the Paris Chamber of 
 
 Commerce, 7$ 
 
 Speech by Mr. Paul Heckmann, Vice-President of the Berlin 
 
 Chamber of Commerce, 80 
 
 Speech by Mr. William P. Wood, Delegate of the London 
 
 Chamber of Commerce, 81 
 
 Participants in the Banquet, 86 
 
 A Brief History of the Chamber of Commerce, 1768-1902, 93 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 Theee days will always stand out from the rest in 
 the History of the Chamber of Commerce of the State 
 of New- York— the fifth of April, 1768, when twenty 
 New- York merchants met to organize the Chamber; 
 the fifth of April, 1900, just one hundred and thirty- 
 two years afterwards, when its building Committee 
 was able to announce the completion of the fund of 
 One Million of Dollars subscribed to supply it with a 
 permanent home, owned and paid for by its own mem- 
 bers ; and the eleventh of November, 1902, when the 
 members took possession of their new home and dedi- 
 cated it, with appropriate ceremonies, to the uses of 
 commerce for all time. No more suggestive contrast 
 could be found in all the history of the United States 
 than that between the gathering in the upper room of 
 Bolton & Sigell's tavern and the assemblage which 
 one hundred and thirty-four years later celebrated 
 the fruition of long years of expectation crowned by 
 the success of a well directed effort. The history of 
 the commerce of the City and State of New- York, from 
 its humble beginnings to the magnificent proportions it 
 has achieved at the opening of the Twentieth Cen- 
 tury, is comprehended within the time which separates 
 the two events. The amazing progress of four genera- 
 tions of the material development of our country 
 could nowhere find a more striking epitome ; the pro- 
 
2 
 
 mise which future generations have in store for this 
 development could, in no other chapter of the commer- 
 cial annals of the country, be more strikingly indicated. 
 From the walls of the magnificent Hall in which the 
 members of the Chamber met to celebrate the event of 
 the day, the portraits of the earliest officers of the 
 Chamber, and of the long line of their successors 
 looked down on a company comprising the President of 
 the United States, the only surviving ex-President of 
 the United States, the Mayor of the City, and many of 
 the bearers of the most distinguished names in the 
 public life, the finance, the commerce and the industry 
 of our time, besides diplomatic representatives and 
 delegates of sister institutions from the great com- 
 mercial nations of the world. The company assembled 
 to assist in the dedication of the Chamber's new and 
 permanent home was a convincing exemplification of 
 the enlightened foresight of the New- York merchants 
 of 1768 ; it furnished, besides, a magnificent demon- 
 stration of the imperial greatness of the commercial 
 metropolis of the Western hemisphere. 
 
 The proceedings were fitly opened by a most impres- 
 sive dedicatory prayer offered by the Reverend Doctor 
 MoBGAN Dix, Rector of Trinity Church. The invoca- 
 tion was couched in a strain of lofty piety and of deep 
 spiritual insight. If one petition more than another 
 elicited a devout response in the hearts of all, it was, 
 perhaps, the following : "Give, in this place, the spirit 
 of vigilance, of clear discernment, of wise counsel, and 
 the voice to speak to the community and the country 
 strong words, good words, comfortable words, as occa- 
 sion shall suggest and exigency demand." 
 
The President of the Chamber, Mr. Moeris K. Jesup, 
 then proceeded to extend the cordial greetings of the 
 members to the distinguished guests who had honored 
 the occasion with their presence. Mr. Jesup went on 
 to say that no ordinary occasion could have brought 
 together such an assemblage, and he proceeded to 
 detail some of the various ways in which the Chamber 
 has become an integral factor in the life of the nation, 
 in the development of the State, and in the progress of 
 our imperial City. He recalled the position of the 
 Chamber and the frequently recurring financial heresies 
 which had threatened the good name and commercial 
 stability of the nation, to illustrate the invaluable influ- 
 ence of its discussions and decisions. It had been 
 closely identified with all great public improvements 
 from the time of the proposition of De Witt Clinton 
 to commit the State to the construction of the Erie 
 Canal down to our own day, when the City, under the 
 influence of the Chamber, has undertaken the construc- 
 tion of a system of underground Rapid Transit, inferior 
 only in cost and importance to the supply of pure 
 water, which, in the early part of the century, was 
 advocated and brought about by the action of the 
 Chamber. After alluding to the fact that in all great 
 calamities, in every part of the world, the action of the 
 Chamber had been prompt and nobly generous, Mr. 
 Jesup declared that its greatest service to the country 
 was undoubtedly its steady support of President Lin- 
 coln and his illustrious associates during the Civil 
 War for the preservation of the Union. An eloquent 
 reference was made to the character and achievements 
 of the three distinguished citizens of New- York — 
 
Hamilton, Jay and Clinton — whose statues will 
 adorn the front of the building, and the address 
 closed with an appeal to the members to regard the 
 history and inheritance of the Chamber as an incentive 
 to the faithful discharge of increased duties and respon- 
 sibilities — to live up to the traditions of the Chamber, 
 as exemplified in the lives and characters of those who 
 had gone before. 
 
 The Honorable Geovee Cleveland, Ex-President of 
 the United States, followed in an address reviewing the 
 historic influence of the Chamber and the relations of 
 its work to the needs of our time. He enlarged upon 
 the civilizing influence of that cosmopolitan commerce 
 which has not only made the activities of business as 
 wide as the world in scope and volume, but which 
 peacefully leads the way to brotherhood among the 
 most distantly separated peoples, points out the path 
 of universal civilization, and fixes for the nations of 
 the earth the standard of national greatness. He held 
 that commerce has done an immense service to hu- 
 manity by enlarging within its wide influence the 
 acceptance of the laws of honest dealing among civil- 
 ized communities, and by curbing man's besetting sin 
 of selfishness and greed. But, he added, that com- 
 merce, by what it has already done, by what lies yet in 
 its path undone, and by what it is able to do, has 
 created a mission which cannot be fulfilled by increased 
 effort directed solely to gaining more business advan- 
 tages. He pointed out that this mission was impressively 
 recognized, and its obligations fully confessed, when 
 representatives of the commerce of the United States 
 met in delightful hospitality and brotherhoood the 
 
leaders of the commercial organizatioDS of Great 
 Britain. He deprecated the somewhat loose method of 
 employing the term "commercialism" to describe cer- 
 tain political and economic phases of our national 
 tendencies, which are greatly lamented by good people 
 solicitous for our country's welfare. With our concep- 
 tion of what commerce is and ought to be, we have just 
 ground for complaint when this word is used as descrip- 
 tive of sordid money getting. He concluded with the 
 declaration that the exercises of the day, recalling so 
 forcibly the growth of American commerce in world- 
 wide influence, were an especial subject for congratu- 
 lation to the citizens of this State and City upon the 
 association of both with the fame and honor which 
 have been achieved by the Chamber of Commerce of 
 the State of New- York. 
 
 The President of the United States then addressed a 
 few words of greeting to the members and their guests. 
 In his capacity of the Chief Executive of the Nation 
 he spoke on behalf of the people as a whole, as well 
 as on behalf of the Chamber, in thanking, for their 
 presence here the distinguished representatives of 
 foreign countries who had come to do honor to the 
 occasion. Finally, he extended a greeting to the mem- 
 bers of the Chamber, not merely because their organiza- 
 tion stood for commercial success, but because it had 
 been able to show that the greatest commercial success 
 can square with the immutable and eternal laws of 
 decent and right living and of fair dealing between man 
 and man. 
 
 The Honorable Seth how, Mayor of the City of 
 
e 
 
 New- York, then expressed, in the name of the City, 
 his acknowledgment of its great indebtedness to the 
 Chamber. He said that the City appreciated the great 
 importance of the services received at their hands, and 
 that it was ready now, as it had always been, to do 
 everything in its power to develop the commercial facil- 
 ities of the Port and City of New- York. He alluded to 
 the fact that the City was now building piers 800 feet 
 in length, but that since they were planned the intima- 
 tion had come that they must be made 1,000 feet in 
 length if they are to accommodate the vessels of five 
 years from now. The Mayor went on to show that the 
 Chamber had not limited its activity either to the pro- 
 motion of public enterprise or of commercial interest. 
 It had illustrated on every occasion a patriotism and a 
 public spirit which has been an object lesson to the 
 whole population of the City, and whenever New- York 
 has been confronted with exceptional perils, the mem- 
 bers of the Chamber had been in the forefront of the 
 battle for its redemption. He held it to be character- 
 istic of the Chamber that, while it encouraged every 
 good work, and while its membership had established 
 universities and colleges, and hospitals and libraries, 
 and had contributed to every agency that ministers to 
 the enrichment of our national life, it had only just 
 provided for itself a home of its own. He could give 
 the Chamber no better wish than that, as time fills this 
 building with the memories and associations that shall 
 make it precious to the members who assemble here, 
 the ancient spirit of public service, which has been so 
 characteristic of the Chamber throughout its history, 
 may remain so essential a part of the atmosphere of the 
 
building as to make and keep it a source of pride to 
 the people of the City. 
 
 The ceremonies were brought to a close by the bene- 
 diction pronounced by the Reverend Doctor Dix. 
 
 A Banquet in honor of the guests who attended 
 the Dedicatory Ceremonies on the opening of the 
 building was held in the great hall of the Waldorf- 
 Astoria, on the evening of the same day. The decora- 
 tions of the hall were of the most elaborate char- 
 acter, an illuminatied reproduction in colors of the 
 great seal of the Chamber occupying a position over the 
 head of the Chairman, and forming the centre of the 
 whole elaborate scheme of mural adornment. The 
 President of the Chamber, Mr. Moeeis K. Jesup, occu- 
 pied the chair, and on the platform beside him were 
 seated the President of the United States, the Governor 
 of the State, and the Mayor of the City of New- York, 
 the Ambassadors of the United Kingdom of Great 
 Britain and Ireland, the Republic of France, and 
 Prince Hans Heinrich von Pless, the special repre- 
 sentative of the German Emperor; the Secretaries of 
 the Treasury and the War Department of the United 
 States, and a number of other distinguished guests 
 from the walks of commerce and public life at home 
 and abroad. 
 
 On the conclusion of the Banquet, the Chairman 
 made a brief opening address in which he congratu- 
 lated those present on a red letter day in the history of 
 the Chamber, and made a passing reference to the dis- 
 tinguished guests on his right and left. He then 
 read a telegram, expressing the regret of the Rus- 
 
8 
 
 sian Ambassador, Count Cassini, at his inability to be 
 present, and adding the sincere hope that the commer- 
 cial relations between Russia and the United States 
 would attain a development corres))onding to the tradi- 
 tional sentiments of friendship existing between the 
 governments ; three cablegrams conveying congratula- 
 tions from the Chambers of Commerce of Bremen, Ham- 
 burg and Frankfort, and two others of like tenor from 
 the American Chambers of Commerce in Paris and 
 Liverpool. 
 
 Amid much enthusiasm the audience drank the toast 
 of "The President of the United States," who, in 
 reply, said that nowhere in the country could there be 
 gathered an audience which would stand as more typi- 
 cally characteristic of all those qualities and attributes 
 which had given the United States its commanding 
 position in the industrial world. He proceeded to say 
 that the welfare of New- York was no matter of mere 
 local or municipal, but of national concern, and that 
 this fact must be taken into account in appreciating the 
 importance of the part played by the New- York 
 Chamber of Commerce. After remarking that we had 
 passed that stage of national development when depre- 
 ciation of other peoples is felt to be a tribute to our 
 own, he went on to define what he conceived to be the 
 proper attitude of this Republic toward the powers of 
 the world, and the way in which it could best promote 
 the maintenance of international peace. He held that 
 while it was important that we should have peace 
 abroad, it was still more important that we should have 
 peace at home, and to that end he invoked the influ- 
 ence of the Chamber of Commerce. He believed that 
 
9 
 
 no patent remedy could be devised for the solution of 
 the grave problems which existed in the industrial 
 world, but he felt assured that they could be solved 
 only by bringing to the task certain old-time prin- 
 ciples and excluding from its performance certain 
 familiar and most undesirable traits which had in the 
 past brought untold degradation and suffering to man- 
 kind. He deprecated the growing tendency to demand 
 the illegitimate and unwise transfer to the Government 
 of much of the work that could be done by private 
 persons, either individually or in association, and he 
 found pleasure in addressing a body whose members 
 possessed to an eminent degree the traditional Ameri- 
 can spirit of self-reliance. He concluded by sum- 
 marizing the great qualities with which he held the 
 Chamber to be in a pre-eminent degree identified, 
 expressing the conviction that the continuance of the 
 marvellous prosperity which the country now enjoys 
 depended in no small measure upon the fidelity of the 
 Chamber in the future to the great traditions which 
 had adorned its past. 
 
 The response to the toast, "To the Rulers of Nations 
 represented at the Banquet," was made by M. Jules 
 Cambon, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipoten- 
 tiary of the Republic of France, and Doyen of the 
 Diplomatic Body at Washington. His brief remarks 
 closed with the statement that all Europe, and espe- 
 cially all France, would be happy over anything tending 
 to strengthen the ties of friendship binding the coun- 
 tries here represented to the United States. 
 
 Departing from the fixed order of the toasts, the 
 Chairman called upon Sir Michael Henby Herbert, 
 
10 
 
 the new Ambassador who has just come from our 
 friend, Great Britain. In reply, Sir Michael alluded 
 to the appropriateness of speaking on such an occasion 
 as the representative of the King of England, since the 
 original charter of the Chamber was granted by a King 
 of England, and because the present King had given 
 evidence of the friendly interest which he felt in the 
 welfare of the Chamber. The Ambassador went on to 
 say that commercial and social intercourse did more 
 than all the diplomatists to bring countries together, 
 and he was glad to have the opportunity of beginning 
 an acquaintance with business men which he hoped 
 would become permanent. 
 
 The Chairman explained that in the absence of the 
 German Ambassador at Washington, the German 
 Emperor had appointed as his representative to express 
 his good will and friendly feeling toward this country 
 Prince Hans Heineich voi^r Pless, who, after due 
 introduction, made a brief address. He referred to the 
 international character of the occasion, and remarked 
 on the increased importance which the commerce and 
 industry of the United States had achieved throughout 
 the world as a reason why the Chamber of Commerce 
 of the commercial and financial centre of the Union 
 should occupy a place in the front rank with her sister- 
 organizations abroad. He considered it a special duty 
 and pleasure to express on behalf of his sovereign and 
 country the feeling of gratitude with which Germany 
 remembered the warm and friendly reception but lately 
 accorded to a Prince of the Royal House of Prussia. 
 While each nation must do its best to protect its own 
 interests in the common field of international compe- 
 
11 
 
 tition, it was the judgment of the speaker that mntual 
 welfare is, to-day, the true community of interests 
 among the nations of the world. There was room for 
 all in the world's markets, and fair and liberal- spirited 
 competition had in itself an element of education and 
 mutual understanding conducive to friendly appreci- 
 ation of each other's good points. The Prince closed 
 by offering, on behalf of his sovereign and his country, 
 their best and most earnest wishes for the future of 
 this great and friendly nation, and for the work of one 
 of the most important agencies of its economic welfare, 
 the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New- York. 
 
 In introducing Sir Albert K. Rollit, the Chairman 
 of the Delegation of the London Chamber of Com- 
 merce, Mr. Jesup made a feeling reference to the im- 
 pression which the hospitality of the London Chamber 
 had made on those who participated in it. He said 
 that he and his associates who had represented the 
 New- York Chamber in London came away feeling 
 toward their brothers in England a tie of friendship, 
 respect and love such as they had not had before. 
 
 Sir Albert, in replying to the toast of "The Cham- 
 bers of Commerce of the World, the Modern Succes- 
 sors of the Guilds of the Middle Ages," went on to 
 enumerate the Chambers which had the honor and 
 privilege of being represented at the Banquet, and he 
 conveyed their united thanks for the hospitality they 
 had enjoyed, and their congratulations upon the open- 
 ing of the new building. He remarked that the beauty 
 of the building and the harmony of all its parts were a 
 contribution not only to the history of commerce but to 
 the civic development of the country and the beautifi- 
 
12 
 
 cation of the City. He bore emphatic testimony to the 
 example which the Chamber had set to the whole 
 world, of cosmopolitan philanthropy and benevolence, 
 as well as to the high standard and tone of commercial 
 morality which it had erected and sustained. It ap- 
 peared to him somewhat of a paradox that, coming 
 from the old world to the new, he should find in New- 
 York so much to remind him of the time when the 
 Georges were Kings of England. He came from a 
 Chamber of Commerce founded in 1882 in London, 
 recalling the fact that the earliest institutions of this 
 kind that Great Britain could produce were the Glasgow 
 Chamber dating from 1783, and that of Edinburgh from 
 1785, and he entered a Chamber of Commerce whos6 
 charter was given by King George the Third in 1770. 
 Even the original seal of the Chamber is older than the 
 present great seal of the United Kingdom. He pro- 
 ceeded to argue that Chambers of Commerce are based 
 upon the application of the principle of co-operation, 
 and that by this collective action men of commerce are 
 able as a whole to do for each other much that indi- 
 duals could never do for themselves. He added that 
 the whole world owed to the New- York Chamber a 
 great lesson and a great example, namely, that it had 
 widened the objective of political economy from mere 
 wealth to the greater and better one of the welfare of 
 mankind. He recalled the share of the Chamber of 
 Commerce in bringing about arbitration in regard to 
 the Venezuelan dispute, and he held that to be one of 
 many examples of the fact of commerce being a powerful 
 influence on the side of peace. The great Anglo-Saxon 
 peace which they all hoped for was a peace of liberty 
 
13 
 
 and hopefulness, and the countries which may be 
 spoken of as part of that great confederation are as 
 the weft and the warp, while the great steamers that 
 pass to and fro between the two are like gigantic 
 shuttles weaving it into one harmonious whole, 
 
 Mr. V. HuGOT next spoke as delegate of the Paris 
 Chamber of Commerce, and regretted that its President 
 had been prevented from responding to the invitation 
 sent to him. The speaker said that he had been for 
 more than half a century in close contact with the 
 business of New- York, beginning at the time of the 
 Presidential contest between Frakklin Pierce and 
 General Soott. Replying to the toast of " Reciprocity 
 between Nations is the application of Commercial Prin- 
 ciples and Methods to International Intercourse," M. 
 HuGOT said that the old phrase, " Do ut Des,^^ must be 
 hereafter understood in the sense of equitable recipro- 
 city and loyal international intercourse for the benefit 
 of all. He expressed the pleasure with which his 
 Chamber had hailed the project of a commercial conven- 
 tion planned in 1899 between France and the United 
 States, and he referred to the satisfaction with which 
 he should see the New- York Chamber encourage the 
 definite adoption of a convention which would unite 
 more closely the ancient and intimate bonds existing 
 between the two nations. He concluded by thanking 
 his audience, as the representatives of American com- 
 merce, for the support they had given to the assump- 
 tion by the United States of the task of completing 
 the great enterprise of the Panama Canal. The Ameri- 
 can Republic, which had opened the railway of 
 Panama, was faithful to her traditions in completing 
 
14 
 
 the canal which would nnite the two most frequented 
 seas of the globe, and, in the long lapse of ages, the 
 names of the United States and France would be 
 inseparable in the memory of future generations. 
 
 The toast of "The World's Commercial Navies. The 
 Tie that binds Foreign Nations in the Mutual Per- 
 formance of Good Works," was responded to by Mr. 
 Paul Heokmann, Vice-President of the Berlin Cham- 
 ber of Commerce. He referred to the fact that this was 
 the first time that the Berlin Chamber had sent, in an 
 official capacity, a representative to New- York, and he 
 took occasion to express the sincere thanks of himself 
 and his associates for the invitation which they had 
 received and their best wishes for a continued reciprocal 
 activity on the same grandiose scale as to-day. His 
 wishes culminated in the hope that the American flag 
 might have success attend it in all countries of the 
 world where industry and commerce exist, and he 
 believed that the more expanded these relations became 
 the greater would be the happiness and well-being of 
 all civilized countries. 
 
 The last toast of the evening, "The Merchant. One 
 of the Oldest of Human Professions. He has always 
 been a Leader in the Historic March of Liberty and 
 Progress," was responded to by Mr. William P. 
 Wood, President of the London Corn Trade Associa- 
 tion, and one of the delegates of the London Chamber 
 of Commerce. He presented a highly interesting and 
 suggestive review of the evolution of the merchant in 
 history, and he insisted that the bloodless victories 
 which the merchant gains are no less honorable and no 
 
15 
 
 less important to the welfare of mankind than those 
 achieved by the more brutal agency of the sword. 
 
 In thanking the distinguished guests for their pre- 
 sence, President Jesup asked the company to drink 
 to their future health and happiness, and proposed 
 "Our Guests." After this appropriate formula had 
 been observed Mr. Jesup announced it to be his 
 duty to say that their delightful entertainment had 
 closed. 
 
 In addition to the formal proceedings to which refer- 
 ence has been made there were several incidents of 
 special interest in connection with the reception of the 
 foreign guests of the Chamber which deserve notice. 
 The care of these guests was confided to a Committee 
 composed of Messrs. A. Barton Hepburn, John I. 
 Waterbury, Isidor Straus, George Gray Ward, 
 and the Secretary of the Chamber. A visit to Wash- 
 ington was part of the programme arranged for the 
 entertainment of the guests, but as President Roose- 
 velt was on the eve of his departure for a trip in the 
 South he agreed to receive them in the rooms of the 
 Chamber after the luncheon which followed the dedi- 
 catory exercises. Ex-President Cleveland assisted at 
 this function, which was, in every way, a form of 
 welcome greatly appreciated by the visitors from 
 abroad. 
 
 On the foUovsdng day the party were received by 
 Mayor Low in the Governor's room of the City Hall, 
 and were cordially welcomed by him in the name of the 
 City of New- York. On Thursday, November 13, the 
 party visited Washington and on their arrival at 4.30 
 P. M. they were received at the Department of State 
 
16 
 
 by Secretary Hay. In the evening a banquet was given 
 at the Arlington Hotel in honor of the distinguished 
 visitors. Mr. Hepbukn presided. Speeches were made 
 by the French and British Ambassadors, by Prince 
 Hans Heineich von Pless, Secretary Shaw of the 
 Treasury Department, Admiral Dewey, Generals Cor- 
 BiN and Young and others. On the following day, 
 Friday, November 14, the visiting party were shown 
 the Capitol, the Congressional Library, and other 
 public buildings, devoted to the work of the Gov- 
 ernment in Washington, as well as some of the most 
 interesting features of the City and its environs. The 
 excursion to Washington was under the immediate 
 care of Messrs. Hepburn, Waterbury and the Secre- 
 tary, and proved a highly satisfactory supplement to 
 the more memorable phases of the hospitality of the 
 Chamber. 
 
 Chamber of Commerce, 
 New- York, December 24, 1902. 
 
OPENING OF THE BUILDING 
 
 CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 
 
 The ceremonies attending the opening of the building 
 of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New- 
 York, at Numbers Fifty-Nine to Sixty-Five Liberty 
 Street, corner of Liberty Place, in the City of New- 
 York, and its dedication to the uses of commerce, were 
 held Tuesday, November the Eleventh, Nineteen Hun- 
 dred and Two, at twelve o'clock noon. 
 
 More than nine hundred members of the Chamber 
 attended, including the prominent merchants, bankers 
 and business men of the City. 
 
 The President of the United States and members of 
 his Cabinet, the Ex-President of the United States, 
 the Ambassadors of England, and France, a special 
 representative of Germany, and delegates from the 
 prominent Chambers of Commerce of those countries, 
 honored the occasion by their presence. 
 
 Mr. Morris K. Jesup, President of the Chamber of 
 Commerce, presided. 
 
18 
 
 GUEST8 OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE. 
 
 The invitation of the Chamber to attend the ceremo- 
 nies was accepted by the following named gentlemen : 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United 
 States. 
 
 The Honorable Grover Cleveland, Ex-President of 
 the United States. 
 
 Mr. Jules Cambon, Ambassador Extraordinary and 
 Plenipotentiary of France. 
 
 Sir Michael Henry Herbert, Ambassador Extra- 
 ordinary and Plenipotentiary of Great Britain. 
 
 Prince Hans Heinrich von Pless, Special Repre- 
 sentative of Germany. 
 
 The Honorable Leslie M. Shaw, Secretary of the 
 Treasury. 
 
 The Honorable Elihu Root, Secretary of War. 
 
 Rear Admiral Albert S. Barker, United States 
 Navy. 
 
 The Honorable Seth Low, Mayor of the City of New- 
 York. 
 
 The Honorable Whitelaw Reid, Honorary Member 
 of the Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. Charles S. Smith, Ex-President and Honorary 
 Member of the Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. Hugh H. Hanna, Honorary Member of the 
 Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. Alexander E. Orr, Ex-President of the Cham- 
 ber of Commerce. 
 
 The Reverend Morgan Dix, D. D. 
 
19 
 
 Sir Albert K. Rollit, D. C. L., LL. D., M. P., 
 Chairman of the Delegation of the London Chamber of 
 Commerce. 
 
 Sir Vincent Kennett-Baeeington, Delegate of the 
 London Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Lient. -General J. W. Laurie, M. P., Delegate of the 
 London Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. H. C. Richards, K. C, M. P., Delegate of the 
 London Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. James Dixon, Delegate of the London Chamber 
 of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. William P. Wood, Delegate of the London 
 Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. Arthur Serena, J. P., Delegate of the London 
 Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. P. Faithfull Begg, Delegate of the London 
 Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Major S. Flood Page, Delegate of the London 
 Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. John Hume, Delegate of the London Chamber of 
 Commerce. 
 
 Mr. J. Y. Henderson, Delegate of the London 
 Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. Kenric B. Murray, Secretary and Delegate of 
 the London Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. V. Hugot, Delegate of the Chamber of Com- 
 merce of Paris. 
 
 Count Raoul Chandon, Delegate of the Chamber of 
 Commerce of Rheims. 
 
 Mr. Leon Porte, Delegate of the Association des 
 Tissus of Paris. 
 
20 
 
 Mr. Erik Pontoppidan, Delegate of the Chamber of 
 Commerce of Hamburg. 
 
 Mr. Joseph Guiistet, Delegate of the Chamber of 
 Commerce of Lyons. 
 
 Mr. Francis Kimbel, President of the American 
 Chamber of Commerce of Paris. 
 
 Sir Percy Sanderson, Consul General of Great 
 Britain. 
 
 Mr. Gaston Yelten, Acting Consul General of 
 France. 
 
 Mr. Karl Buenz, Consul General of Germany. 
 
 Mr. Nicholas de Ladygensky, Consul General of 
 Russia. 
 , Mr. C. Clive Bayley, Consul of Great Britain. 
 
 Mr. Alfred Mosely. 
 
 President Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia 
 University. 
 
 Rev. Henry Van Dyke, D. D. 
 
 Mr. George B. Cortelyou. 
 
 Mr. Henry E. Gourd, President of the French 
 Chamber of Commerce in the City of New- York. 
 
 Mr. William Mackenzie, of Dundee, Scotland. 
 
 Mr. William R. Willcox. 
 
 Mr. John Foord. 
 
 Mr. St. Clair McKelway. 
 
 Mr. Henry M. Stegman. 
 
 PRAYER BY THE REVEREND MORGAN DIX, D. D. 
 
 The ceremonies were opened by prayer by the Rev- 
 erend Morgan Dix, D. D., as follows : 
 
 Our Father, who art in Heaven, ^Hallowed be Thy 
 
21 
 
 Name, Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on 
 Earth, as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily 
 bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive 
 those who trespass against us. And lead us not into 
 temptation. But deliver us from evil. For Thine is the 
 Kingdom, and the Power, and the Grlory, for ever and 
 ever. Amen. 
 
 Direct us, O Lord, in all our doings, with Thy most 
 gracious favor, and further us with Thy continual help ; 
 that in all our works begun, continued, and ended in 
 Thee, we may glorify Thy Holy Name, and finally, by 
 Thy mercy, obtain everlasting life, through Jesus Christ 
 our Lord. Amen. 
 
 Almighty and everlasting God, King of Kings and 
 Lord of Lords, dwelling in the light which no man can 
 approach unto, Who keepest covenant and mercy with 
 Thy servants that walk before Thee with all their heart : 
 May it please graciously to accept the action of this 
 day in the dedication of this house, in Thy name and 
 presence. Thou who has set Thy glory above the 
 heavens, visit us Thy people, dwellers in these earthly 
 tabernacles, that what we do may be done to the praise 
 of Thy great name. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, 
 and the power, and the glory, and the victory and the 
 majesty : for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is 
 Thine ; Thine is the Kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art 
 exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor 
 come of Thee, and Thou reignest over all ; and in 
 Thine hand is power and might ; and in Thine hand it 
 is to make great and to give strength unto all. Now, 
 therefore. Our God, we thank Thee and praise Thy 
 glorious name. 
 
 Almighty God, from whom all good things proceed, 
 send Thy blessing on this Chamber of Commerce and 
 on whatsoever shall be done in this place by its mem- 
 bers. Strengthen their brotherhood ; lift up their 
 hearts in their work for the good of the City and the 
 
22 
 
 State. Give, in this place, the spirit of vigilance, of 
 clear discernment, of wise counsel, and the voice to 
 speak to the community and the country strong words, 
 good words, comfortable words, as occasion shall sug- 
 gest and exigency demand. The Lord Grod be with this 
 Association, as He was with their fathers ; let Him not 
 leave them nor forsake them ; that He may incline their 
 hearts unto Him ; to walk in all His ways, and to keep 
 His commandments and His statutes and His judg- 
 ments which he commanded our fathers ; that they may 
 stand in their ranks, and be strong and helpful in the 
 latter days. 
 
 Almighty God, who in the former time leddest our 
 fathers forth into a wealthy place, and didst set their 
 feet in a large room, give Thy grace to us their children 
 that we may always approve ourselves a people mindful 
 of Thy favor and glad to do Thy will. Bless our land 
 with honorable industry, sound learning and pure man- 
 ners. Defend our liberties, preserve our unity. Save 
 us from violence, discord and confusion, from pride and 
 arrogancy, and from every evil way. Fashion into one 
 happy people the multitude brought hither out of 
 many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of 
 wisdom those whom we entrust in Thy name with the 
 authority of governance, to the end that there may be 
 peace at home and that we keep our place among the 
 nations of the earth. In the time of our prosperity 
 temper our self-confidence with thankfulness, and in 
 the day of trouble suffer not our trust in Thee to fail. 
 All of which we ask for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. 
 
 addeess by me. moeeis k. jesup, peesident of the 
 ohambee of oommeece. 
 
 Fellow Membees of The Chambee and oue 
 Guests: It is my high privilege, as the presiding 
 
23 
 
 officer of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of 
 New- York, to extend the cordial greetings of its 
 members to the President of the United States, [ap- 
 plause,] to the Honorable Gr rover Cleveland, Ex- 
 President of the United States, [applause,] to the 
 Mayor of our City [applause] and to the other distin- 
 guished guests, who have gathered here to-day from all 
 parts of our common country and from foreign lands to 
 join in the congratulations of the Chamber upon its hav- 
 ing at length achieved, after many years of hope and 
 effort, the erection of this building, which is to be its 
 permanent home, and which I trust you will all agree is 
 worthy of the enlightened and beneficent object for 
 which the Chamber was originally founded. No ordi- 
 nary occasion would bring together such an assemblage 
 of distinguished men representing the State, the 
 Church, the Bench and the learned professions, and all 
 departments of business, which, in New- York, have 
 made for themselves a record of unsurpassed excellence. 
 Indeed, this is an extraordinary occasion. Whatever 
 claims to distinction in other directions the City "of 
 New-York may possess, and they are many, its chief 
 prominence in the eyes of the world is, and must ever 
 be, due to its trade and commerce. From its very 
 foundation New- York, differing from the other 
 colonies, which were settled either for religious or 
 political considerations, became the home of men of all 
 nations who sought to establish commercial relations 
 with the new continent and to develop its resources for 
 the general profit of mankind. It was a commercial 
 settlement at the outset, and during its long career the 
 chief aim of its citizens has been to enlarge the com- 
 merce of the country by the development of its 
 resources and the interchange of its products for the 
 commodities of an older civilization. It was this spirit 
 that impelled twenty representative merchants, with 
 
24 
 
 John Ceugee at their head, and afterwards first 
 President of the Chamber, to come together at 
 Bolton & Sigell's, now known as Fraunce's 
 Tavern, at the corner of Pearl and Broad streets, 
 in the, year 1768, a date antecedent to the Eepublic, 
 and organize the Chamber of Commerce. In its 
 original Articles of Incorporation granted by George 
 the Third in 1770, it is distinctly set forth that 
 the object of the Chamber is to secure " the 
 numberless inestimable benefits which have ac- 
 crued to mankind from commerce," and that " the 
 enlargement of trade will vastly increase the general 
 opulence of the colony." Power is given to hold real 
 estate and to establish suitable offices for the conduct of 
 the business of the corporation. The records, which have 
 come down to us unimpaired, will show that one of the 
 main objects of the Chamber has been at all times to 
 secure for itself a building which might be worthy of 
 its high mission and of the great State of New- York, 
 whose name it bears. It was also felt that the building, 
 when erected, should adequately represent by its loca- 
 tion, dignity and appointments, the beneficent pur- 
 poses for which the Chamber was founded. 
 
 Its history up to 1856 has been fully recorded by the 
 graceful yen of Dr. Charles King, a former President 
 of Columbia College. To quote his language, " from its 
 origin to the commencement of this century, and to a 
 more recent date, the Chamber was called upon, alike 
 by the authorities of the City, of the State and of the 
 nation, for its advice and opinions on questions sup- 
 posed to be specially within its cognizance —questions 
 of quarantine, of public health and cleanliness, the 
 laws of trade, of currency, the effect of inspection 
 laws, ot high and low duty, and of bankruptcy laws," 
 and for the last half century every great question 
 affecting commerce, the finances and the currency, 
 which, the country has been called upon to 
 
26 
 
 confront, have been discussed by the Chamber, and 
 through its resolutions and reports decided in a way 
 which has contributed to their solution. 
 
 The Chamber has thus become an integral factor in 
 the life of the nation, in the development of the State, 
 and in the progress of our imperial City. Undoubtedly 
 the crisis of the Civil War gave a new birth to the 
 Chamber and proved its complete loyalty to the country, 
 and the questions which have arisen in our own day 
 and generation have been of such vital importance as 
 to impose upon the Chamber a new sense of responsi- 
 bility and a proper realization of its potent influence 
 in the final decision of all questions, either of a local or 
 a national character. 
 
 We have only to recall its ])osition on the frequently 
 recurring financial heresies — legel tender paper money 
 — of repudiation — inflation and the unlimited coinage 
 of silver, to realize the invaluable influence of its dis- 
 cussions and its decisions. And so it has been with 
 all public improvements from the time of the pro- 
 position of De Witt Clinton to commit the State 
 to the construction of the Erie Canal down to our own 
 day, when the City, under the influence of the Chamber 
 of Commerce, has undertaken the construction of a 
 system of underground Rapid Transit, originated and 
 promoted by our honored fellow member, Abram S. 
 Hewitt, [applause,] and inferior only in cost and 
 importance to the supply of pure water, which, in the 
 early part of the century, was advocated and brought 
 about by the action of this Chamber and the co- 
 operation of its leading members in the management 
 of the Croton Aqueduct. In the same manner the 
 City has practically confided the supervision of the 
 Rapid Transit construction to members selected from 
 this Chamber. 
 
 In all great calamities in every part of the world the 
 action, of the Chamber has been prompt and nobly 
 
26 
 
 generous, but undoubtedly its greatest service to the 
 country was its steady support of President Lincoln 
 and his illustrious associates during the Civil War for 
 the preservation of the Union upon a firm basis of 
 equal rights and universal justice. [Applause.] 
 
 With such a history and such a position in the 
 general estimation, it is not to be wondered at that the 
 present generation, who control the Chamber, should 
 desire that the building to be erected for its accommo- 
 dation should be worthy of its traditions, influence and 
 achievements, and of its possibilities for future use- 
 fulness and progress. 
 
 On behalf of the Chamber, therefore, let me welcome 
 you to this building, which we have tried to make 
 worthy of the City, the State and the Nation at an era 
 when wealth has grown to phenomenal proportions 
 and the arts of peace have been so cultivated as to 
 justify the declaration that New- York is "no mean 
 City," and that this building in which we are as- 
 sembled is worthy of its position in the world of 
 commerce, which President King has declared to be 
 "the civilizer, the refiner and liberator of the world." 
 "It is commerce," he adds, "which covers with its 
 ships the subject sea, which sweeps over the globe for 
 materials to adorn beauty, which seals in its scabbard 
 the red sword of war and cultivates peace and the arts 
 of peace ; which lights the fire of the mechanic arts, 
 and, last and greatest of all, teaches man no longer to 
 bow down before the idols of his own creation on earth 
 or in the skies, but looking erect to heaven, to walk 
 among his fellow men as an equal, while walking 
 humbly and devoutly before the true and no longer 
 conjectural or unknown God." 
 
 The Building is not yet complete. Upon its front 
 will be in places prepared for their setting three marble 
 statues of citizens of the State of New York, whose 
 careers and achievements will always stand pre-eminent 
 
97 
 
 among the strong men who laid the foundation of our 
 greatness as a people, and who were the authors of the 
 assured primacy of our country among the nations 
 of the world, and some of whose descendants have 
 been connected and associated with the Chamber. 
 
 Of ALEXAin)ER Hamilton, the student, the soldier, 
 the lawyer, the financier, the statesman, who prepared 
 the framework of the Constitution, whose genius 
 founded on a rock the edifice of public credit, and 
 whose untimely death filled the world with mourning. 
 
 Of John Jay, the associate of Hamilton through all 
 the revolutionary struggle, patriot, legislator, philan- 
 thropist, diplomatist, Chief Justice of the United States, 
 Governor of the State of New- York, the consummate 
 flower of the manhood of the Revolution and of the 
 constructive era of the Republic ; worthy associate in 
 the glorious company of the good and great of all times 
 and countries ; whose sweetness and nobility of char- 
 acter should ever claim the admiration and excite the 
 emulation of the youth of the land. [Applause.] 
 
 Of De Witt Clinton, creator of the Erie Canal, by 
 which New-York has been made great and rich beyond 
 the dreams of avarice ; founder of the public school 
 system of tire State of New- York, by which every 
 dollar of its property is pledged for the free education 
 of the young ; Mayor, Governor, and by general judg- 
 ment the fittest man of his time for the Presidency ; 
 appealing to our civic pride, and for years to come 
 recalling the story of the development of the State of 
 New- York from its humble beginnings to the magnifi- 
 cent achievements of the present day, and the glorious 
 promise of future growth through its internal com- 
 munications, and their natural fruition in the control of 
 the commerce of the ocean. [Applause.] 
 
 Can any State or any nation, ancient or modern, pro- 
 duce a more illustrious trinity of incomparable patriot- 
 ism, genius and achievement ? Surely we are Justified 
 
28 
 
 in recalling this imperishable record, and in no boastful 
 spirit, though with becoming pride, point to the Cham- 
 ber of Commerce and its associates in the glorious 
 history of the country as worthy of the compliment 
 which its guests here to-day pay by their presence, and 
 for which, on behalf of the Chamber, I tender to them 
 our grateful appreciation, [Applause.] 
 
 Fellow Members : With such a history and such 
 an inheritance, what will be our pledge as to the future 
 as we dedicate this building to the honorable calling of 
 commerce and trade. Let us not forget our increased 
 duties and responsibilities. Let us see to it that in the 
 future as in the past we shall live up to the traditions 
 of the Chamber, as exemplified in the lives and charac- 
 ters of the eminent merchants who have preceded us, 
 some of whose portraits now adorn these walls, and 
 whose voices still speak to us in the words of Scrip- 
 ture, "Be not weary in well doing; for in due season 
 ye shall reap if ye faint not." [Great applause.] 
 
 The Peesident. — Fellow members, gentlemen and 
 guests, I have the great honor to introduce to you 
 the Honorable Grover Cleveland, Ex-f resident of 
 the United States, who will now address you. [Ap- 
 plause.] 
 
 ADDRESS BY THE HONOEABLE GEOVEE CLEVELAND, EX- 
 PEESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Gentlemen : It is a curious fact that, although the 
 Chamber of Commerce of the State of New- York has 
 sturdily and usefully lived for more than a hundred and 
 thirty years, we are celebrating to-day its first possession 
 of a permanent home. This circumstance has, however, 
 a meaning and significance quite in keeping with the dis- 
 position and methods of the organization. Its purposes 
 
have been so practical, and the occasions for its nseful 
 and beneficial work have been so constant, that it has 
 been abundantly content to make a career and add 
 lustre to its name before providing for itself a local 
 habitation ; but no architectural finish and no ornate 
 decoration befits this beautiful edifice so well as the 
 bright coloring reflected from the splendid achieve- 
 ments proudly borne by those who now enter upon its 
 occupancy. 
 
 It need not surprise us if the popular estimate of this 
 business organization should fail to take into account 
 all that it has done to promote high and patriotic pur- 
 poses not always related, in a narrow sense, to Com- 
 merce. No associated body of our citizens felt more 
 deeply and effectively the throbbing of patriotism and 
 devotion to country when our Government was threat- 
 ened by armed rebellion ; its protest and aid was imme- 
 diately forthcoming when, afterwards, an insidious 
 attack was made upon our financial integrity through 
 an attempted debasement of our currency ; from no 
 quarter has a more earnest and insistent demand been 
 heard for the adjustment of international disputes by 
 arbitration ; its espousal of the cause of business edu- 
 cation among our people has been hearty and practical ; 
 it has advocated enlarged reciprocity of business re- 
 lations between nations, and the removal of their vexa- 
 tions hindrances ; and last, but by no means least^ it 
 has promptly and with an open hand relieved distress 
 and alleviated disaster. Such incidents as these illus- 
 trate the organization's beneficent accomplishments in 
 the advancement of civilization and in furtherance of 
 the improvement of humanity. This occasion most 
 palpably and prominently suggests the stupendous 
 evolution of the enormous commerce of to-day from 
 the beginnings of trade, when the brothers of Joseph 
 went down into Egypt to buy corn, and since Tyre and 
 Sidon rose and fell. From the littleness of trade and 
 
80 
 
 barter, limited to man's narrow necessities, or often 
 arising from the needs of aggressive or subjugating war, 
 there has been developed an agency which has not 
 only made the activities of business as wide as the 
 world in scope and volume, but which peacefully leads 
 the way to brotherhood among the most distantly sepa- 
 rated peoples, points out the path of universal civiliza- 
 tion, and fixes for the nations of the earth the standard 
 of national greatness. [Applause.] 
 
 It is, however, when we consider how large and 
 important a place in this evolution the Chamber of 
 Commerce of the State of New- York has occupied 
 during its long life, and when, in the midst of these 
 splendid surroundings, we recall its day of small 
 things, that we feel we are face to face with an especial 
 growth in organized usefulness near at home, and so 
 related to us that we may all claim a share in the pride 
 and satisfaction to which it gives birth. We know that 
 those who in 1770 applied to King Geoege the Third 
 for a charter incorporating a Chamber of Commerce 
 were, in that instrument, described as " A great number 
 of merchants in our City of New- York in America, 
 who have, by voluntary agreement, associated them- 
 selves for the laudable purpose of promoting the trade 
 and commerce of our said province ;" and we wonder 
 whether it ever entered into the imagination of those 
 merchants that they were laying the foundations of an 
 organization which at any time in its future would be 
 able to point to such noble achievements as are to-day 
 found among the cherished possessions of the Chamber 
 of Commerce of the State of New- York. [Applause.] 
 We read the statement in their charter that this " great 
 number of merchants" were "sensible that numberless 
 inestimable benefits have accrued to mankind from com- 
 merce, that they are in proportion to their greater or 
 lesser application to it, more or less opulent and potent 
 in all countries, and that the enlargement of trade will 
 
31 
 
 vastly increase the value of real estates as well as the 
 general opulence of our said Colony;" and we wonder 
 whether they had a hint or conception that their suc- 
 cessors in this day and generation would not only show 
 a most glorious record of their success in aid of giving 
 "the numberless inestimable benefits of Commerce to 
 mankind," bnt that this record would be gained under 
 the inspiration of aims and purposes higher and better 
 than the mere increase of the value of real estate, or 
 the opulence of their City and State. We read the 
 requirement in this charter that the meetings of the 
 corporation shall be held "in the great room of the 
 building commonly called the Exchange, situate at the 
 lower end of the street called Broad street, in the said 
 City of New- York ;" and we wonder how large that 
 great room was, and whether the wildest fancy of the 
 incorporators of 1770 could have pictured a future 
 home for their Chamber of Commerce as magnificent as 
 this. 
 
 In considering the evolution of commerce from small 
 trade and barter, one of its incidents which should im- 
 press us, perhaps, more than all others, is the elimina- 
 tion in this process of evolution of the meanness and 
 over- reaching greed which petty trade so frequently 
 attracts and fosters. They were little traders and petty 
 money changers who were driven from the courts of the 
 Temple of Jerusalem, charged with making the place of 
 their assemblage a den of thieves. Of course, it cannot 
 be said that either then or now the amount of trade 
 should in every case fix the character of the trader ; but 
 it is nevertheless true that the commercial organizations 
 of to-day cultivate a broad spirit of business fairness 
 and develop merchants and traders whose word is as 
 good as their bond, whose dealings are open and honest, 
 and whose business assemblages are guarded and con- 
 trolled by the exactions of probity and uprightness. 
 
 If we justly appeciate what these things mean, we 
 
32 
 
 shall realize that commerce has done an immense service 
 to humanity, by enlarging within its wide influence the 
 acceptance of the laws of honest dealing among civilized 
 communities, and by curbing man's besetting sins of 
 selfishness and. greed. 
 
 We shall thereupon be led to apprehend the especial 
 benefits in a moral sense that have accrued to our own 
 countrymen from the work and example of the Chamber 
 of Commerce of the State of New- York, and of kindred 
 institutions scattered throughout our land. They have 
 brought together a vast number of our citizens and 
 made the American merchant, who, too great to be 
 mean, has, by bold enterprise and brave venture, chal- 
 lenged the admiration of the world ; equally as impor- 
 tant as this in its moral complexion and significance, 
 they have, by the adoption and enforcement of rules 
 for their government, illustrated to a people apt to 
 chafe under enforced restraint, how usefully they them- 
 selves may voluntarily restrain and regulate their con- 
 duct ; and beyond all, they have directly and by exam- 
 ple leavened the mass of our citizenship with a love of 
 scrupulous honor, and largely contributed to the preser- 
 vation of true American devotion to fair play. [Ap- 
 plause.] Do I exaggerate when I say that all this 
 amounts to the elevation of our national character, and, 
 if I speak within bounds, may we not put to the credit 
 of commerce the gift to our people of a steadying force 
 more than ever needed in these days, if we are to stem 
 the tide of misleading influences and dangerous tenden- 
 cies ? [Applause.] 
 
 What I have said must not be understood as in the 
 least intimating that commerce should be an altruistic 
 or benevolent affair, managed on lines of amiability 
 and concession. Such a conception would be absurdly 
 at fault. Commerce is born of enterprise ; and enter- 
 prise in this busy, bustling age, is born of struggle and 
 competition. But the struggle and competition need 
 
33 
 
 not be to the death. Alertness and keenness in secur- 
 ing business opportunities does not by any means im- 
 port unmindfulness of all else save ruthfulness and 
 ravenous snatching. 
 
 I have attempted to suggest how practical business 
 activity can be mingled with enlightenment and social 
 betterment, and how commercial organizations have 
 already woven them together. They are estopped from 
 disclaiming their obligation to continue the work. It 
 rests with them not only to enlarge and strengthen by 
 increased enterprise the fabric they have thus produced, 
 but to make it brighter and more beautiful by adding 
 to it a larger infusion of that which touches the welfare 
 of mankind in every moral and social phase and condi- 
 tion. 
 
 It may, therefore, be justly said that commerce, by 
 what it has already done, by what lies yet in its path 
 undone, and by what it is able to do, has created for 
 itself a mission which cannot be fulfilled by increased 
 effort directed solely to gaining mere business advan- 
 tages. This mission does not exact an abatement of 
 commercial struggle and competition ; but it so far fixes 
 their limit as to enjoin that with such struggle and com- 
 petition there shall also be willing co-operation in an 
 endeavor to promote every beneficial purpose which 
 commerce can draw within its sphere. 
 
 This mission was impressively recognized and its 
 obligations fully confessed not many months ago, when 
 representatives of the commerce of the United States 
 met in delightful hospitality and brotherhood the 
 leaders of the commercial organizations of Great 
 Britain. 
 
 It was the President of the London Chamber of Com- 
 merce who said : " Working together for the common 
 good of all mankind we may keep the door open for 
 trade ; we may spread civilization, protect the oppressed 
 and establish peace among the nations." [Applause.] 
 
34 
 
 It was the President of the Association of Chambers 
 of Commerce of the United Kingdom of Great Britain 
 who said: "We have the highest authority for saying 
 that blessed are the peacemakers. I sometimes think 
 that commerce has done even more than religion in this 
 respect. Differences of religion sometimes separate 
 nations, but commerce is never militant. It binds us 
 together in links of gold like marriage rings." 
 
 It was the President of the Chamber of Commerce of 
 the State of New- York who voiced the sentiment of 
 every conscientious American, and every true-hearted 
 man, when he said : " Our only rivalry exists in seeing 
 how we can emulate each other in doing those things 
 which tend for civic righteousness and truth. Banding 
 ourselves together hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, 
 heart beating with heart, let us emulate one another in 
 endeavoring to extend to the ends of the earth the 
 blessings or our civil and religious liberty, to tell the 
 world of the holy brotherhood of man." [Applause.] 
 
 Such lofty and cheering expressions as these heard in 
 the atmosphere of commerce are not less gratifying 
 because they are in contrast with harsher doctrines and 
 methods which have sometimes been its close com- 
 panions. As the pioneer of colonization and expansion 
 sordidly undertaken in its interest. Commerce has in 
 other days had justly laid at its door cruel aggression 
 and ruthless disregard of human rights in regions 
 where, to use the language of an apologist, "the welfare 
 of the inhabitants of these possessions is subordinate 
 to the strategic or commercial purpose for which they 
 are held." If any measure of restitution or compen- 
 sation has fallen due from commerce to humanity on 
 this score we know that its full acquittance has been 
 made or is forthcoming ; and we certainly should have 
 no cause to fear that a like guilty responsibility will be 
 again incurred. 
 
 Commercialism is a word we often hear in these days 
 
38 
 
 when an attempt is made to describe certain political 
 and economic phases of onr national tendencies, which 
 are greatly lamented by good people who are solicitous 
 for our country's welfare. It has always seemed to me 
 that the meaning attached to this word lacks detinite- 
 ness. If it is used to define a desire to accumulate 
 wealth not only for the gratification of individual 
 wishes, but in full recognition of the duties and obliga- 
 tions to others which the possession of wealth imposes, 
 we need not complain of such use. 
 
 With our conception of what commerce is and ought 
 to be, we have, however, cause of complaint when the 
 word "commercialism" is used as descriptive of sordid 
 money-getting, and of the conduct of those who have been 
 characterized by a thoughtful and philosophical writer 
 in these words: "Sometimes, however, with the very 
 rich and without any ulterior motive, money-making 
 for its own sake becomes the absorbing interest. They 
 can pursue it with great advantage, for, as has been 
 often said, nothing makes money like money ; and the 
 possession of an immense capital gives innumerable 
 facilities for increasing it. The collecting passion takes 
 this form. They come to care more for money than for 
 anything money can purchase, though less for money 
 than for the interest and excitement of getting it. 
 Speculative enterprise with its fluctuations, uncertain- 
 ties and surprises, become their strongest interest and 
 their greatest amusement." 
 
 Surely commerce deserves better treatment than to be 
 accused of any relationship to such behavior as this. 
 
 These exercises, recalling so forcibly the growth of 
 American commerce^ in world wide influence abroad, 
 and in usefulness and beneficence at home, cannot fail 
 to be of interest to all our countrymen ; but the citizens of 
 the greatest of our States and of our imperial City, with 
 all they have to make them proud and happy, must 
 especially congratulate themselves upon the association 
 
36 
 
 of their State and City with the fame and honor which 
 have been wrought out by the Chamber of Commerce 
 of the State of New- York. [Great applause.] 
 
 The President. — Gentlemen, I have now the great 
 pleasure in saying to you that Mr. Roosevelt, the Presi- 
 dent of this great country, [applause,] will say a few 
 words to you, although he did not expect to do so. He 
 expected this evening to favor us with an address, but 
 he has consented to speak a few words of welcome now, 
 and I am sure we will be gratified. [The audience rose 
 and greeted the President with great applause.] 
 
 speech by THEODORE ROOSEVELT, PRESIDENT OF THE 
 UNITED STATES. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen : As I am to speak 
 to you this evening, I shall now simply say a word of 
 greeting to you and to your guests. I have been asked 
 here as the Chief Executive of the nation, and so I can 
 speak not merely on your behalf but on behalf of our 
 people as a whole in greeting and thanking for their 
 presence here those representatives of foreign countries, 
 who have done us the honor and pleasure of being 
 present to-day. [Applause.] I greet the Ambassador, 
 whose approaching departure we so sincerely regret ; 
 [applause ;] the Ambassador to whom, on his advent, 
 we extended such hearty greetings, [applause,] and the 
 special representatives of those great friendly civilized 
 nations with whom we intend to be knit ever closer by 
 ties of commercial and social good will in the future. 
 [Great applause.] And now, gentlemen, having greeted 
 your guests on behalf of you, I greet you in the name 
 of the people, not merely because you stand for com- 
 mercial success, but because this body has been able to 
 
37 
 
 show that the greatest commercial success can square 
 with the immutable and eternal laws of decent and 
 right living and of fair dealing between man and man. 
 [Great applause.] 
 
 The entire audience again rose and gave three cheers 
 for President Roosevelt. 
 
 The President. — Gentlemen, we expected to have 
 with us to-day the Governor of this Empire State, but 
 he is unavoidably detained ; however, I have great 
 pleasure in introducing to you the Honorable Seth 
 Low, the Mayor of this imperial City. [Applause.] 
 
 speech by the honorable seth low, mayor of the 
 city of new-york. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen : The history of the 
 Chamber of Commerce of the State of New- York is a 
 part of the story of our State and nation. Founded in 
 Fraunoes' Tavern, in 1768, while New- York was still a 
 colony, the activities of the Chamber form an important 
 chapter in the history of the City of New- York from 
 that day to this. You have heard how the Chamber 
 has been influential in securing for this City and for 
 our State the construction of the Erie Canal, the erec- 
 tion of our water works and the development of our 
 rapid transit system. These are only conspicuous illus- 
 trations of a service that has been unending since the 
 formation of the Chamber in 1768. I am here to-day, 
 sir, to acknowledge, in the name of the City of New- 
 York, the great services of the Chamber to the City, and 
 to thank you for them. The Chamber naturally has 
 contributed during all its history to the development of 
 tjie commerce of this port and to the commerce of the 
 
88 
 
 country. I am here, sir, to say to you, in the name of 
 the City, that the City appreciates the great importance 
 of your services in the interest of our commerce, and to 
 assure you that the City is ready now, as it always has 
 been, to do everything in its power to co-operate with 
 you in developing the commercial facilities of the port 
 and City of New- York. [Applause.] 
 
 A single illustration may interest you of the changes 
 that come about in the course of years. Twenty-five or 
 thirty years ago people believed that the shape of the 
 Island of Manhattan was such that it was the best of 
 policy to create land wherever it was possible. At the 
 present time the City of New- York is spending millions 
 of dollars to make piers, for which we have to dredge 
 out the land formerly made in order to secure sufficient 
 length for the modern vessels. We are building now 
 piers 800 feet in length, and, since they have been 
 planned, we have been told that they must be made 
 a thousand feet in length, if they are to accommodate 
 the vessels of five years from now, and I hope the Presi- 
 dent of the United States and the other officers of the 
 Government who are here will remember that fact, 
 [laughter,] and permit us to extend our pier line out 
 into the river sufficiently to make the piers of the 
 needed length. 
 
 But the Chamber of Commerce has hot limited its 
 activity either to the promotion of public enterprise or 
 of matters commercial. It has illustrated on every 
 occasion a patriotism and a public spirit that has been 
 an object lesson to the whole population of the City. 
 Two things, indeed, seem to me characteristic of 
 the Chamber. Although primarily a commercial 
 body, the influence of the Chamber has been felt 
 in almost every direction in which patriotism and 
 public spirit could find a field for enterprise. Dur- 
 ing the trying times of our Civil War, the Chamber 
 never flagged in its efforts to support the Government ; 
 
39 
 
 and whenever the City of New- York has been con- 
 fronted with exceptional perils, the members of the 
 Chamber have been in the forefront of the battle for the 
 redemption of the City. Whenever pestilence and dis- 
 aster have overwhelmed any portion of our country, or 
 whenever exceptional distress abroad has made appeal 
 to the sympathies of our people, the Chamber of Com- 
 merce has taken the lead in sending relief to the suffer- 
 ing and the afflicted. It is natural that a body made 
 up of commercial men should give uninterrupted atten- 
 tion to the distinctly commercial and financial problems 
 of the country. This the Chamber of Commerce has 
 done from the beginning, with an intelligence as note- 
 worthy as the public spirit that has animated it ; but it 
 will also be clear, from what I have said, that the activi- 
 ties of the Chamber have not been confined within these 
 narrow bounds, but that they have broadened out, 
 without effort, precisely as the influences of commerce 
 are felt, in a thousand directions, as a force making for 
 civilization. 
 
 It is also characteristic of the Chamber, that while it has 
 encouraged every good work, and while its membership 
 has established universities and colleges and hospitals 
 and libraries, and has contributed to every agency that 
 ministers to the enrichment of our national life, it is only 
 now that the Chamber is providing for itself a home of 
 its own. Every one must be glad that the Chamber is 
 at last to be suitably housed, but it is to me, as the son 
 of a former President of the Chamber, an exceptional 
 pleasure to be permitted to bring to the officers and 
 members of the Chamber, and especially to all who 
 have been closely identified with the erection of this 
 building in which we are now assembled, a message of 
 congratulation and good will in the name of the City 
 of New- York. 
 
 I can give to the Chamber no better wish than that, 
 as time fills this building with the memories and asso* 
 
40 
 
 ciations that shall make it precious to the merchants 
 who assemble here, the ancient spirit of public service, 
 which has been so characteristic of the Chamber 
 throughout its history, may remain so essential a part 
 of the atmosphere of this building as to make and keep 
 it a source of pride to the people of the City. [Ap- 
 plause.] 
 
 The Peesident. — ^The ceremonies will now be brought 
 to a close, and I will ask the Reverend Dr. Dix to pro- 
 nounce the benediction. 
 
 BENEDICTION BT THE KEVEEEND MOEGAN DIX, D. D. 
 
 To the Lord's gracious mercy and protection we com- 
 mend you. The Lord bless you and keep you. The 
 Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious 
 unto you. The Lord lift up the light of His counte- 
 nance upon you and give you peace, both now and 
 forever more. Amen. 
 
BANQUET IN HONOR OF THE GUESTS 
 
 WHO ATTENDED THE 
 
 OPENING OF THE BUILDING 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CHAMBER OF COMMERCE. 
 
 The Banquet by the Chamber of Commerce in honor 
 of the guests who attended the Dedicatory Ceremonies 
 on the Opening of the Building of the Chamber was 
 held at the Waldorf-Astoria, Fifth Avenue, Thirty- 
 Third and Thirty-Fourth Streets, Tuesday Evening, 
 November the Eleventh, Nineteen Hundred and Two, 
 at half- past six o'clock. 
 
 Mr. MoREis K. Jesup, President of the Chamber 
 of Commerce, presided : 
 
 THE DECORATIONS OP THE BANQUET HALL. 
 
 The Banquet Hall was transformed for the occasion 
 into a scene of beauty. Among its features was an 
 elaborate exhibition of colors, coats- of -arms, flags and 
 crests of the prominent nations, in honor of the repre- 
 sentatives of the countries who attended. 
 
 The background of the speakers' table at the head of 
 
42 
 
 the Banquet Hall showed at its centre a magnificent 
 specimen of silk and gold hand embroidered work 
 of large size, in the form of the coat-of-arms of the 
 United States, the same being fl.anked to the right and 
 left respectively by the coats-of-arms of France, Russia 
 and Mexico and Great Britain, Germany and Italy, in 
 the form of banners. 
 
 These coats-of-arms were interspersed with clusters 
 of flags of the nations named, all in silk and punctu- 
 ated at symmetrical intervals, with gracefully draped 
 American flags of large size, the flag of the United 
 States predominating in the display. 
 
 To represent all the States of our country, the seals 
 in the form of elaborately embroidered silk banners, were 
 placed at appropriate intervals about the side walls and 
 balconies, on a background of very large American 
 flags falling in graceful folds and covering and filling in 
 completely the spaces between. The pilasters about 
 the beautiful Banquet Hall, lending themselves most 
 admirably to the artistic treatment of America's fore- 
 most decorators, showed clusters of silken American 
 flags on staffs with gold-tipped spears, the prodigal pro- 
 fusion of the same being enhanced and apparently mul- 
 tiplied to endless extent by their reflection in the many 
 crystal mirrors with which the Banquet Hall abounds. 
 
 Supporting and centering in these clusters of silk 
 flags were large golden eagles with outspread wings, 
 and grasping in their talons the supporting cords of 
 large silk banners showing the crests of the other 
 States and Territories of the Union. 
 
 The boxes as well as the rear wall and the great 
 windows of the Banquet Hall were draped in the * 
 
4a 
 
 national colors, with shields centred in silk flags stud- 
 ding their folds. A grand centrepiece was placed directly 
 opposite the speakers' table, thus bringing it face to 
 face with the great seal of the Chamber of Commerce, 
 which, placed directly over and back of the Chair- 
 man, occupied the position of honor and formed the 
 grand centre of the elaborate decorations. 
 
 THE MENU. 
 
 The illustration which formed the frontispiece of the 
 menu was a fine piece of die, plate and hand work. At 
 the top of which was the seal of the Chamber, with the 
 caduceus, and ivy leaves of friendship, grouped about 
 which were the flags of the United States, Great Britain, 
 France and Germany, in honor of the gaests. 
 
 At the base was a steel plate engraving of the build- 
 ing of the Chamber. 
 
 The inscription read : 
 
 BANQUET BY THE 
 
 CHAMBEK OF COMMERCE, 
 
 OF THE STATE OF NEW-YOEK, 
 
 IN HONOR OF THE GUESTS WHO ATTENDED THE 
 
 DEDICATOBY CEREMONIES ON THE OPENING OF THE 
 
 BUILDING OF THE CHAMBER, 
 
 NUMBER SIXTY-FIVE LIBERTY- STREET, NEW- YORK. 
 
 THE WALDORF-ASTORIA, 
 TUESDAY EVENING, 
 
 NOVEMBER THE ELEVENTH, 
 NINETEEN HUNDRED AND TWO. 
 
 In the ornamental initial letter C, the shield of the 
 arms of the State of New-York is seen, entwined about 
 with grapes, suggesting the feast. 
 
44 
 
 THE MEDAL. 
 
 The medal struck to commemorate the opening of 
 the building of the Chamber and in honor of the 
 guests who attended the dedicatory ceremonies was 
 three inches in diameter and of proportionate weight and 
 thickness. On the obverse were two female figures — a 
 North American Indian girl and Europa — representing 
 America and Europe. In the background was a globe 
 and above this shone the caduceus — the rod of Mercury, 
 god of commerce, and are also shown with the steamer 
 St. Louis and a locomotive. All were surrounded by a 
 wreath of laurel — indicating success — and oak — signify- 
 ing strength — with horns- of- plenty and the shields of 
 the United States, Great Britain, France and Germany. 
 Around all was the legend, "In honor of the guests 
 who attended the dedicatory ceremonies on the opening 
 of the building of the Chamber of Commerce." 
 
 On the reverse was a fine representation of the 
 building of the Chamber of Commerce, with the seal of 
 the Chamber — surrounded by the inscription, " to com- 
 memorate the opening of the building of the Chamber 
 of Commerce of the State of New- York, New- York, 
 November 11, 1902." 
 
 A copy of the medal was presented to each guest and 
 to each member of the Chamber who attended the Ban- 
 quet. 
 
 THE GUESTS OF THE OHAMBEB OP COMMERCE. 
 
 The guests of the Chamber of Commerce were : 
 
 Theodobe Roosevelt, President of the United 
 States. 
 
45 
 
 Mr. Jules Cambon, Ambassador Extraordinary and 
 Plenipotentiary of France. 
 
 Sir Michael Henry Herbert, Ambassador Extra- 
 ordinary and Plenipotentiary of Great Britain. 
 
 Prince Hans Heinrioh von Pless, Special Repre- 
 sentative of Germany. 
 
 The Honorable Leslie M. Shaw, Secretary of the 
 Treasury. 
 
 The Honorable Elihu Root, Secretary of War. 
 
 The Honorable Chauncey M. Depew, Senator of the 
 United States from the State of New- York. 
 
 Rear Admiral Albert S. Barker, United States 
 Navy. 
 
 His Excellency Benjamin B. Odell, Jr., Governor 
 of the State of New- York. 
 
 The Honorable Seth Low, Mayor of the City of New- 
 York. 
 
 The Honorable Carl SchuRz, Honorary Member of 
 the Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. Thomas A. Edison, Honorary Member of the 
 Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 The Honorable Whitelaw Reid, Honorary Member 
 of the Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. Charles S. Smith, Ex-President and Honorary 
 Member of the Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. Hugh H. Hanna, Honorary Member of the 
 Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. Alexander E. Orr, Ex-President of the Cham- 
 ber of Commerce. 
 
 Sir Albert K. Rollit, D. C. L., LL. D., M. P., 
 Chairman of the Delegation of the London Chamber of 
 Commerce. 
 
46 
 
 Sir Vincent Kennett-Baerington, Delegate of the 
 London Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Lieut. -General J. W. Laurie, M. P., Delegate of the 
 London Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. H. C. Richards, K. C, M. P., Delegate of the 
 London Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. James Dixon, Delegate of the London Chamber 
 of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. William P. Wood, Delegate of the London 
 Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. Arthur Serena, J. P., Delegate of the London 
 Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. F. Paithfull Begg, Delegate of the London 
 Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Major S. Flood Page, Delegate of the London 
 Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. John Hume, Delegate of the London Chamber of 
 Commerce. 
 
 Mr. J. Y. Henderson, Delegate of the London 
 Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. Kenrio B. Murray, Secretary and Delegate of 
 the London Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 Mr. V. HuGOT, Delegate of the Chamber of Com- 
 merce of Paris. 
 
 Count Raoul Chandon, Delegate of the Chamber of 
 Commerce of Rheims. 
 
 Mr. Joseph Guinet, Delegate of the Chamber of 
 Commerce of Lyons. 
 
 Mr. LisoN PoRTB, Delegate of the Association des 
 Tissus of Paris. 
 
 Mr. Paul Heokmann, Vice-President of the Cham- 
 ber of Commerce of Berlin. 
 
47 
 
 Mr. Eeik Pontoppidan, Delegate of the Chamber of 
 Commerce of Hamburg. 
 
 Mr. Francis Kimbel, President of the American 
 Chamber of Commerce of Paris. 
 
 Mr. Alexander McFee, President of the Board of 
 Trade of Montreal. 
 
 Sir Peeoy Sanderson, Consul General of Great 
 Britain. 
 
 Mr. Gaston Velten, Acting Consul General of 
 France. 
 
 Mr. Karl Bfenz, Consul General of Germany. 
 
 Mr, Nicholas de Ladygensky, Consul General of 
 Russia. 
 
 Mr. C. Clive-Bayley, Consul of Great Britain. 
 
 Mr. Alfred Mosely. 
 
 President Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia 
 University. 
 
 Mr. Philippe Bunau-Varilla. 
 
 The Reverend Theodore L. Cuyler, D. D. 
 
 The Reverend Henry Van Dyke, D. D. 
 
 Mr. George B. Cortelyou. 
 
 Mr. George Earl Church. 
 
 Mr. Henry E. Gourd, President of the French 
 Chamber of Commerce in the City of New- York. 
 
 Mr. William Mackenzie, of Dundee, Scotland. 
 
 Mr. Eastman Johnson. 
 
 Mr. William R. Willcox. 
 
 Mr. Paul Dana. 
 
 Mr. Charles R. Miller. 
 
 Mr. John Foord. 
 
 Mr. St. Clair MoKelway. 
 Mr. Henry M. Stegman. 
 
 Mr. PoMBROY Burton. 
 
48 
 
 The Divine Blessing was asked by the Reverend 
 Theodoee L. Cuylee, D. D. 
 
 Shortly after nine o'clock, the President called the 
 assembly to order and said : 
 
 speech by mr. m0eri8 k. jesttp, president of the 
 chamber of commerce. 
 
 Gentlemen and Fellow Members of the Cham- 
 ber : This has been a red letter day in our history. We 
 have dedicated to the honorable calling of commerce 
 and trade our new building. We have dedicated our- 
 selves in the future, to do that which is honest and 
 right. [Applause.] 
 
 We have with us here to-night our President. 
 [Applause.] We have our Governor. [Applause.] 
 We have with us the Mayor of our City. We 
 have with us the representatives of the three great 
 nations of Europe. [Applause.] We have with us the 
 representatives of trade of Great Britain, France 
 and Germany. [Applause.] We have with us those 
 who are at the head of our financial affairs, our 
 Treasury Department, our War Department, [ap- 
 plause,] and we have with us those who are distin- 
 guished in all the civic walks of life, and last, but not 
 least, we have with us the ladies, [applause,] the com- 
 panions of our lives and cheerers of our homes. [Ap- 
 plause.] What more do we want. What more can I 
 say? 
 
 Gentlemen, I will now proceed to the business of 
 the evening, which to me is a very pleasant duty, and, 
 
4» 
 
 first of all, I wish to read a telegram from the Russian 
 Ambassador : 
 
 ^om Count Cassini, Arribassador Extraordinary and 
 Plenipotentiary of Russia. 
 
 Washington, D. C, November 10, 1902. 
 To President New- YorTc Charriber of Commerce^ New- 
 York City : 
 I regret immensely that a sudden indisposition pre- 
 vents me from the pleasure of attending the inaugu- 
 ration of the new building of the New- York Chamber 
 of Commerce, but I wish to express to you, Mr. Presi- 
 dent, on this occasion, my most cordial congratulations, 
 and ask you to convey to the members my most sincere 
 wishes for the prosperity of this institution, which will 
 undoubtedly successfully promote the interests of com- 
 merce of the United States as well as of other nations. 
 I avail myself of this opportunity to express my most 
 sincere hope that the commercial relations between 
 Russia and the United States will attain in the near 
 future the development which would be equal to tradi- 
 tional sentiments of friendship based on mutual con- 
 fidence existing between the two governments and the 
 two countries. I feel confident to say that on her part 
 Russia is, and has always been, ready to do all that is 
 in her power to attain this result, which I consider to 
 be of the utmost importance for the two friendly 
 nations. 
 
 Count Cassini, 
 Arribassador of Russia. 
 
 The President. — Gentlemen, we have also received 
 cablegrams from abroad — congratulations from a 
 number of prominent Chambers of Commerce, which 
 I will read : 
 
60 
 
 From the Chamber of Commerce of Bremen. 
 
 Beemen, November 11, 1902. 
 
 Accept our heartiest congratulations on dedication of 
 new home. May the good commercial relations which 
 have so far existed between New- York and Bremen 
 always find powerful support in further continuance of 
 friendly co-operation of our Chambers. 
 
 From the Chamber of Commerce of Hamburg. 
 
 Hamburg, November 11, 1902. 
 
 Chamber of Commerce of Hamburg sends hearty 
 congratulations on your festival of to-day. 
 
 From the Chamber of Commerce of Frankfort. 
 
 Feankfobt, November 11, 1902. 
 
 Congratulations on dedication of new home. Wish 
 at all time successful activity to Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 From the American Chamber of Commerce of Paris. 
 
 Ameeioan Chambee of Commerce, 
 
 Paeis, November 11, 1902. 
 
 Paris presents New- York Chamber hearty congratu- 
 lations. Hope it will continue unbroken career of pros- 
 perity, and always constitute important factor in 
 furtherance of trade. 
 
 From the American Chamber of Commerce of Liver- 
 pool. 
 
 Liverpool, November 11, 1902. 
 
 Hon. Whitelaw B-eid, Tribune^ New- York : 
 
 With grateful remembrance of your visit to our 
 
CI 
 
 centenary American Chamber Commerce, Liverpool, has 
 pleasure in asking you to express our sincere congratu- 
 lations to the New- York Chamber of Commerce on 
 entering its new home. 
 
 A. S. Hannay, 
 
 President. 
 Gbay Hill, 
 
 Secretary. 
 
 The President. — Gentlemen, will you fill your 
 glasses and rise, as I give you the first toast of the 
 evening, 
 
 "The President of the United States." 
 
 The audience drank the toast standing, giving three 
 cheers for the President of the United States ; also three 
 cheers for Theodoee Roosevelt. 
 
 SPEECH BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT, PRESIDENT OF THE 
 
 united states. 
 Mr. President, Gentlemen, and you, the Guests, 
 
 WHOM WE WELCOME HERE THIS EVENING : I do UOt 
 
 wish to speak to you in the language of idle compli- 
 ment, and yet it is but a bare statement of fact to 
 say that nowhere in our country could there be gath- 
 ered an audience which would stand as more typically 
 characteristic than this of all those qualities and attri- 
 butes which have given us of the United States our 
 commanding position in the industrial world. [Ap- 
 plause.] There is no need of my preaching to this 
 gathering the need of combining efficiency with upright 
 dealing, for as an American and as a citizen of New- 
 York I am proud to feel that the name of your organiza- 
 tion carried with it a guaranty of both ; [applause ;] and 
 your practice counts for more than any preaching could 
 
63 
 
 possibly count. [Applanse.] New- York is a City of 
 national importance, because its position towards the na- 
 tion is unique, and the Chamber of Commerce of New- 
 York must of necessity be an element of weight in the 
 commercial and industrial welfare of the entire people. 
 [Applause.] New- York is the great port of entry for 
 our country — the port in which centres the bulk of the 
 foreign commerce of the country — and her welfare is, 
 therefore, no matter of mere local or municipal, but of 
 national, concern. [Applause.] The conduct of the 
 Government in dealing with all matters affecting the 
 financial and commercial relations of New- York must 
 continually take into account this fact ; and it must be 
 taken into account in appreciating the importance of 
 the part played by the New- York Chamber of Com- 
 merce. [Applause.] 
 
 This body stands for the triumphs of peace, both abroad 
 and at home. We have passed that stage of national 
 development when depreciation of other peoples is felt 
 as a tribute to our own. [Applause.] We watch the 
 growth and prosperity of other nations, not with hatred 
 or jealousy, but with sincere and friendly good will. 
 [Applause.] I think I can say safely that we have shown 
 by our attitude toward Cuba, by our attitude toward 
 China, that as regards weaker powers, our desire is that 
 they may be able to stand alone, [applause,] and that if 
 they will only show themselves willing to deal honestly 
 and fairly with the rest of mankind, we on our side will 
 do all we can to help, not to hinder them. [Applause.] 
 With the great powers of the world we desire no rivalry 
 that is not honorable to both parties. We wish them 
 well. We believe that the trend of the modern spirit 
 is ever stronger toward peace, not war ; [applause ;] 
 toward friendship, not hostility, as the normal interna- 
 tional attitude. [Applause.] We are glad, indeed, that 
 we are on good terms with all other peoples of man- 
 kind, and no effort on our part shall be spared to secure 
 
63 
 
 a continuance of these relations. [Applause.] And 
 remember, gentlemen, that we shall be a potent factor 
 for peace largely in proportion to the way in which we 
 make it evident that our attitude is due, not to weak- 
 ness, not to inability to defend ourselves, [applause,] 
 but to a genuine repugnance to wrong-doing, a genuine 
 desire for self-respecting friendship with our neighbors. 
 [Cheers and applause.] The voice of the weakling or 
 the craven counts for nothing when he clamors for 
 peace ; but the voice of the just man armed is potent. 
 [Applause.] We need to keep in a condition of pre- 
 paredness, especially as regards our navy, not because 
 we want war, but because we desire to stand with those 
 whose plea for peace is listened to with respectful atten- 
 tion. [Applause.] 
 
 Important though it is thai we should have peace 
 abroad, it is even more important that we should have 
 peace at home. [Applause and cries of "Bravo!"] 
 You, men of the Chamber of Commerce, to whose efforts 
 we owe so much of our industrial well-being, can, and 
 I believe surely will, be influential in helping toward 
 that industrial peace which can obtain in society only 
 when in their various relations, employer and employed 
 alike show not merely insistance each upon his own 
 rights, but also regard for the rights of others, and a 
 full acknowledgment of the interests of the third party 
 — the public. [Cries of "good" and applause.] It is 
 no easy matter to work out a system or rule of conduct, 
 whether with or without the help of the law-giver, which 
 shall minimize that jarring and clashing of interests in 
 the industrial world which cause so much individual 
 irritation and suffering at the present day, and which, 
 at times, threatens baleful consequences to large por- 
 tions of the body politic. But the importance of the 
 problem cannot be over-estimated, and it deserves to 
 receive the careful thought of all men such as those 
 whom I am addressing to-night. [Applause.] There 
 
54 
 
 should be no yielding to wrong ; but there should most 
 certainly be not only desire to do right but a willing- 
 ness each to try to understand the viewpoint of his 
 fellows, with whom, for weal or for woe, his own for- 
 tunes are indissolubly bound. [Applause.] 
 
 No patent remedy can be devised for the solution of 
 these grave problems in the industrial world, but we 
 may rest assured that they can be solved at all only if 
 we bring to the solution certain old time virtues, and if 
 we strive to keep out of the solution some of the most 
 familiar and most undesirable of the traits to which 
 mankind has owed untold degredation and suffering 
 throughout the ages. Arrogance, suspicion, brutal envy 
 of the well-to-do, brutal indifference toward those who 
 are not well to do, the hard refusal to consider the 
 rights of others, the foolish refusal to consider the 
 limit of beneficent action, the base appeal to the spirit 
 of selfish greed, whether it take the form of plunder 
 of the fortunate or of oppression of the unfortunate — 
 from these and from all kindred vices this nation must 
 be kept free if it is to remain in its present position in 
 the forefront of the peoples of mankind. On the other 
 hand good will come, even out of the present evils, if 
 we face them armed with the old homely virtues ; if we 
 show that we are fearless of soul, cooler of head, and 
 kindly of heart; if, without betraying the weakness 
 that cringes before wrong doing, we yet show by deeds 
 and words our knowledge that in such a government as 
 ours each of us must be in very truth his brother's 
 keeper. [Applause.] 
 
 At a time when the growing complexity of our sociol 
 and industrial life has rendered inevitable the intrusion 
 of the State into spheres of work wherein it formerly 
 took no part, and when there is also a growing tendency 
 to demand the illegitimate and unwise transfer to the 
 Government of much of the work that should be done 
 by private persons, singly or associated together, it is a 
 
56 
 
 pleasure to address a body whose members possess, to 
 an eminent degree, the traditional American self-reliance 
 of spirit which makes them scorn to ask from the 
 Government, whether of State or of nation, anything 
 but a fair field and no favor [applause] — who confide 
 not in being helped by others, but in their own skill, 
 energy and business capacity to achieve success. The 
 first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours 
 is, that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight 
 [applause] — that he shall not be a mere passenger, 
 [laughter,] but shall do his share in the work that each 
 generation of us finds ready to hand ; and, furthermore, 
 that in doing his work he shall show not only the 
 capacity for sturdy self help, but also self-respecting 
 regard for the rights of others. [Great applause.] 
 
 The Chamber of Commerce, it is no idle boast to say, 
 stands in a pre-eminent degree for those qualities which 
 make the successful merchant, the successful business 
 man, whose success is won in ways honorable to himself 
 and beneficial to his fellows. [Applause.] There are 
 very different kinds of success. There is the success 
 that brings with it the seared soul — the success 
 which is achieved by wolfish greed and vulpine cun- 
 ning — the success which makes honest men uneasy 
 or indignant in its presence. Then there is the other 
 kind of success — the success which comes as the reward 
 of keen insight, of sagacity, of resolution, of address, 
 combined with unflinching rectitude of behavior, public 
 and private. [Applause.] The first kind of success 
 may, m a sense — and a poor sense at that — benefit the 
 individual, but it is always and necessarily a curse to 
 the community ; whereas, the man who wins the second 
 kind, as an incident of its winning, becomes a bene- 
 ficiary to the whole commonwealth. Throughout its 
 history, the Chamber of Commerce has stood for this 
 second and higher kind of success. [Applause.] It is, 
 therefore, fitting that I should come on here as the 
 
66 
 
 Chief Executive of the nation to wish you well in your 
 new home ; for you belong not merely to the City, not 
 merely to the State, but to all the country, and you 
 stand high among the great factors in building up that 
 marvelous prosperity which the entire country now 
 enjoys. [Applause.] The continuance of this pros- 
 perity depends in no small measure upon your sanity 
 and common sense, upon the way in which you combine 
 energy in action with conservative refusal to take part 
 in the reckless gambling which is so often bredby, and 
 which so inevitably puts an end to, prosperity, [Ap- 
 plause.] You are men of might in the world of Ameri- 
 can effort ; you are men whose names stand high in the 
 esteem of our people ; you are spoken of in terms like 
 those used in the long-gone ages when it was said of 
 the Phoenician cities that their merchants were princes. 
 Great is your power, and great, therefore, your respon- 
 sibility. Well and faithfully have you met this respon- 
 sibility in the past. We look forward with confident 
 hope to what you will do in the future, and it is there- 
 fore with sincerity that I bid you Godspeed this even- 
 ing, and wish for you, in the name of the nation, a 
 career of ever-increasing honor and usefulness. [Great 
 applause.] 
 
 The Peesident. — Gentlemen, the next toast for the 
 evening is, 
 
 "To THE Rulers of Nations represented at the 
 
 Banquet." 
 
 I think that toast is a little too formal, and so I take 
 the liberty of adding something to it : " May the 
 friendship and good will now existing between the 
 United States and the great nations of Europe here 
 represented never be broken." 
 
67 
 
 This toast will be responded to by his Excellency, 
 Mr. Jules Cambon, Ambassador Extraordinary and 
 Plenipotentiary of the Republic of France, Doyen 
 of the Diplomatic Body. 
 
 I have the pleasure of introducing Mr. Jules Cambon. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 SPEECH BY HIS EXCELLENCY M. JULES CAMBON, AMBAS- 
 SADOR EXTRAOEDINARY AND PLENIPOTENTIARY OF 
 THE REPUBLIC OF FRANCE. 
 
 Gentlemen : On behalf of the Diplomatic corps I beg 
 to thank you for your toast to the Sovereigns and 
 Rulers whose representatives are seated at this table. 
 
 Commerce is a very strong, the strongest bond be 
 tween nations, and its wide extension is the greatest 
 guarantee of peace. 
 
 From the bottom of our hearts we wish to see the 
 Chamber of Commerce of the State of New- York carry 
 forward the gigantic work which has been already 
 accomplished on this side of the Atlantic. [Applause.] 
 
 All Europe, and, allow me to say so, especially all 
 France, will be happy of anything that may strengthen 
 the ties of friendship which bind the countries repre- 
 sented here to the United States. [Applause.] 
 
 The President. — Gentlemen, I propose to change 
 very slightly the order of the toasts, and, before 
 proceeding to the next regular toast, I know that you 
 would like to hear from Sir Michael Henry Herbert, 
 [applause,] the new Ambassador just come to us from 
 our friend, Great Britain, [applause,] and I will ask 
 him to say a few words to us this evening and give him 
 our welcome. [Applause.] 
 
68 
 
 SPEECH BY SIR MICHAEL HENRY HERBERT, AMBASSADOR 
 EXTRAORDINARY AND PLENIPOTENTIARY OF GREAT 
 BRITAIN. 
 
 Mr. President, Chairman and G-entlemen : When 
 I landed in this country a few weeks ago I registered a 
 mental vow that I would follow the precedent set by my 
 predecessor and never make a speech as long as I was 
 in this country. [Laughter.] But man proposes and 
 Mr. Jesup disposes. And I feel also that I should 
 indeed be wanting in courtesy if I did not return thanks 
 to you to-night for your splendid hospitality, and for 
 the reception which you gave to me this morning, 
 which, I assure you, went to my heart. [Applause.] 
 
 It is, perhaps, appropriate that the King of England's 
 representative should say a few words to-night. We 
 heard this morning that your charter was originally 
 granted to your corporation by a King of England. 
 King George III. The present King of England no 
 longer takes an official interest in your corporation, 
 [laughter,] but I can assure you, gentlemen, he takes a 
 very friendly interest in it, as you can tell by his cordial 
 reception of your delegates last year when he received 
 them at Windsor. And my presence here to night is 
 intended to illustrate his good will towards these United 
 States and the interest taken in Great Britain in the 
 commercial prosperity of New- York. 
 
 Gentlemen, I think Mr. Cambon's admirable speech 
 has omitted one point, and that is the gratitude which 
 we diplomatists owe to you business men, and I will tell 
 you why. 
 
 Commercial intercourse promotes social intercourse ; 
 social intercourse promotes friendship ; and the friend- 
 ship of peoples does more than all we diplomatists to 
 bring countries together. As your eloquent Ambas- 
 sador in London, Mr. Choate, [applause,] of whom 
 
59 
 
 yon may well be proud, [applause,] said last year, I tell 
 you that commerce is the real pacifier, the peacemaker, 
 the common and mutual blessing of all mankind. 
 
 For these reasons, gentlemen, we hold that a diplo- 
 matist should get into touch with the business men 
 of the conntry to which he is accredited, just as much 
 as he gets into touch with the political men. [Laugh- 
 ter.] I therefore trust that the acquaintance which we 
 have so happily begun to-night will not be a temporary 
 one but a permanent one. [Applause.] 
 
 I am sure that I shall not have many opportunities of 
 coming to New- York just now, for I am leading in 
 Washington, if I may borrow a favorite expression of 
 the President, a very strenuous life, [applause,] picking 
 up the threads of the various questions with which we 
 have to deal. But I can assure you, gentlemen, if you 
 come to Washington and will call at the Embassy, I 
 will give you as hearty a welcome as you have given me 
 here to-night. [Applause.] 
 
 The President. — When the Chamber sent an invita- 
 tion to the German Ambassador at Washington and 
 found that he was absent in Europe, His Majesty 
 William II., the German Emperor, to show his good will 
 and friendly feeling towards the United States, ap- 
 pointed at once as his representative to come to this 
 country — almost in a moment's warning, and we have 
 him here to-night — Prince Hans Heinrioh von 
 Pless, and I have great pleasure in introducing him 
 to you. [Applause.] 
 
 speech by prince HANS HEINRICH VON PLESS. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen : I feel highly 
 honored, indeed, to represent the Government of my 
 
60 
 
 country on this memorable occasion. The opening of 
 the new building of the Chamber of Commerce of the 
 State of New- York, which we celebrate to day, is not 
 by any means an event of merely local or even national 
 interest. The gathering at this table of delegates of 
 foreign nations gives ample proof of the international 
 character of the occasion. [Applause.] The commerce 
 and industry of the United States have of late years 
 achieved much toward an increased importance in the 
 financial and commercial affairs of the world, pushing, 
 at the same time, the Chamber of Commerce of the 
 leading commercial and financial center of the Union 
 to the front rank with her sister organizations of the 
 old world. The wonderful resources which the United 
 States possess in their natural wealth, in agricultural 
 products as well as in raw materials, for nearly all fields 
 of industrial production are, together with the genius of 
 their leading men in finance, commerce and industry, the 
 admiration of the old world. [Applause.] We of the 
 old world know very well what a large debt of gratitude 
 we owe to the commercial and industrial genius of your 
 nation. That is one of the reasons why we are with 
 you to-day in order to participate, on behalf of our 
 governments, in the dedicatory ceremonies attending 
 the opening of that magnificent building, in which, 
 from to-day, the commercial wisdom and the financial 
 genius of this great nation will centre. And I, for one, 
 will say that I feel proud, indeed, to represent the gov- 
 ernment of my country at this memorable event. [Ap- 
 plause.] This feeling of genuine pride I, no doubt, 
 share with the rest of the foreign delegates present, 
 but, at the same time, I consider it my special duty as 
 well as my pleasure to express on this occasion on 
 behalf of my Sovereign and of my country the feeling 
 of gratitude with which Grermany remembers the warm 
 and friendly recepiion which, a few months ago, a Prince 
 of the Royal House of Prussia representing his Majesty, 
 
61 
 
 the Emperor, in a special mission to this country, has 
 found everywhere here a reception which was bound to 
 find a ready and equally warm response with our 
 country and people, and which will never be forgotten. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 Our age stands in the token of commerce, and each 
 nation, even to the. limits of its resources and abilities, 
 will therefore try its best to protect its own interests on 
 the common field of international competition. But 
 competition does not necessarily mean hostility. 
 Mutual welfare is to-day the true community of in- 
 terests amongst the nations of the world. [Applause.] 
 There is room for all of us in the world's markets, and 
 fair and liberal spirited competition has in itself an 
 element of education and mutual understanding con- 
 ducive to friendly appreciation of each other's good 
 points which cannot but lead the nations of the earth 
 towards a higher conception and more comprehensive 
 fulfillment of their destinies in mutual helpfulness. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 In the spirit of these remarks I have the honor, Mr. 
 President and gentlemen, to offer on behalf of my 
 Sovereign and of my country our best and most earnest 
 wishes for the future of this great and friendly nation 
 and for the work of one of the most important agencies 
 of its economical welfare, the Chamber of Commerce of 
 the State of New- York. [Long continued applause.] 
 
 The Peesident. — Gentlemen, the next toast, 
 
 " The Chambers of Commerce of the World, the 
 Modern Successors of the Guilds of The Middle 
 Ages," 
 
 will be responded to by Sir Albert K. Rollit, 
 
69 
 
 Member of Parliament and Chairman of the Delegation 
 of the London Chamber of Commerce. [Applause.] 
 
 Sir Albert, before giving this toast, to which I shall 
 ask you to respond, I feel it a pleasure and a privilege 
 to express to you how grateful we are to see you here 
 and your delegation. We never can forget, those of us 
 who received your hospitality not many months ago in 
 the great City of London — we never can forget that visit, 
 the kindness with which we were received, and all that 
 was done for our welfare and comfort. We came away 
 feeling toward you and towards our brothers in Eng- 
 land a tie of friendship, respect and love which we had 
 not before. We are glad that you have accepted our 
 invitation to come across the ocean, and that you are 
 here with us this evening to break bread with us. I 
 wish to convey to you and to your delegation the 
 thanks of the members of the Chamber of Commerce 
 that we have the privilege of receiving you. [Ap- 
 plause.] 
 
 speech by sib albert k. rollit, d. 0. l., ll. d., m. p., 
 chairman of the delegation of the london 
 chamber of commerce. 
 
 Mb. Chairman, Mr. President of the Republic, 
 Mr. Mayor, Your Excellencies, and Gentlemen : 
 I am very conscious of the high compliment which is 
 paid to the London Chamber of Commerce, and to its 
 Delegation, of which I have the honor to be Chairman, 
 in my being asked to acknowledge, — in the presence 
 of your great statesman, your President of the 
 Republic, [applause], in this great convention of com- 
 merce, and in this representative gathering of interna- 
 tional courtesy and comity, — the Toast of " The Cham- 
 
jMi 
 
 63 
 
 bers of Commerce of the World, the modem successors 
 of the religious Guilds of the Middle ages." I am afraid, 
 however, the religion is now reduced to the saying of 
 grace before and after banquets [laughter ] ; but the 
 inspiring speeches which have been made this morn- 
 ing and evening must stimulate any man to do 
 his best, — 'to rise to the height of the great argu- 
 ment.' I respond, therefore, with every apprecia- 
 tion of the most kind expressions which have been 
 made use of by the President of your Chamber, and I 
 know that I express the reciprocal good feeling of all 
 Chambers of Commerce, — (including the British Cham- 
 ber at Paris, which has authorized me, as one of its 
 Directors, so to say), — and especially of those Cham- 
 bers which have the honor and the privilege of being 
 represented here to-night, — Chambers of Commerce 
 among the largest and the most notable in the whole 
 world. It is quite true that the oldest, or probably the 
 oldest. Chamber, Marseilles, is not here ; though when 
 I say the oldest, perhaps I ought to except Ephesus, 
 whose extemporized Chamber was formed in the market 
 place, when the craftsmen, men of like occupation, met 
 because the craft was in danger, — a scene which gives 
 Chambers of Commerce a high antiquity [laughter]. 
 But we have with us the close neighbor of Marseilles, 
 Lyons, which recently celebrated its bi-centenary. We 
 have also the Chamber of Paris, with its great Schools 
 of Commerce ; the Chamber of Berlin ; and that very 
 old Chamber of Hamburg, a Chamber which may be 
 said to be coeval with that great Hansetown itself, the 
 very word Hansetown signifying *an association,' and a 
 Chamber which may, therefore, be said to have existed 
 when England and America were being made in Ger- 
 many. [Laughter and applause.] 
 
 There is also another Chamber which is most properly 
 present at a great banquet and festivity like this. I 
 mean the Chamber of Commerce of Rheims, of Cham- 
 
64 
 
 pagne, represented by a suggestive name, Count Raoul 
 'Ohandon,' and represented also in the magnificent 
 hospitality which has been extended to us to-night. 
 [Laughter.] 
 
 Gentlemen, we of the Chambers of Commerce from 
 abroad most cordially thank you for that entertainment 
 and hospitality, which we shall always remember with 
 gratitude, that gratitude which is the memory of the 
 heart. [Applause.] Carltle said that the inventor 
 of a new pudding might be a greater man than the 
 discoverer of a new planet, but experience tells me that 
 if we wished for them, you would add both to your 
 Lucullian menu ; and the fate I fear if, unlike Mrs. 
 Lot, I go straight on, will be that I may be turned 
 into a Terrapin Tower ; that my only strong points left 
 will be ' blue-points' ; and that if, as we are assured in 
 commerce, figures can prove anything, our figures will 
 be conclusive proof of your lavish hospitality. [Laugh- 
 ter.] Its generous profusion rivals that of the Doctor, 
 who, when the Highwayman put the pistol at his head, 
 saying, 'your money or your life,' replied, 'my man, 
 I have always taken both, pray do the same.' 
 [Laughter.] 
 
 I now begin to understand an original rule of your 
 Chamber, which puzzled me for a moment when I first 
 read it in your Reports, under which fines were inflicted 
 for non-attendance at meetings, "except in the case of 
 gout," to quote the words of the rule, " or other valid 
 cause." [Laughter.] I should have expressed it, 
 "other in-valid cause." [Laughter.] But that is a 
 detail, [laughter] ; and, for my part, I venture to hope 
 that, as a means of friendship and good fellowship, 
 dining will never become a lost art, or hospitality only 
 an ancient virtue. [Applause.] 
 
 For the Chambers of Commerce, I respectfully offer 
 you, of the New- York Chamber, our congratulations 
 upon the opening of your new building to-day, a build- 
 
65 
 
 ing worthy of tlie great work of yonr Chamber. You 
 have no longer merely a mansion in the skies [laugh- 
 ter], you have not an iron flat or a "flat-iron," 
 [laughter] ; but you have a most beautiful building, not 
 made with hands only, but made by the minds of those 
 men pictured on its walls, whose portraits represent the 
 evolution and development of the commerce of your 
 Empire State ; a building the beauty of which, and the 
 harmony of all its parts, suggested to my delighted 
 eyes to-day the imagination of petrified music [ap- 
 plause]. That building takes its place not merely in the 
 history of commerce, but in the civic development of 
 your community, in the adornment of your great City. 
 That City is the subject of a transformation scene, 
 which is, to my mind, most striking. It is thirty-two 
 years of my life since I first visited New- York. At that 
 time I went to the top of Trinity Church to view the 
 house tops ; to-day I go to the house tops to view the top 
 of Trinity, — a topsy-turvy view of your tall City, your 
 modern Babel. [Laughter.] Your splendid addition 
 to the architecture of that City, a palace of white 
 marble, may, apart from its commercial aspect, well fill 
 you with proper civic pride, in that it helps you to 
 echo the boast of Augustus C^sae : "I found Rome 
 of brick, and I left it of marble." [Applause.] 
 
 And that building bears no name save that of ' The 
 Chamber of Commerce,' — it is the gift not of a person, 
 but of the people ; in which you also emulate the civic 
 virtue of the Athenians, when they forebore to name 
 one of their public buildings after Peeicles, — after the 
 greatest statesman of antiquity, saying that it belonged 
 only to the people. [Applause.] 
 
 But this is an age in which we rightly judge of 
 men not by what they have, but by what they 
 do ; and it is of your work that I desire for a 
 moment to speak, — not merely of your work for 
 commerce, great as it has been, but rather of your 
 
66 
 
 special work for civilization and for Christianity, 
 in which your Chamber has set an example to the 
 whole world of cosmopolitan charity and benevolence. 
 You have, indeed, fulfilled your altruistic motto : "Non 
 nobis nati solum ;" you have unified conscience and 
 commerce ; you have federated the nations and the 
 peoples, through the human heart ; you have fostered 
 both commerce and international comity by a union of 
 both hearts and interests throughout the world. The 
 epitaph of the philanthropist, Howaed, in our St. 
 Paul's is: "They who seek to do good to mankind tread 
 an open, but an unfrequented, path to immortality," — 
 and on that path you have made beaten footprints 
 for all mankind to follow. Wherever there has been a 
 convulsion, a catastrophe, a conflagration, almost any 
 human ill, your helping hand has been extended to 
 relieve and to restore ; and we in England, after many 
 generations, do not, and never can, forget, that, at a 
 delicate and difficult moment of your civil war, you 
 helped our cotton operatives of Lancashire, and im- 
 planted in our hearts a remembrance and a gratitude 
 which will endure with the history of our nation. 
 Truly, you have made the performance of public and 
 private duty the chivalry of to-day. [Applause.] 
 
 And you will have your reward. On the Town Hall 
 or Zittan, in Saxony, I remember reading a Latin in- 
 scription : "To do good and to be spitefully entreated 
 is kingly" [laughter]; and, whatever your material 
 profit, you will at least have regal returns, and the con- 
 solation once given to me by an engine-driver who had 
 permitted me to ride with him on his engine in the 
 White Mountains, the better to see the scenery, and 
 whom I asked, when we were descending a steep and 
 precipitous decline : "Where should we go to if that 
 break gives way f " That, sir, depends upon our past 
 lives." [Laughter.] 
 
 But, gentlemen, the President of the Republic has 
 
67 
 
 most properly suggested to us that, not only in acts of 
 benevolence, but also in the ethics of commerce, your 
 Chamber has done much good by the high standard and 
 tone of commercial morality which it has always set up 
 for both itself and for others. It has ever proclaimed 
 honesty as the best policy. You have never shown any 
 sympathy with that class of men of whom it may be 
 said : *' It is not their principle to pay their interest, nor 
 their interest to pay their principal." [Laughter and 
 applause.] You have known how to punctuate the 
 line between speculation and peculation ; you have 
 never given countenance to the idea of some that 
 there are easier and better ways of getting a dollar than 
 by working for it ; and you have always supported 
 laws tending to repress such commercial adventurers as 
 the one who said: "Two years ago I came to your 
 country a penniless and friendless man ; but, thanks to 
 my own enterprise and energy, I leave it to to-morrow 
 twenty thousand pounds in debt." [Laughter and 
 applause.] 
 
 Your object has been to advance the best men and 
 the best measures. Yoa have favored the enactment of 
 good laws and pure administration, and you have never 
 failed to remember, as has also been suggestively inti- 
 mated by the President of the Republic to-night, that 
 liberty, to be enjoyed, must be limited by law ; that 
 where law ends there tyranny begins ; and that the 
 tyranny is the same, whether it be the tyranny of a 
 monarch or of a multitude. Nay, the tyranny of the 
 multitude may even be a multiplied tyranny. [Ap- 
 plause.] And, by these means you have rid your laws, 
 to a large extent, of the reproach which has been at- 
 tached to ours, — not altogether truly, but still attached, 
 — that law and equity are two things which God has 
 joined together and man has put asunder. [Laughter.] 
 
 For instance, I was present at the last historical de- 
 bate in your old building, and was struck by the solici- 
 
68 
 
 tude, in municipal improvements, for individual rights ; 
 while, as Chairman of the Statutory Savings Banks' In- 
 spection Committee in the United Kingdom, I have 
 noticed your interest in the safety of deposited sav- 
 ings, and your wish, like ours, to make the most of them 
 by widening the area of prudent and safe investment. 
 
 Therefore, gentlemen, it is a great pleasure to us, 
 members of other, I will not say foreign. Chambers, to 
 visit yours ; but, from the first, I have been faced by 
 what appears to me a perpetual paradox. I thought I 
 was coming from the old world to the new world ; from 
 old York, my home county, to New- York ; from the 
 dark ages, relieved, — it is true, by brilliant flashes of 
 light, disclosing the germs of the great institutions of to- 
 day, — to the light age [laughter] ; and, when we were 
 invited, even Mr. Hepbuen wrote to me, plaintively 
 almost, saying that you had but little of interest to 
 shew us, and, above all, he added, ' we have no antiqui- 
 ties.' Now, I have asked myself while I have been here, 
 what is a rough test of antiquity. I have remembered 
 an old song, named ' When Geoege III. was King,' 
 and I came to the conclusion that the title of that song 
 was enough to give me an index of reasonable antiquity, 
 — that the four Geoeges were old enough for any one. 
 But, wherever I go, I cannot escape from Geoege III. 
 and other Geoeges. I went to Columbia University, — 
 that magnificent monument of the foundation of your 
 commercial success on wide and diJBEused education and 
 knowledge, on equality of educational opportunity, 
 tempered by natural selection according to merit. It 
 was called The King's College, originally, and was 
 founded by Geoege II. ! I went to Trinity Church. Its 
 whole associations were with Geoege III. ! I came from 
 a Chamber of Commerce founded in 1882. 
 
 A Voice.— In 1768. 
 
 SiE Albebt K. Rollit. — No, no. That is the point. I 
 
69 
 
 came from a Chamber of Commerce founded in 1882, in 
 London, not forgetful of the historical fact that the 
 earliest Chambers which Great Britain has produced 
 are the Chamber of Glasgow, established in 1783, and 
 that of Edinburgh in 1785 ; and then I entered the Cham- 
 ber of Commerce of the State of New- York, founded by 
 Koyal Charter of His Majesty King George III., in 
 1768. ! Why, gentlemen, that is going back almost to 
 the times of the Young Pretender and the Stuarts ! 
 [Laughter.] Even the original seal of silver of your 
 Chamber, a seal older than our Great Seal, because our 
 Great seals are always broken up, was lost, and found, 
 and brought back to New- York from an old curiosity 
 shop in England. Now, I must make an appeal. 
 I heard, the other night, your Ambassador at Berlin, Mr. 
 White, at the Bodleian Tercentenary Celebration at Ox- 
 ford, say that in his boyhood, he and the other scholars 
 were taught — shall I call it mildly ? — not to reverence 
 the name of George III. I now make an appeal that 
 there be an amnesty, that those days may be completely 
 forgotten, that, — as even the memory of King John is, 
 Mr. Mayor, redeemed, because he first invented Mayors, 
 — so that the character of George III. may be redeemed 
 by the fact of his historical association with your great 
 institutions to which I have ventured to refer. [Ap- 
 plause.] 
 
 Now, gentlemen, a few words more especially to my 
 Toast, the Toast of The Chambers of Commerce of the 
 World, a wide-wide- world toast. Its very title recalls 
 some of the foibles of our two nations, at which we may 
 now laugh. I have heard one of your countrymen speak 
 of its boundaries, saying, ' My country is bounded by the 
 path-less ocean on the east, by the e-qui-nox-es on the 
 south, by the au-ro-ra Bo re-a-lis on the north, and by 
 the day of judgment on the west. [Laughter.] Well, 
 we laughingly reply 'that our country has no boun- 
 daries at all,' [laughter], 'it is encompassed by the 
 
70 
 
 inviolate sea.' And I remember also having a conversa- 
 tion, — I am not sure, Mr. Senator Ohaunoe;y Depew, 
 whether you were not present, — at Homburg, where 
 some of us Britons were talking, too tritely, that the 
 sun never sets upon our Empire, and when a distin- 
 guished American lady said to us : ' Has it ever occurred 
 to you to inquire the reason why the sun does not set 
 upon your Empire ? ' No.' ' Then,' she said, ' I will 
 hazard a conjecture, — may it not be that Providence 
 dare not trust you in the dark V [Laughter.] 
 
 Mr. Depew. — When that remark was made Sir 
 Albert was younger than he is now. 
 
 Sir Albert K. Rollit. — And I am afraid I was also 
 darker. [Laughter.] 
 
 Now, the words of the toast lead me to support it by 
 the argument that Chambers of Commerce are based upon 
 the application of the principle of co-operation to com- 
 merce ; they give cohesion to commerce ; that collective 
 action is more powerful than individual action ; and that, 
 by this collective action, men of commerce are able, as 
 a whole, to do for each very much that the individuals 
 could never do for themselves, or, at any rate, much 
 which a great body politic is better able to do for each, 
 and which it can do much better and more cheaply than 
 the individuals can do it by and for themselves. My 
 great Hull townsman, Andrew Marvel, an incorrupti- 
 ble patriot in a corruptible age, said, in one of his 
 poems : "How much one man can do, if he both act and 
 know ;" and it is this principle of knowledge, as the 
 basis of business, to which Chambers of Commerce are 
 able to give practical effect. How much can be done 
 through collective knowledge and action ! Chambers of 
 Commerce are the eyes and ears, as it were, of commer- 
 cial peoples ; they are the ' intelligence departments ' of 
 
71 
 
 our industrial armies ; and if, for a moment, I may carry 
 the military parallel further, your Chamber is, as it 
 were, a great ambulance department of those armies, 
 raising the fallen, relieving and restoring stragglers to 
 the ranks, making them march into step again, and re- 
 placing them in a position from which they may have 
 momentarily fallen, and to which they are restored by 
 your generous co-operation. You have thus shown 
 how to widen the objective of political economy from 
 mere wealth to the greater and better one of the welfare 
 of mankind. [Applause.] 
 
 And, by many such means, our Chambers of Commerce, 
 now rising in new countries almost with the Church and 
 the Store — as in South Africa, and in the Philippines, 
 where, it may interest you to know, there are now 
 two Chambers of Commerce, — have promoted national 
 and individual commerce and trade. They have also 
 taken, and are taking, their part in great public works, 
 — in such works as the Erie Canal, at the base of your 
 commerce in the port of New- York, in the Atlantic 
 cable, in the Pacific cable, just completed, girdling 
 the world, and so realizing the demand of that great 
 municipal reformer who insisted that "all those old- 
 fashioned lines of latitude and longitude should be 
 taken up and replaced by telegraphic wires." [Laughter 
 and applause.] Chambers of Commerce are thus, 
 through collective and common knowledge and action, a 
 great power in the commercial world. We have heard 
 much latterly about Trusts and Combines and the like ; 
 these have caused some surprise and some appre- 
 hension, but my chief comment is that earlier know- 
 ledge and thought, which might have been had through 
 Chambers of Commerce, might have prevented, or 
 allayed, that apprenension. So long since as 1894, in 
 my Annual Address as President of the Associated 
 Chambers of Commerce of the United Kingdom, I dealt 
 with the subject as one for careful consideration 
 
72 
 
 Ever since I read my Locke, as a student, I have 
 learned to think more of things than words and names. 
 Trusts have existed, in principle, since Lord Keeper 
 Coke said that corporations had neither souls to be 
 saved nor bodies to be kicked ; and what are Trusts, after 
 all, but vast incorporations under a new name ? And 
 corporations and companies, no less than Trusts, have 
 had their amalgamations and reconstructions, their ab- 
 sorptions, their monopolies, their watered capitals, and 
 all the rest of it. The vital point is as to administrative 
 methods. Cicero said that bad laws well administered 
 might be better than good laws ill administered ; and, so 
 far as Combines and the like effect more economic pro- 
 duction and reduction of cost by diminishing fixed and 
 other charges, they are a phase in the economic evolu- 
 tion of trade, and a good one ; and, if they sin against 
 the human and Divine law of "live and let live," if, 
 like Juggernauts, they crush out and contract the 
 necessaries of life by grinding monopolies, we must 
 hope that the resources of civilized legislation will 
 prove at least as equal to the occasion as they were in 
 Queen Elizabeth's time in her statutes against monopo- 
 lies, and regratings, and engrossings, and this by the way 
 of due and proper regulation and control and without 
 any unnecessary interference with the course of trade 
 and industry. For my part, therefore, I don't think we 
 have any real reason to fear, in our country or in yours, 
 anything very serious from combinations, much less 
 from competition. If you combine, we do not, nor ever 
 shall, repine ; and, if you are our competitors, we are 
 quite certain you will also be our customers, because we 
 hold the gateway of Europe, because there must be two 
 termini at least in every commercial transaction, and 
 because both our nations share the inestimable ad- 
 vantage of a common language, the chief instrument 
 of international trade. We shall, therefore, jointly 
 advance, and the destinies of our countries, of both of 
 
73 
 
 them, will be promoted by the combined action of which 
 I have been speaking. I have, indeed, no fear of 
 Morgan-atic alliances in commerce. [Laughter,] Eng- 
 lish capital largely and profitably helped to develop 
 American railroads and other public works, and, equally, 
 American capital may develop for us Rapid Transit 
 through our two-penny tubes [laughter]; and it is 
 possible that American commercial methods may make 
 us, as a people, more active and alert and up-to-date, 
 and less inclined, while an American father says, 
 "Thank God I have a son," to rest and be thankful, 
 and say "Thank God I have a father." [Laughter.] 
 I believe, then, Mr. President of the Republic, that the 
 eternal principles of right and justice, which both our 
 great nations reverence, will prevail, and that, if they 
 falter, even for a moment, means will be found of recon- 
 ciling any changes with the supreme principle of the 
 welfare of the nation. [Applause.] 
 
 Now, gentlemen, with apologies for a somewhat long 
 trespass, I conclude by saying that we also owe some- 
 thing to our Chambers for the practical interest they 
 have taken in Mercantile Arbitrations, in place of slow 
 and costly litigation ; in Industrial Conciliation and 
 Arbitration, — in saying to the combatants, ' Strike, but 
 hear ;' in International Arbitration, by which war has 
 more than once been prevented. For instance, in the case 
 of the Venezuelan dispute, I claim, with pride, that , 
 during my Presidency of the London Chamber of Com- 
 merce, we particularly represented the difficulty, the 
 delicacy, and the danger of the question, and urged upon 
 Ministers of both political parties its reference to arbi- 
 tration, long before matters became acute ; and we shall 
 never forget that arbitration, as the alternative to that 
 which would have been a public crime, war between 
 our two countries, was ultimately effected, in a very 
 large measure by the joint action of your Chamber and 
 our own. [Applause.] 
 
74 
 
 We are, therefore, glad that the United States has 
 set the first example of a reference to arbitration under 
 the Treaty of the Hague ; that the Behring' s Sea dis- 
 pute was disposed of by arbitration, with due regard to 
 the interest and feelings of our great colony, Canada ; 
 and even that in Samoa both our nations have so referred 
 matters, although they have both been held liable for 
 injuries to third parties ; while many of us have urged 
 that, in the case of France and England and the United 
 States, the very possibility of war ought to be removed 
 by general Treaties of Arbitration. And, if there be 
 still some prejudice in my country against international 
 arbitration, owing to the belief that we did not gain 
 much by the Treaty of Washington in relation to the 
 Alabama disputes, I am able to say, as a Britisher, that 
 my shipping firm of Bailey & Leetham was a success- 
 ful claimant under that treaty, and that we received a 
 most liberal reward for the detention of one of our 
 steamers, the Labuan, in the Harbor of New- York 
 during the war, lest she should carry the news of Gen- 
 eral Banks' expedition down South. [Laughter.] 
 
 That award, however, was of small moment, compared 
 with the Presidential message of General Grant of 
 December 2, 1872, when he addressed to Congress these 
 words: "The results of the arbitration leave Great 
 Britain and the United States without a shadow on their 
 friendly relations." [Applause.] That, I hope, will 
 make for arbitration and make for peace ; for, we of the 
 Chambers of Commerce agree with those statesmen who 
 believe that commerce, whatever it may have meant 
 occasionally in the past, now means peace. Our com- 
 merce is peace ; for, as the terrible consequences of the 
 use of modern armaments tend to keep the peace, so the 
 consequences of the disruption of the vast interests of 
 modern commerce must ever make for peace. Com- 
 merce, therefore, will act as what I will call economic 
 friction against war. There are times when the exist- 
 
75 
 
 ence or honor of nations is at stake. There are moments 
 when the force of right mnst be asserted by the right of 
 force, when the sword alone can keep the sword in the 
 scabbard ; and peril is not peace. Bnt we all hope for 
 that blessed time when the animosities shall perish and 
 the humanities become eternal, when the barriers shall 
 fall down between nation and nation, and be set up only 
 between right and wrong ; when we may all say : 
 
 The sheathed sword falls, 
 And peace, an Angel, folds her golden wings, 
 And commerce smiling callB. 
 
 [Applause.] 
 
 And in the case, Mr, President, of our own two great 
 countries, when I speak of peace, I am reminded 
 of the great Pax Romana^ spoken of by Tacitus, in 
 which the whole Roman world is described as lying at 
 peace ; but that was a peace of force, a peace of subjec- 
 tion, a peace of the sword, the hilt of which was at 
 Rome and the point everywhere. [Applause.] And, 
 as Cavour said, ' You may do anything with bayonets 
 — except sit upon them.' [Laughter.] 
 
 Our Pax Anglo-Saxonica, what we hope for, the great 
 Anglo-Saxon peace, is to be a peace of liberty, and help, 
 and hopefulness, the peace of civilization and Christi- 
 anity. Our countries ever recall a commercial simile — 
 as it were of the weft and warp, our great ocean steamers, 
 like gigantic shuttles, passing to and fro, and weav- 
 ing them into one harmonious whole. How we long 
 for that brotherhood of kith and kin ! How we thank 
 you for paving the way to it, by your generous and en- 
 lightened sympathies, and by the expressions of your 
 public men and of your esteemed President. [Ap- 
 plause.] St. Paul says, 'Let peace garrison your 
 hearts ;' and it is in this spirit of peace that I close my 
 speech, — in thanking you all. President and People, on 
 behalf of the Chambers of Commerce, — by borrowing, in 
 the poverty of my own language for such a purpose, 
 
76 
 
 from the wealth of Shakespeare, — our Shakespeare, 
 — your Shakespeare, — that King Shakespeare, of 
 which we are all subjects, that genius which has given 
 us and you, and the whole world, a priceless heritage, — 
 to enable me to say all in a single verse : 
 
 " We can no other answer make 
 But thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks." 
 
 [Applause.] 
 
 The President. — Gentlemen, we have with as a 
 representative of the commercial interests of the French 
 Republic, Mr. V. Hugot. He comes as a delegate of 
 the Chamber of Commerce of Paris. In your name I 
 tender to him and his associates a hearty welcome. 
 We do not forget that France was our ancient ally, and 
 is still our firm friend. [Applause.] The toast, 
 
 " Reciprocity between Nations is the application of 
 Commercial Principles and Methods to Inter- 
 national Intercourse." 
 
 I have the pleasure of introducing to you Mr. Hugot, 
 delegate of the Paris Chamber of Commerce. [Ap- 
 plause.] 
 
 speech by MR. V. HUGOT, DELEGATE OF THE PARIS 
 CHAMBER OF COMMERCE. 
 
 Me. President and Gtentlemen : I beg to rise in 
 order to present to you the congratulations of the Paris 
 Chamber of Commerce, in whose name and on whose 
 behalf I am here. [Applause.] Unfortunately our 
 President, M. Fumouje, has been prevented on account 
 of the great pressure upon his time from responding to 
 your kind invitation. 
 
77 
 
 Probably I am not altogether unworthy to address 
 yon myself, as, for more than half a century, I had 
 never ceased to be in close personal contact with the 
 business of your City. I began at the time of the 
 Presidential competition between Franklin Pierce 
 and General Scott. I do remember it pretty well, as it 
 was associated with a commercial speculation which 
 turned out badly. We had imported a lot of purses 
 with the portrait of Scott on them. Pierce was 
 elected, and we had to sell out Scott as a job lot. 
 [Laughter.] We experienced in this circumstance that 
 it is in New- York as it was formeriy in Rome : Vie 
 Yictis. 
 
 Since then what changes have taken place in the 
 commercial life of the United States. When one con- 
 siders its extraordinary growth one's mind becomes 
 confused. If the first President of 1768 of the New- 
 York Chamber of Commerce came back to life he would 
 be astounded at the manifestation of such marvelous 
 power. 
 
 As a matter of fact, nature has been prodigal towards 
 you with her gifts. Your soil produces all the various 
 necessities of life, such as corn, cattle, wood, &c. 
 Minerals and coal are found in abundance. She has 
 given you immense lakes and rivers, and through you 
 she has given to the worid that most wonderful gift of 
 modern industry — petroleum. In order to complete her 
 work she has made of you a race which combines the 
 qualities and experience of the old people with the 
 energy of youth. [Applause.] 
 
 Each star of your flag is the symbol of a new territory 
 conquered to civilization and industry and to the light 
 of science. [Applause.] In the last fifty years how 
 the number of those stars has increased. 
 
 Your clients hail from all the nations of the world, 
 and one the more readily understands why the metropo- 
 lis of such a country should erect such a magnificent 
 
78 
 
 palace to commerce, why so many famous names should 
 be inscribed on its rolls of honor, and why its members 
 should be as numerous to the City of New- York alone 
 as for most of the Chambers of Commerce of the old 
 continent together. The Chamber of Commerce in 
 Paris admires you, but without envy. It has deter- 
 mined, I can assure you from my heart, to entertain the 
 most amicable relations with you, and it hopes those 
 relations will be fruitful. [Applause.] 
 
 The toast I have the honor to respond to is, in my 
 opinion, the mere expression of justice and common 
 sense. We are no more in those times when commerce 
 was forced by war. The whole world is now-a-days 
 united by new bonds created by science. [Applause.] 
 It will not be in the power of anybody to unloose those 
 splendid ties and to minimize their influence. [Ap- 
 plause.] The old words. Do ut Des^ must be hereafter 
 understood in the mode of equitable reciprocity and 
 loyal international intercourse for the benefit of all 
 nations at large. We think in Paris that in these 
 times of emulation, when commerce is subjected to 
 violent and frequent fluctuations, any agreement 
 tending to assure the fixity of the market can only be 
 to the advantage of the countries contracting it. We 
 hailed with pleasure the project of a commercial con- 
 vention planned in 1899 between our two nations, and 
 if the New- York Chamber of Commerce shares our 
 sentiments we shall, with great satisfaction, see it 
 encourage the definite adoption of this project, which 
 will unite more closely the ancient and intimate bonds 
 existing between the two nations. [Applause.] 
 
 A true son of France, I could not conclude my 
 address to you to-night without offering you a word of 
 gratitude. It is in his own name that the delegate of 
 Paris thanks you, you the representatives of American 
 commerce, for the support you have given to a work so 
 dear to our hearts. After uniting the Mediterranean to 
 
the Indian Ocean, France now sees with pleasure that it 
 is her sister Republic, America, who takes upon herself 
 the task of completing the great enterprise of the 
 Panama Canal. [Applause.] The time is not far distant 
 when the basin of the Pacific will equal that ot the 
 Atlantic by the magnitude of its commerce. The Ameri- 
 can Republic which has opened the first railway with 
 Panama is faithful to her traditions in completing the 
 canal which will unite the two most frequented seas of 
 the globe, and, in the long lapse of ages, the names of 
 the United States and France will be inseparable in the 
 memory of future generations. [Applause.] 
 
 I drink, gentlemen, with all my heart to the pros- 
 perity of the New- York Chamber of Commerce and to 
 the development of the American commerce upon the 
 sound principle of just and fair reciprocity between 
 well-wishing and friendly nations. [Long applause.] 
 
 The President. — Gentlemen, the commercial inter- 
 ests of Germany are represented to-night by Mr. Paul 
 Heckmann, who has been delegated by the Chamber of 
 Commerce of Berlin, to attend our celebration. We 
 have welcomed the commercial representatives of Eng- 
 land and France, and, in your name, I heartily extend 
 a like welcome to the representative of Germany, whose 
 influence is felt in every department of industry and 
 commerce throughout the world. [Applause.] I give 
 you the following toast : 
 
 "The World's Commercial Navies. The Tie that 
 Binds Foreign Nations in the Mutual Perfor- 
 mance OF Good Works," 
 
 And have the pleasure of introducing to you Mr. 
 
80 
 
 Heckmann, Vice-President of the Berlin Chamber of 
 Commerce. [Applause.] 
 
 SPEECH BY MR. PAUL HECKMANN, VI0E-PEE9IDENT OF 
 THE BERLIN CHAMBER OP COMMERCE. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen : The Chamber of 
 Commerce of Berlin was delighted to receive your cour- 
 teous invitation to the celebration of the dedication of 
 the new building destined for the uses of commerce. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 This Chamber of Commerce can look back upon an 
 unusually long period of activity, as you are already in 
 the second century of your labors. You would have 
 certainly had in former times more diflficulty in bringing 
 together for such an exceptional festive occasion the 
 representatives of all nations, and we must to-day 
 acknowledge with gratitude that progressive industry 
 has produced all those means which connect distant 
 countries with each other, not only in regard to prompt 
 inter- communication, but also to a functional and rapid 
 transport of persons and merchandise. 
 
 It is the first time that the Berlin Chamber of Com- 
 merce has sent in oflBcial capacity a representative to 
 your City, and I have the great honor, as their Vice- 
 President, to express our sincere thanks for the invita- 
 tion, and our best wishes for a continued reciprocal 
 activity on the same grandiose scale as to-day. When 
 we admire the splendid new building we are confident 
 that the foundation rests upon the strong rock of com- 
 mercial and industrial energy, that the corner-stones 
 are joined by means of mutual confidence in all busi- 
 ness relations, and the commercial success will float the 
 flag at the summit. My wishes culminate in the hope 
 that the American flag may have success in all countries 
 of the world wherever industry and commerce may 
 
81 
 
 exist. I am of the opinion that such expanded rela- 
 tions will increase the happiness and well-being of all 
 civilized countries. [Applause.] 
 
 The President. — Gentlemen, I have now the plea- 
 sure of giving you the last toast of the evening : 
 
 "THE Merchant. One of the Oldest of Human Pro- 
 fessions. He has always been a leader in the 
 historic march of uberty and progress." 
 
 This toast will be responded to by Mr. William P. 
 Wood, President of the London Corn Trade Association 
 and delegate of the London Chamber of Commerce. I 
 have the pleasure of introducing to you, Mr. Wood. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 SPEECH BY ME. WILLIAM P. WOOD, DELEGATE OF THE 
 LONDON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE. 
 
 ' Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: I am not aston- 
 ished at the enthusiasm with which this toast has been 
 received, because it is virtually the toast of "our noble 
 selves," and no one knows better than those gentlemen 
 who have drunk the toast the excellencies of those 
 estimable individuals. If I had been responsible, per- 
 haps, for the wording, I might have awarded the palm 
 of antiquity, not to the merchant, but to the old 
 gardener whose dismissal from his situation under 
 tragic and unfortunate circumstances has been fraught 
 with such momentous consequences to posterity, or to 
 the ancient shipbuilder whose designs have been so 
 familiar to us from our childhood, but which would 
 hardly be taken nowadays as the most approved types 
 for the best cattle carrying steamers. 
 
83 
 
 Sir, the old moralist has told us that the world is 
 governed primarily by hunger and by love. But I am 
 here to-night to assert, in speaking and acknovs^ledging 
 this toast of "The Merchant," that the merchant no 
 less than the lover or the soldier is, and always has 
 been, an equally important and a great factor in carry- 
 ing out and in shaping human destiny and the history 
 of nations. For trade and the inclination to trade are 
 instinctive and embodied in every one of us. That is 
 to say the desire to acquire something we have not got, 
 the tendency and the faculty of supplying from the 
 resources of one country the deficiencies of another. 
 Even those "combines" and "trusts" to which allu- 
 sion has been made to-night had their counterpart in 
 the days of old. Mr. Cleveland, in the admirable 
 address which he gave us at the Chamber of Commerce 
 this morning, alluded to an old speculation, the record 
 of which has come down to us from the time of the 
 early ages of mankind. And I am sure that no New- 
 York deal and no Chicago combine have ever been so 
 brilliantly successful as that old speculation in Egyp- 
 tian wheat. [Laughter.] It is to be hoped, for the 
 sake of the ancient Egyptians of that i)eriod, that no 
 one had "sold short !" And some who are gathered in 
 this room will remember that striking passage in one of 
 CiCEEo's works where he discusses the conduct of the 
 captain of a wheat-laden vessel who had obtained an 
 extravagant price from the starving inhabitants of 
 Rhodes for his cargo, well knowing that at a very short 
 distance a considerable wheat-laden fleet bound for that 
 island lay becalmed ; and Cicero, almost bursting with 
 honest indignation, declares the conduct of that captain 
 to be opposed to all his notions of equity and right. 
 Well, 1800 or 1900 years of Christian civilization have 
 rolled by since then, but still I don't think that the 
 speculators of the present day would unanimously 
 endorse the verdict of that honest old heathen. [Ap- 
 plause.] 
 
83 
 
 Sir, at this late hour of the night I would not inflict 
 so ungrateful a return for your lavish and generous 
 hospitality as to dwell at length on the undoubted fact 
 that the merchant is, if not the oldest, at least one of 
 the oldest of the professions. You will remember that 
 the ancestor of that great and illustrious nation, some 
 of whose representatives I suppose are present in this 
 room to-night, paid for his land purchases with 300 
 shekels, " current money of the merchant," and that 
 those cities of antiquity, Babylon and Tyre and Car- 
 thage, reached the meridian of their glory through the 
 energy of their merchants. 
 
 I need not speak to you of Venice, whose story has 
 an element of romance mingled with her record, of 
 whom the poet says, that " She held the gorgeous East 
 in fee," while she controlled for a long time the com- 
 merce of the West. That story is familiar to us from 
 our histories and from the pages of our Shakespeare. 
 I will not speak to you much of Spain, (who, perhaps, 
 in a rather unfortunate hour for herself, discovered 
 America, and has had her reward ; [laughter ;] but at 
 any rate, the commercial enterprise of Spain brought 
 into her coffers the riches of the Spanish Main and all 
 the almost fabulous wealth of Mexico and Peru ; and it 
 was not until she sought to establish a commercial 
 tyranny in the Netherlands, which was, perhaps, not 
 less oppressive than the religious persecutions so 
 graphically chronicled for us in the pages of your im- 
 mortal historian, Mr. Motley, that the United Provinces 
 at last shook off the yoke of Spain, and took their place 
 among the pioneers of European civil and religious 
 liberty. 
 
 Sir, I am reminded that nowadays, in professions as 
 well as in institutions, the justification for existence is 
 not a question of mere historic continuity so much as 
 of practical utility, and so I will claim for the merchant 
 to-night, that not less than in ancient times he is a 
 
84 
 
 necessary factor in the world's progress, and it is a 
 pleasing thought to think with regard to the merchants 
 of my own beloved country and of that allied country 
 whose generous hospitality we are partaking of to- 
 night — a peculiarity not confined to those countries 
 alone, but also common to the great European nations — 
 that the merchants are still among " the honorable of 
 the earth." 
 
 It is a fact, no less true in economics than in ethics, 
 that " no man liveth to himself." It is impossible for 
 either individuals or nations to live long in a state of 
 "splendid isolation." Everyman is, according to the 
 designs of Providence, necessarily a helper of others. 
 We live on one another and we must, selfish though we 
 may be, we must help one another. And I claim for 
 the merchant, in accordance with the last clause of the 
 toast that has been put before you, that he has been a 
 leader in the historic march of liberty and of progress. 
 
 Sir, the bloodless victories that the merchant gains 
 are no less honorable and no less important to the wel- 
 fare of mankind than those which are gained by the 
 more brutal agency of the sword. [Applause.] It may 
 not be for us to live to the time when " men shall beat 
 their swords into ploughshares and their spears into 
 pruning hooks," but we are certain of this, that every 
 gallant steamer that crosses the mighty Atlantic, that 
 every step taken in the direction of facilitating inter- 
 course and of establishing and developing commercial 
 relations, is a strand ih the great cord that is binding 
 the nations of the world together. 
 
 Sir, fresh as I am from experiences, somewhat varied 
 and not altogether agreeable, of the great Atlantic 
 Ocean, I can still apply to England and to America 
 those old words of the Latin poet, ''''Nee nos mare 
 separat ingens.''^ And we are sure of this, that in pro- 
 portion as we are all as merchants, as individuals, or in 
 communities, faithful to our trust and to that high ideal 
 
86 
 
 sketched out for us by your eloquent President this 
 evening, we are working one and all in the direction of 
 the establishment of the grand ideal of human brother- 
 hood and of universal peace. 
 
 The President. — Gentlemen, in your name I wish 
 to thank our distinguished guests for their presence 
 here this evening, and ask you to fill your glasses and 
 to drink to their future health and happiness — "Our 
 Guests." 
 
 The toast was drunk standing. 
 
 The President. — It is my duty to say to you that 
 this delightful entertainment is now closed. 
 
PARTICIPANTS IN THE BANQUET. 
 
 Fbitz Achelis, 
 Thomas Achelis, 
 Ebnest R. Ackerman, 
 Edwakd D, Adams, , 
 
 Frederick T. Adams, 
 Samuel Adams, 
 Adelbeet H. Alden, 
 James W. Alexander, 
 Bekjamin Altman, 
 Charles W. Anderson, 
 Frank E, Anderson, 
 Francis R. Appleton, 
 Hicks Arnold, 
 John L. Arts, 
 John Jacob Astor, 
 Samuel P. Avery, 
 
 Edwin H. Baker, 
 
 George F. Baker, 
 
 James B. Baker, 
 
 William D. Baldwin, 
 
 Samuel Bancroft, Jr., 
 
 Paul Barjon, 
 
 George Clinton Batcheller, 
 
 Edmund L. Baylies, 
 
 Thomas P. Beai,, 
 
 George A. Beaton, 
 
 MiLO M. Belding, 
 
 MiLO M. Belding, Jr., 
 
 ArouBT Belmont, 
 
 Henry H. Benedict, 
 James Benedict, 
 George P. Benjamin, 
 Charles L. Bernheimer, 
 Samuel Bettle, 
 Hkber R. Bishop, 
 Eugene G. Blackford, 
 Cornelius N. Bliss, 
 Cornelius N. Bliss, Jr., 
 Eliphalet W, Bliss, 
 George Blumenthal, 
 Emil L. Boas, 
 George C. Boldt, 
 Max J. Bonn, 
 Samuel W. Boocock, 
 Adolph H. Borman, 
 George S. Bowdoin, 
 Clarence Winthrop Bowen, 
 Charles F. Brooker, 
 William Brookfield, 
 John Crosby Brown, 
 Vernon H. Brown, 
 Carl Brucker, 
 Hart B. Brundrett, 
 Charles E. Bulkley, 
 Edwin M. Bulkley, 
 James A. Burden, 
 J. Adriance Bush, 
 
 Henry A. Caesar, 
 
87 
 
 Laurence J. CauiAuan, 
 Hermann H. Cammann, 
 Henrt W. Cannon, 
 James G. Cannon, 
 Howard Carroll, 
 Charles F. Cartledoe, 
 John Cartledge, 
 Albert C. Case, 
 Juan M. Ceballos, 
 Hugh J. Chisholh, 
 S. E. Churchill, 
 John Claflin, 
 Gardiner K. Clark, Jr., 
 Thomas B. Clarke, 
 Henry Clews, 
 Thomas Clyde, 
 William P. Clyde, 
 John W. Cochrane, 
 Charles A. Coffin, 
 William B. Cogswell, 
 Charles T. Cook, 
 auguste j. cordieb, 
 George H. Coutts, 
 Clarkson Cowl, 
 Samuel D. Coykendall, 
 Stanley T. Cozzens, 
 Charles H. Crajip, 
 John D. Crimmins, 
 George A. Crocker, 
 Cornelius C. Cutler, 
 Thomas De Witt Cutler, 
 
 Joseph G. Darlington, 
 Henry P. Davison, 
 Benjamin M. Day, 
 Edgab Deal, 
 Frank Dean, 
 Adolfhb De Baby, 
 
 Eugene Delano, 
 Richard Delafield, 
 William C. Demorest, 
 Carll H. De Silter, 
 Jacob G. Dettmkr, 
 William E. Dodge, 
 Thomas Dolan, 
 John Dougherty, 
 Robert Dun Douglasi, 
 John R. DRsrEL, 
 John F. Dryden, 
 William Dulles, Jr. 
 Stuart Duncan, 
 WiLLiAJf Butler Duncan, 
 F. p. Dunne, 
 WnxiAM N. Dykman, 
 
 Edward E. Eambs, 
 Frederick H. Eaton, 
 Richard L. Edwards, 
 Earnest Ehrmann, 
 Max Eisman, 
 James W. Ellsworth, 
 William L. Elkins, 
 John B. Elmendorf. 
 Martin Erdmann, 
 Webster C. Estbs, 
 
 Harris Fahnestock, 
 Harris C. Fahnestock, 
 William .Fahnestock, 
 Henry P. Fairbanks, 
 Charles S. Faxrchlld, 
 Julian D. Faxrchild, 
 Samuel W. Fairchild, 
 GusTAV Fat.k, 
 J, Sloat Fassett, 
 Marshall Field, 
 
88 
 
 AsHBEL P. Fitch, 
 Henby M. Flagleb, 
 
 EWALD FlEITMANN, 
 
 Austin B. Fletchek, 
 Charles R. Flint. 
 Thomas P. Fowlbe 
 Michael Fbiedsam, 
 howabd p. feothinaham, 
 
 Lyman J. Gage, 
 
 ROBEBT M. GalLAWAY, 
 
 Geobge Rutledge Gibson, 
 Chables p. H, Qilbeet, 
 s. l. goldenbebg, 
 Henby Goldman, 
 Malcolm Gbaham, 
 William S. Gbay, 
 B. J. Geeenhut, 
 Heebebt L, Geiggs, 
 Clement A, Gbiscom, 
 Clement A. Gbiscom, Jr. 
 Heney S. Geovb, 
 Isaac Guggenheim, 
 MoBEis Guggenheim, 
 
 Kalman Haas, 
 
 COBCELLUS H. HaCKETT, 
 
 Henby H. Hall, 
 John R. Hall, 
 Joseph Hamebshlag, 
 Stewaet Haetshobn, 
 Geobge B. M. Haevey, 
 Chables Hathaway, 
 Edwin Hawley, 
 Aethue H. Heaen, 
 Geoege a. Heaen, 
 James Hedges, 
 Homeb Heminway, 
 
 Henby Hentz, 
 A. Baeton Hepbuen, 
 Febdinand Hebmann, 
 William Hestee, 
 A. Fostee Higgins, 
 William Hillman, 
 Fbancis L. Hine, 
 Albeet F. Hochstadtee, 
 Geobge B. Hodgman, 
 Geobge F. Hodgman, 
 Samuel V. Hoffman, 
 Edwabd Holbbook, 
 Colgate Hoyt, 
 Jacques Hubee, 
 Alexandee C. Humphbeys, 
 Abcher M. Huntingtojn, 
 Thomas J. Hueley, 
 Claeence M. Hyde, 
 E. Fbancis Hyde, 
 
 Geobge E. Ide, 
 Silas A. Ilsley, 
 Adbian Iselin, Jr., 
 
 John H. Jacqublin, 
 Aethue Cubtiss James, 
 Chables M. Jesup, 
 Fbank W, Jesup, 
 MoBEis K. Jesup, President, 
 James G. Johnson, 
 Waltee S. Johnston, 
 E. Claeence Jones, 
 
 John C. Kapbe, 
 Otto H. Kahn, 
 Fbanklin H. Kalbfleisch, 
 RiCHABD B. Kelly, 
 John S. Kennedy, 
 
89 
 
 Thomas B. Kknt, 
 Rudolph Kepplkb, 
 Gkokge a. Kesslee, 
 RoBEBT J. Kimball, 
 William F. Kutg, 
 Thomas Kibkpatrick, 
 Charles J. Knapp, 
 
 ROLANTJ F. KnOEDLKE, 
 
 Herman C. Em>LiCH. 
 Pekcival Euhnb, 
 
 Henby J. Lamabchs, 
 J. Henry Lane, 
 James W. Lane, 
 Woodbury Lanodok, 
 Jacob Lanqeloth, 
 Charles Lanieb, 
 Edward Lauterbach, 
 Arthur B. Leach, 
 William B. Lebdb, 
 Edward L. Lewis, 
 Adolph Lewisohh, 
 Alfred Lichtensteot, 
 Frederick J. Lismait, 
 Lucius N. Littaubb, 
 James Loeb, 
 C. Adolphe Low, 
 Charles H. Ludinqtoh, 
 
 John A. McCall, 
 William H. McCobd, 
 James McCreery, 
 James McCutcheon, 
 John B. McDonald, 
 George H. McFadden, 
 Gates W. McGarrah, 
 James McGovern, 
 Daniel McEeeyex, 
 
 James McMahon, 
 George McNetb, 
 
 James A. Macdonau>, 
 Donald Mackat, 
 Duncan L. S. Maclakrn, 
 V. EVEBIT Macy, 
 John Mabkle, 
 Edgar L. Mabston, 
 Abistides Mabtxnez, 
 Samuel Matheb, 
 Charles W. Maubt, 
 Robert Maxwell, 
 Morris Mayer, 
 Herman A. Metb, 
 Cord Meyer, 
 Habry H. Meyer, 
 Theodobb F. Milleb, 
 Wabneb Milleb, 
 
 SETH M. Mn.T.TKEN, 
 
 Dabius O. Mills, 
 Fbancis L. Minton, 
 J, J. Mitchell, 
 Geobge B. Moffat, 
 Charles A. Moobs, 
 WlLLIAX H. Moobb, 
 J. PiEBPOirr Morgan, 
 Henby Mobgbnthau, 
 EIffinoham B. Mobbis, 
 David M. Mobbibon, 
 Geobge Austin Mobrison, 
 Chables W. Mobss, 
 E. Rollins Mobsb, 
 Levi P. Mobton, 
 Fbank a. Munbbt, 
 
 William A. Nash 
 Max Nathan, 
 
90 
 
 Aaron Naumburg, 
 Elkan Naumburg, 
 George W. Naumburg, 
 Walter W. Naumburg, 
 
 LUDWIG NiSSEN, 
 
 Lewis Nixon, 
 
 Frank Louis Nugent, 
 
 William C. Oastler, 
 Edward C. O'Brien, 
 Adolph S. Ochs, 
 Joseph Offenbach, 
 Robert C. Ogden, 
 Robert Olyphant, 
 Adolph Openhym, 
 Calvin B. Orcutt, 
 
 Francis F. Palmer, 
 George Q. Palmer, 
 Nicholas F. Palmer, 
 Frederic A. Parsons, 
 William H, Parsons, 
 A. J. Paterson, 
 Charles H, Patrick, 
 Charles J. Peabouy, 
 George Foster Peabody, 
 George W. Perkins, 
 William R. Peters, 
 James W. Pinch ot, 
 Frederick S. Pinkus, 
 RuEL W. Poor, 
 William H. Porter, 
 Thomas Potts, 
 John F. Praeger, 
 Charles M. Pratt, 
 Dallas B. Pratt, 
 John D. Probst, 
 Robert C. Pruyn, 
 
 Jambs A. Punderpord, 
 William A. Putnam, 
 
 Dick S. Ramsay, 
 Arthur E. Randle, 
 Anton A. Raven, 
 James I. Raymond, 
 Peter Reid, 
 John Harsen Rhoades, 
 Bradford Rhodes, 
 Charles L. Rickerson, 
 John L. Riker, 
 Stephen W. Roach, 
 Andrew J. Robinson, 
 George H. Robinson, 
 George N. Robinson, 
 John D. Rockefeller, 
 Henry A. Rogers, 
 William I. Rosenfeld, 
 William A. Ross, 
 William Rowland, 
 James C. Russell, 
 
 Harry Sachs, 
 William Salomon, 
 George H. Sargent, 
 Henry Schaefer, 
 George Edgar Schanck, 
 Frederick B. Schenck, 
 William Scherer, 
 Charles Scheuer, 
 Charles A. Schieren, 
 Jacob H. Schipf, 
 Mortimer L. Schiff, 
 Leo Schlesinoer, 
 Grant B. Schley, 
 Daniel Schnakenberq 
 GusTAV H. Schwab, 
 
91 
 
 H. J, Seaman, 
 Clabknce W. Skamans, 
 Isaac N. Seligmajt, 
 Georgb F. Sewabd, 
 RAIiPH L. Shainwauj, 
 Albebt R. Shattuck, 
 Chkistopheb C. Shatnb, 
 George R. SnEiiDON, 
 Augustus D. Shepabd, 
 George Sherman, 
 Herman Sielcekn, 
 Charles H. Simmons, 
 J. Edward Simmons, 
 William A. Simonson, 
 John J. Sinclair, 
 Amory T. Skerry, 
 William Skinner, 
 Henry T. Sloane, 
 John Sloane, 
 William Sloane, 
 William D. Sloane, 
 Alfred H. Smith, 
 Q. Waldo Smith, 
 Howard C. Smith, 
 Jaiiies Henry Smith, 
 Robert A. C. Smith, 
 Francis S. Smithebs, 
 Valentine P. Snyder, 
 Julio F. Sorzano, 
 Lewis H. Spence, 
 Samuel Spencer, 
 James Speyer, 
 John H. Starin, 
 Isaac Stern, 
 Leopold Stern, 
 Louis Stern, 
 John A. Stewart, 
 Lispenard Stewart, 
 
 William Rhinelander Stewart, 
 
 James Stillman, 
 
 Edward T. Stotesbury, 
 
 IsiDOR Straus, 
 
 Nathan Straus, 
 
 Benjamin Strong, 
 
 Lionel Sutro, 
 
 Richard Sutro, 
 
 J. Howard Sweetskr, 
 
 Edward N. Tailbr, 
 Gage E. Tarbell, 
 Daniel C. Tate, 
 Stevenson Taylor, 
 John T, Terry, 
 William B. Thom, 
 Ransom H. Thomas, 
 Myles Tierney, 
 Frank Tilford, 
 John S. Telnet, 
 William H. B, Totten, 
 William H. Truesdale, 
 George R. Turnbull, 
 
 Frederick D. Underwood, 
 
 Anthony Van Bergen, 
 Harman B. Vanderhobv, 
 Albert H. Vernam, 
 George F. Vietor, 
 Walther Vom Rath, 
 GusTATE Von Bruening, 
 Herbert H. Vreeland, 
 
 Frederic C. Wagner, 
 William L Walter, 
 John Wanamakkr, 
 Felix M. Warburg, 
 
92 
 
 PaxjIi M. Wabburg, 
 George Gray Ward, 
 John I. Waterbury, 
 Edwin H. Weatherbkb, 
 Silas D. Webb, 
 George B. Weed, 
 Aaron Weil, 
 W. Storrs Wells, 
 Schuyler S. Wheeler, 
 Clarence Whitman, 
 Cassius M. Wicker, 
 Edward A. Wickes, 
 Peter A. B. Widbnbr, 
 Joseph C. Willetts, 
 George G. Williams, 
 Charles S. Wills, 
 Charles T. Wills, 
 George Wilson, 
 George T. Wilson, 
 
 Henry R. Wilson, 
 John A. Wilson, 
 John W. Wilson, 
 Marshall Ormb Wilson, 
 Richard T. Wilson, 
 Richard T. Wilson, Jr. 
 Frank S. Witherbee, 
 Lewis S. Wolff, 
 Stewart L. Woodford, 
 William H. Woodin, 
 James T. Woodward, 
 
 Arthur G. Yates, 
 Edward P. C. Young, 
 George W. Young. 
 Richard Young, 
 
 Cornelius Zabriskib, 
 
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A BRIEF HISTORY 
 
 or THS 
 
 CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 
 
 0» THB 
 
 STATE OF NEW^ YORK. 
 1768-1902. 
 
 The Chamber of Commerce had its origin in a meet- 
 ing of twenty representative merchants of the City of 
 New- York on Tuesday, the 6th of April, 1768. Their 
 names were as follows : 
 
 John Crugeb, 
 Elias Desbrosses, 
 James Jauncey, 
 Jacob Walton, 
 Robert Murray, 
 Hugh Wallace, 
 George Folliot, 
 William Walton, 
 Samuel Verplanck, 
 Theophylact Baohe, 
 
 Thomas White, 
 Miles Sherbrooke, 
 Walter Franklin, 
 Robert Ross Waddle, 
 Acheson Thompson, 
 Lawrence Kortright, 
 Thomas Randal, 
 William McAdam, 
 Isaac Low, 
 Anthony Van Dam. 
 
 The place of meeting was Bolton & Sigell's, later 
 known as Fraunoes' Tavern, which occupied the 
 building still standing on the southeast corner of 
 Broad and Pearl Streets. The fame of some of the 
 
94 
 
 founders of the Chamber has lived after them in the 
 records of their State and country, and their local emi- 
 nence is attested, even to modern ears, by the names of 
 the City streets, which still perpetuate the esteem in 
 which was held the Uesbrosses, the Murrays, the 
 Whites, the Franklins, the Thompsons and the Van 
 Dams. In the preamble to the proceedings of the 
 meeting it was set forth that mercantile societies have 
 been found very useful in trading cities for promoting 
 and encouraging commerce, supporting industry, ad- 
 justing disputes relative to trade and navigation, and 
 procuring such laws and regulations as may be found 
 necessary for the benefit of trade in general, and then 
 and there it was resolved to establish such a society in 
 the City of New- York, to be known by the name of 
 The New- York Chamber of Commerce. 
 
 The specific character of the questions to be consid- 
 ered by the Chamber was left to develop as time went 
 on. But we may be permitted to assume that certain 
 unavowed influences had their share in bringing the 
 solid men of New- York together on that April evening 
 one hundred and thirty-four years ago. To a man, 
 they were loyal subjects of the British crown, but there 
 is every reason to believe that they were also fully 
 impressed with the necessity for united action on the 
 part of the American Colonies in support of the right to 
 be taxed only through their own representatives. This 
 was already the burning question of the time. The 
 Stamp Act had been passed by the British Parliament 
 in 1765, and repealed a year later at the instance of the 
 eloquent defender of colonial rights, William Pitt. 
 It was the first president of the Chamber, John Ciiuger, 
 who, as Mayor of New- York, demanded and received 
 the surrender of the obnoxious stamps which had been 
 sent over from England, and were held ready for use 
 in the custody of the Lieutenant-Governor of the 
 Province. The names of the organizers of the Chamber 
 
95 
 
 appear in the list of two hundred New- York merchants, 
 who bound themselves, by solemn agreement, on the 
 31st of October, to trade no more with Great Britain 
 until the Stamp Act was repealed. It was John 
 Ceuger who was the author of the clear, concise and 
 able "Declaration of Rights and Grievances of the 
 Colonists in America," issued by the First Congress of 
 the American Colonies, held in New- York City in Oc- 
 tober, 1765, and he was a member of the Provincial 
 Assembly, which was dissolved almost as soon as it 
 convened, in February, 1768, because of its determined 
 resistance to the extension of the Mutiny Act and the 
 Quartering Act to the Colonies. Isaac Low, another 
 of the organizers of the Chamber, and its last Colonial 
 President, took an equally prominent part in the efforts 
 to bring the British Ministry to see the folly of denying 
 to the colonies the full possession of their inheritance 
 of English liberty, but it was characteristic of both 
 men, and in this they shared the views of the vast 
 majority of their associates in the New- York Chamber, 
 that, they believed the wrongs of the colonies could be 
 redressed without separation from the mother country. 
 They were among those who felt that it was a desertion 
 of the men who had fought their cause in the British 
 Parliament to break away from them forever. Both 
 insisted to the last on awaiting the action of the King 
 and the Houses of Parliament on the representations 
 made to them of the grievances of the colonies, and 
 both were left to lament the failure of the resources of 
 statesmanship to settle questions which, in the irresist- 
 able current of events, had already been subjected to 
 the arbitrament of arms. 
 
 But if moderation was the keynote of the policy of 
 the founders of the Chamber of Commerce during the 
 stormy seven years that preceded the Revolution, that 
 policy was never deficient in firmness. In the second 
 year of its existence the Chamber received the thanks 
 
U6 
 
 of the House of Assembly of the Provincial Legislature 
 for the patriotic conduct of its members in declining the 
 importation of goods from Great Britain at this junc- 
 ture, and until the acts of Parliament, which the As- 
 sembly had declared unconstitutional and subversive of 
 the rights and liberties of the people of the colonies, 
 should be repealed. A year later a Merchants' Commit- 
 tee of which Isaac Low was at the head, found occasion 
 to remind the merchants of Boston of their persistent dis- 
 regard of the non- importation pledge and to declare that 
 "the conduct of the merchants of this city has always 
 been agreeable to their public declarations and agree- 
 ments ; they have never deceived their neighbors, but 
 have most religiously maintained their engagements." 
 
 The tendency of the time was toward union, and the 
 impelling motive of the organization of the Chamber 
 was unquestionably the sense of a common interest and 
 the feeling of a common danger. Added to this there 
 was in New- York a growing perception of the great 
 future which awaited the City and its commerce. The 
 population of the City in 1768 was estimated at only 
 20,000, and the volume of its trade was considerably 
 less than that of either Philadelphia or Boston, but, as 
 Charles O' Conor has said, "The chartered City of 
 New- York had, from the beginning, an imperial status." 
 The grant given in 1686 by Thomas Dongan, Lieu- 
 tenant-Governor and Vice- Admiral of New- York under 
 His Majesty James II., recognized the possession by 
 the citizens of this ancient city of "sundry rights, lib- 
 erties, privileges, franchises, free customs, pre-emi- 
 nences, advantages, jurisdictions, emoluments and 
 immunities, as well by prescription as by charter, letters 
 patent, grants and confirmations," &c., beginning with 
 the high officers of the Nether-Dutch nation and re- 
 maining intact to that time. These were confirmed and 
 amplified under the seal of His Majesty George II. in 
 an instrument known as the Montgomerie Charter, so 
 
97 
 
 named after the Governor of the State in the year of 
 grace 1730. Following the recital of preliminary grants 
 this document makes the British sovereign say, " We 
 of our own especial grace, certain knowledge and mere 
 motion, have willed, ordained, constituted, confirmed, 
 given and granted * * that our said City of New- 
 York be, and from henceforth forever shall be, and 
 remain a free city of itself." 
 
 From the first the Chamber concerned itself with the 
 removal of obstacles to the development of the trade of 
 the port. Next to the vexatious questions relating to 
 the acceptance of the paper currency of the neighboring 
 colonies, the topic which recurs of tenest in the minutes 
 of the proceedings of the Chamber concerns the price 
 and quality of flour, the staple product of the colony 
 and the chief article of its export. A price was fixed 
 beyond which no member was to go in paying for flour 
 and bread casks, and precautions were adopted to detect 
 fraud in their weight when filled. The bolters, millers, 
 bakers and sellers of flour having made a combination 
 to oppose this resolution of the Chamber, an agent was 
 deputed to go to Philadelphia and purchase there from 
 1,500 to 2,000 barrels of flour, to be shipped to New- 
 York, members to be supplied with what they needed, 
 and the remainder to be sold. This vigorous action 
 brought the flour dealers and bakers promptly to terms. 
 Then the Chamber proceeded to advocate a more rigid 
 system of flour inspection, on the ground that while 
 Philadelphia flour had the better reputation, the wheat 
 brought from the North River in particular was much 
 better than any carried to Philadelphia, and that, there- 
 fore, any inferiority of New- York to Philadelphia must 
 be ascribed to defect in the manufacture and to the 
 present mode of inspection. The Chamber did not stop 
 short at recommending improved methods of inspecting 
 flour, but took measures to encourage the importation 
 of French burr stones for grinding the wheat, to whose 
 
98 
 
 use was attributed part of the reputation gained for 
 Philadelphia flour at the expense of the New-York 
 product. In its concern for the reputation of the great 
 staple of the colony, the Chamber, in these old days, 
 did not forget to maintain the standard of other ex- 
 ports, and it devoted much time and consideration to 
 aflBxing a stable value to the coins then in use, as well 
 as to regulating the procedure as to bills of exchange 
 and prescribing rates of commission for transacting 
 different kinds of business. The adjustment of differ- 
 ences between parties agreeing to leave the settlement 
 of mercantile disputes to the Chamber was stated as one 
 of its objects in the resolution under which it was or- 
 ganized, and at its first regular meeting a Committee of 
 Arbitration, consisting of seven members, was appointed 
 to meet every Tuesday, or oftener, if business required. 
 A new Committee was appointed every month for this 
 purpose, and at the meeting of May, 1769, it was or- 
 dered that the business coming before these monthly 
 Committees should be entered on the minutes of the 
 Chamber. 
 
 Before the Chamber had been a year in existence, its 
 founders were able to say that it included in its mem- 
 bership the greater number of the merchants of the 
 City. At the close of 1769, it was proposed by Isaac 
 Low, "as it would tend greatly to promote the benevo- 
 lent intentions of this Chamber to have it incorporated, 
 under proper regulations ; and, as there is the greatest 
 reason to expect from His Honor the Lieutenant- 
 Governor and his Council all the countenance and pro- 
 tection which so useful an infant institution justly 
 merits," that a Committee be appointed to wait on the 
 Lieutenant-Governor, "praying the favor of him to 
 invest it with a charter granting such privileges as may 
 be conceived most advancive of the important ends 
 intended by it." What the Committee did present at 
 a special meeting of February loth, 1770, was a draft of 
 
a petition to the Lieutenant-Governor, setting forth on 
 the part of John Cruger, "President of a Society of 
 Merchants of the City of New- York, associated for pro- 
 moting trade and commerce :" That the said Society, 
 sensible that numberless inestimable benefits have 
 accrued to mankind from commerce, that they are in 
 proportion to their greater or lesser application to it, 
 more or less opulent and potent in all countries ; and 
 that the enlargement of trade will vastly increase the 
 value of real estates as well as the general opulence of 
 this colony ; have associated together for some time 
 past, in order to carry into execution, amongst them- 
 selves, and by their example, to promote in others such 
 measures as were beneficial to these salutary purposes. 
 And the said Society having, with great pleasure and 
 satisfaction experienced the good effects which the few 
 regulations already adopted have produced, are very 
 desirous of rendering them more extensively useful and 
 permanent, and more adequate to the purposes of so 
 benevolent an institution. The petitioner, therefore, in 
 behalf of the Chamber, most humbly prayed the 
 Lieutenant-Grovernor to incorporate them as a Body 
 Politic, and to invest them with such powers and 
 authorities as may be thought most conducive to answer 
 and promote the commercial, and consequently the 
 landed interests of the growing colony. 
 
 To a Committee of the Chamber which waited on him 
 on the 24th of March, 1770, Lieutenant-Governor 
 CoLDEN, after an appropriate exchange of compliments, 
 delivered the charter, which, in the name of his Majesty 
 George the Third, recited the terms of Mr. Cruger's 
 petition, and constituted and appointed the then mem- 
 bers of the Chamber and their successors to be forever 
 hereafter One Body Corporate and Politick in Deed, 
 Fact, and Name, by the Name, Style, and Title of 
 "The Corporation of the Chamber of Commerce in the 
 City of New-York in America," 
 
100 
 
 The previously adopted articles of the Chamber were 
 embodied in the Charter, and were accompanied by cer- 
 tain rights and privileges appropriate to such a body. 
 Among these, was the right to purchase, take, hold, 
 receive and enjoy real estate in the annual value of 
 three thousand pounds sterling, to have a common seal, 
 to serve for the causes and business of them and their 
 successors, and to erect and build out of their common 
 funds, or by any other ways or means, any house, 
 houses, or other buildings, as they shall think necessary 
 and convenient for the use of the corporation. 
 
 The original of this venerable instrument is unfortu- 
 nately lost. At the outbreak of the Revolution, it was 
 apparently in the custody of William Walton, who 
 was President of the Chamber from 1774 to 1775. 
 When his son Jacob, who became a Rear-Admiral in 
 the British Navy, returned to New- York and took pos- 
 session of the famous old Walton House, in Franklin 
 Square, in 1822, among a vast accumulation of miscel- 
 laneous lumber, boxes, baskets and chests, articles of 
 domestic economy, dragoon saddles, and Hessian mus- 
 kets, in the spacious attic of the old mansion, was found 
 the original charter of the Chamber of Commerce. It 
 was very large, about three feet in width, with the mas- 
 sive wax seal of the crown, six inches in diameter, 
 attached, and the whole carefully encased in tin and 
 enclosed in mahogany. The document was transferred 
 to the rooms occupied by the Chamber in the Mer- 
 chants' Exchange, on the site of the present Custom 
 House, and though it is believed to have been pre- 
 served when that building was destroyed by fire in 
 1835, no trace has ever been found of it. The original 
 seal of the Chamber, a massive disk of silver, three 
 inches in diameter, is still in use, but was, by the 
 merest chance, rescued from oblivion. Some years after 
 the Revolution, a gentleman interested in the affairs of 
 this country, in looking through the miscellaneous 
 
101 
 
 stock of a sort of old cariosity shop in London, discov- 
 ered this signet of the Chamber of Commerce of New- 
 York. He immediately secured it and restored it to its 
 proper custody, and the modesty of our fellow country- 
 man may be inferred from the fact that no record 
 remains of his name. 
 
 It seems to have been the fate of everything pertain- 
 ing to the colonial history of the Chamber to become 
 treasure-trove. Prospek M. Wetmoke, who became 
 Secretary of the Chamber in 1843, records that when he 
 entered upon the discharge of his duties, he received 
 but a single volume of minutes of the proceedings of 
 the Chamber, and could not learn that any previous 
 volumes were extant. Not content to believe, however, 
 that the history of so ancient a corporation could be 
 thus imperfect, he began to trace affairs back for a 
 number of years, and was fortunate enough to find, in 
 a lumber box at a store in Front Street, the two 
 volumes of early records now in the possession of the 
 Chamber, and published under the editorship of John 
 Austin Stevens in 1867, Secretary at that time. Tbey 
 form a complete series from the organization of the insti- 
 tution in 1768 to the time when the more modern rec- 
 ords begin. To appreciate a further discovery made by 
 Mr. Wetmore, it is necessary to explain that in order 
 to show its gratitude to Lieutenant-Governor Colden 
 for favoring the corporation with a charter, and as 
 there "happened to be a good limner in town," the 
 Chamber resolved to ask Mr. Colden to sit for his 
 portrait. The painting was made by Matthew Pkatt, 
 of Philadelphia, and £37 was duly paid to the artist. 
 It originally hung in the long room, over the Exhange, 
 which was occupied by the Chamber from 1770 to 1775. 
 At the close of the war it seems to have fallen into the 
 keeping of the family of the Lieu tenant- Governor, 
 since, on the 1st day of February, 1791, there is an 
 entry on the minutes of the Chamber to the effect that 
 
103 
 
 a picture of Cadwallader Coldest, Esq., was reported 
 to be in good preservation, and in hands which were 
 willing to restore it to the former owners. The picture 
 was returned by the son of the Lieutenant-Governor, 
 and was placed upon the walls of the room used by the 
 Chamber in the Merchants' Coffee House, and after- 
 wards, on their changing their place of meeting, to the 
 Tontine Building, in 1795, it was removed to that place. 
 In April, 1817, this picture, together with the fine full- 
 length of Hamilton, by Trumbull, also the property 
 of the Chamber, was lent for exhibition to the American 
 Association of Fine Arts, and the two portraits con- 
 tinued for many years to make a part of the exhibition 
 of the Academy. When the Chamber took possession 
 of their rooms in the Merchants' Exchange in May, 1827, 
 it was ordered that the pictures should be repaired, 
 their frames re-gilded, and that they be hung in the 
 hall, which was on the lower floor of the building, on 
 the right of the main entrance. On the morning of 
 December 16, 1835, the second day of the great fire, 
 they were saved from the flames which consumed the 
 building, and, covered with canvas, they were deposited 
 in the garret of a store in Wall Street. It was here 
 that Mr. Wetmore found them in 1843, under a coat of 
 mildew and dust. The injuries resulting from long 
 exposure and somewhat careless handling were soon 
 repaired, and the pictures were transferred to the 
 gallery of the Historical Society, and now they stand at 
 the head of the gallery of portraits which Mr. Wet- 
 more hoped, fifty-four years ago, would one day occupy 
 a building provided for the special accommodation of 
 the Chamber. 
 
 Before passing from the pre-revolutionary history of 
 the Chamber there is one point which ought to be 
 recorded, and that is the distinguished part which its 
 chief members bore in the public life of that time, and 
 the close touch that was preserved between the Chamber 
 
103 
 
 and the legislative body of the province. We have al- 
 ready referred to the occupancy by John Cruger, the 
 first President of the Chamber, of the mayoralty of the 
 City — an office which he held for ten successive years. 
 While still mayor, Mr. Cruger was elected member of 
 the General Assembly of the Colony, and became, in 
 1761, one of that famous body, the Long Assembly, to 
 whose patriotism and. courage the union of the colonies 
 and the successful vindication of American liberties 
 was in very large measure due. Of the last Colonial 
 Assembly, which met in 1769, Mr. Cruger was unani- 
 mously chosen Speaker, retaining this position until 
 1775, when it adjourned never to meet again. The 
 second President of the Chamber, Hugh Wallace, 
 was a member of the Governor's Council ; the third, 
 Elias Desbrosses, served for three years as Alderman 
 of the East Ward ; the fourth, Henry White, sat for 
 seven years at the Council Board of the Governor, and 
 the seventh, Isaac Low, was one of the five delegates, 
 three of whom were merchants and members of the 
 Chamber, elected as representatives of the City and 
 County of New- York to the first Continental Congress. 
 In 1773, the General Assembly of the Colony voted to 
 the Chamber £200 for five years, in order to encourage a 
 better fish supply in the New- York markets, and the 
 latest colonial records of the Chamber are occupied 
 with the details of awards made to the owners and 
 crews of fishing vessels. 
 
 Between August, 1774, and the annual meeting of 
 May, 1776, there was but once a quorum of members 
 present for the despatch of business, and from that day 
 till June, 1779, the monthly meetings were interrupted. 
 When they were resumed, New- York was under mili- 
 tary law, and was the headquarters of the British army 
 in America, the commandant of the garrison being 
 responsible for the government of the City, In 1778, 
 His Majesty's commissioners — the Earl of Carlisle, 
 
104 
 
 GfEORGE Johnstone and William Eaton — who had 
 been appointed to try to come to terms with the 
 colonies in revolt, issued a proclamation in which they 
 announced their desire "to give all immediate relief 
 and security to the trade carried on by His Majesty's 
 loyal subjects at the port of New- York," and they 
 therefore suspend so much of the acts of Parliament of 
 1776 as prevented the exportation of goods formerly 
 allowed to be shipped from this port to Great Britain, 
 Ireland, Newfoundland, Halifax, Rhode Island, East 
 and West Florida, and the British West Indies. The 
 increase of commerce in consequence of the latitude 
 which it thus derived was assigned as a reason for sum- 
 moning as many members of the Chamber as were then 
 in New- York to meet in the upper long room of the 
 Merchants' Coffee House on June 21st, 1779. Twenty 
 answered the call, and the established routine of busi- 
 ness was resumed, with such variations as the peculiar 
 conditions of the time demanded. For example, the 
 commandant asked the aid of the Chamber in determin- 
 ing the means to be used for the better cleansing of the 
 City and for the raising of a necessary fund for defray- 
 ing the expenses thereof, as likewise to propose such 
 fines and penalties as may be thought sufficient to pre- 
 vent the inhabitants from throwing their filth and rub- 
 bish into the streets. The commandant further re- 
 quested the Chamber to lay before him a table of such 
 rates as they thought ought to be allowed to cartmen in 
 the City, and much matter relating to the artifices prac- 
 tised by the bakers to take undue advantage of the 
 community in these times of stress came up for discus- 
 sion. The Chamber found occasion, in 1781, to memor- 
 alize Sir Henry Clinton, the British Commander-in- 
 Chief, regarding the burdens illegally laid on the 
 imports of New- York and to make representations to 
 Admiral Arbuthnot in regard to what was deemed the 
 inadequate protection afforded the commerce of the 
 
100 
 
 port by his Majesty's ships of war. During the whole 
 period of the occupation of the City by the British, the 
 authorities, both naval and military, relied very much 
 upon the influence and exertions of the Chamber to 
 render their rule of the City easy and acceptable, and 
 the co-operation of the Chamber was both zealously and 
 effectively given. 
 
 The first meeting held after the evacuation of the 
 City was on the 20th of April, 1784. This was called 
 under a law passed by the Legislature of the State of 
 New- York upon the petition of many members who 
 dissented from the course of the Chamber while the 
 City was in the occupation of the British, and who were 
 advised that the charter was by misuser forfeited, and 
 therefore required a new sanction from the State. The 
 Legislature granted the prayer of the petition and passed 
 a law entitled " An Act to remove doubts concerning 
 the Corporation of the Chamber of Commerce and to 
 confirm the rights and privileges thereof," under which 
 the name of the Chamber was changed to that of " The 
 Corporation of the Chamber of Commerce of the State 
 of New- York." Under this act the royal letters patent 
 and all the other powers, rights, privileges, franchises 
 and immunities granted under the old charter were 
 ratified and confirmed, and the new corporation was 
 formally made the successor of the Corporation of the 
 Chamber of Commerce of the City of New- York in 
 America. 
 
 The first President of the re-incorporated Chamber 
 was John Alsop. He was one of the founders of the 
 old Chamber, for though not present at the first meet- 
 ing in 1768, he was named on the minutes with three 
 others as assenting to the resolutions then adopted. 
 Though men's passions had been violently stirred by the 
 confiict of the preceding nine years, though many 
 friendships had been severed and the members of many 
 families divided against each other, the fact that Mr. 
 
106 
 
 Alsop was the unanimous choice of his fellow- merchants 
 for the Presidency of the Chamber is equally a testi- 
 mony to the integrity of his character and to the large- 
 minded generosity of those composing the Chamber of 
 Commerce at that transition time. For Mr. Alsop, 
 while one of the most eminent of those identified with 
 the struggle for colonial rights, was emphatically in 
 favor of moderation and compromise, and, in a letter 
 to the Provincial Convention of New-York in 1776 he 
 had expressed his disappointment at the course of Con- 
 gress in closing the door against reconciliation with 
 Great Britain. A later exhibition of the same spirit 
 which dictated the election of John Alsop is to be 
 found in the resolution of the Chamber of February, 
 1787, to the effect that such merchants as were members 
 of the corporation antecedent to the confirmation of the 
 charter by a law of the State of New- York should be 
 admitted and declared to be members thereof, provided 
 they attend the Chamber at a stated meeting and sig- 
 nify their consent to be considered members on or before 
 the first Tuesday in June. 
 
 From the birth of the Republic to the present time 
 the influence of the Chamber has been one of the forces 
 which have shaped the history of the State of New- 
 York and of the United States. A year after its re- 
 incorporation by the State Legislature the Chamber 
 placed the seal of its approval on the project of one 
 Chkistophee Collis to connect the City by artificial 
 navigation with the lakes — the germinal idea of the 
 Erie Canal — and about the same time it entered a vigor- 
 ous protest against the scheme which the Legislature 
 had then under consideration for issuing paper money 
 and making it a legal tender. The unwavering devotion 
 of the Chamber to the cause of sound money through- 
 out all its history finds expression in certain remarks in 
 the memorial to the Legislature setting forth, among 
 other things, that, " If the paper emitted should stand 
 
107 
 
 on such a basis as to render it in the public estimation 
 equal to gold and silver, the intervention of legislative 
 authority to enforce its reception must be unnecessary. 
 If it should not stand on such a basis that intervention 
 would be unjust and indefensible on any ground of 
 public utility." 
 
 The first notable manifestation of the benevolence of 
 the Chamber which forms so brilliant a chapter in its 
 history is to be found in the appointment of a Com- 
 mittee at a special meeting held on July 24th, 1793, to 
 procure subscriptions in aid of the fugitives from San 
 Domingo, who, flying from that island in consequence 
 of the disasters and horrors of the servile war, had 
 arrived, and were arriving in the United States. 
 
 The key note of a course of policy which has been 
 followed by the Chamber for more than a hundred 
 years was struck at the meeting of July 21st, 1795, con- 
 vened to consider the subject which then particularly 
 agitated the public mind, the treaty of amity, commerce 
 and navigation between the United States and Great 
 Britain. The minutes say the meeting was the most 
 respectable ever held in the Chamber of Commerce, 
 upwards of seventy members being present. After the 
 treaty was read resolutions approving it were adopted, 
 with only ten dissenting votes. 
 
 As befitted a body of business men, the influence of 
 the Chamber was, during all its history, steadfastly 
 exerted on the side of the policy of peace. But the 
 Chamber never placed considerations of national honor 
 below those of commercial prudence. The spirit of the 
 resolutions which it transmitted to President Adams in 
 1798 in regard to the differences between the United 
 States and the French Republic is that which has been 
 manifested in all similar crises throughout its history. 
 At that time, while the Chamber approved the neutral 
 policy adopted by Washington, at the beginning of 
 hostilities in Europe, its report concluded with this 
 
108 
 
 significant declaration: *'But, estimating our rights as 
 an independent nation far above any considerations of 
 inconvenience which may attend the means of main- 
 taining and preserving them : 
 
 " Resolved, That we will zealously support such meas- 
 ures as the wisdom of the Government may dictate, 
 and demonstrate by our unanimity that all efforts to 
 divide us will be vain." 
 
 No more impressive illustration could be given of the 
 commercial depression and internal dissensions attend- 
 ing the controversy with Great Britain which led up to 
 the war of 1812 than the suspension for a period of eleven 
 years of the meetings of the Chamber. In 1807, the 
 year in which the United States retaliated against 
 Great Britain by the passage of the Embargo Act, the 
 total exports of the country exceeded $108,000,000, of 
 which New- York's share was $26,000,000. In the year 
 following, the total exports fell to $22,430,000, of which 
 $5,600,000 represented the share of New- York. In the 
 year following the conclusion of peace, 1815, the exports 
 of New-York almost reached eleven millions out of a 
 total of fifty-two millions, and when the sessions of the 
 Chamber were resumed in 1817, the trade of the port 
 had regained its normal proportions, and New- York 
 took up again the career of progress which shortly led 
 her to the commercial supremacy of the United States. 
 
 With every phase of that progress the Chamber has 
 been closely identified, and it need hardly be added that 
 this progress has been the index and the reflex of the 
 material development of the United States, Space 
 would fail even to give an adequate summary of the great 
 questions in the settlement of which the influence of 
 the Chamber has made itself felt, and the great public 
 enterprises to which it has lent direction and impulse. 
 De Witt Clinton had the earnest support and ad- 
 
109 
 
 vocacy of the Chamber in his epoch-making project to 
 connect the Great Lakes with tide-water by a canal. 
 William Bayakd, who was President of the Chamber 
 from 1819 till his death in 1827, was deeply impressed 
 with the benefits which New- York was likely to derive 
 from this enterprise, and he pledged himself to Mr. 
 CLiNToif to procure from his Batch friends the capital 
 necessary for the undertaking upon the stock of the 
 State of New- York. As early as 1827 the Chamber, in 
 co-operation with the Philadelphia Chamber of Com- 
 merce, adopted a memorial to the President, John 
 QuiNCY Adams, in favor of a line of communication 
 between the United States and the Pacific Ocean, 
 through the Gulf of Mexico, and across the Isthmus of 
 Darien. The plan suggested to the Government by the 
 Chamber, in 1827, was for a line of small Dational 
 vessels to sail once a month to Chagres, with a number 
 of like vessels in the Pacific, to meet their mails at 
 Panama, and convey them to Valparaiso. At that time 
 no vision of a continuous people from the Atlantic to 
 the Pacific, stretching across the whole continent, had 
 dawned on the public mind, and it was not till thirty- 
 three years later that, as it appeared to the Chamber, an 
 urgent necessity existed for the establishment of mail 
 facilities between the cities of San Francisco in Cali- 
 fornia and Shanghai in China. In 1833 a project for a 
 ship canal around the Falls of Niagara, and a railroad 
 from Lake Erie to the Hudson, was laid before the 
 Chamber, and a very favorable expression of opinion 
 was elicited. A Committee was appointed to publish 
 the plan of the proposed canal, and a pamphlet ex- 
 planatory of the whole scheme was prepared for general 
 distribution. In 1846 a Committee of the Chamber 
 brought in a report in favor of Whitney's project of a 
 railroad to the Pacific. The report concluded as fol- 
 lows : " If it be our desire, as it is our interest, that our 
 Union should extend from sea to sea, we must bind it 
 
110 
 
 by something stronger than parchment bonds — by the 
 ties of brotherhood, of common interests, and of easy 
 and rapid inter- communication — by the iron bands — in 
 short, of a railroad. This, which is a political necessity, 
 will also be a great commercial advantage." In 1868 
 the Chamber hailed the laying of the first Atlantic cable 
 as the great event of the age, and it recognized in the 
 new connection of the two continents another bond of 
 union, by means of which two kindred nations of the 
 world were brought into nearer alliance. 
 
 While resolutely opposed, in the early twenties, to 
 the repeal of the laws prohibiting trade in British 
 vessels from the colonies, while the colonial system of 
 Great Britain was maintained against our navigation, 
 the Chamber was prompt to recognize the necessity of 
 liberalizing our commercial relations with other countries 
 in return for similar concessions from them. In 1852, 
 the Chamber recommended to the special consideration 
 of Congress a reciprocity arrangement with the British 
 North American Provinces for the free inter-change 
 of the natural products of the respective countries. 
 The appeal was renewed in 1866, when a report on the 
 reciprocity trade with Canada was unanimosly adopted, 
 and ordered to be forwarded to Congress, asking the 
 extension of this reciprocity, so as to do away with "all 
 duties and restrictions on the importation into the 
 United States of all articles, the growth, produce or 
 manufacture of the Canadas ; also to permit all ships 
 and vessels built in Canada to participate on equal 
 terms in the shipping or coasting trade on the interior 
 lakes and fresh waters intervening between the two 
 countries, and for that purpose to open to the free and 
 common use of both all the water communications, 
 coasts and ports on the said intervening waters between 
 Canada and the United States, to take effect whenever 
 the Government of Canada shall pass a law to extend 
 the like privileges to citizens of the United States, so 
 
in 
 
 that the vessels of Taoth conntries may engage in the 
 coasting trade on the intervening waters aforesaid on 
 equal terms." In 1858 notice was taken of the unusual 
 number of treaties recently perfected, providing for com- 
 mercial relations with foreign nations. The treaty with 
 Japan, negotiated by Commodore Perey in 1854, and 
 the naval operations of which it was the sequel, com- 
 mended themselves so strongly to the appreciation of 
 the Chamber, that a Committee of twenty-five of the 
 leading members was designated to take such measures 
 as they deemed proper in recognition of these services. 
 The sum of six thousand dollars was raised for this pur- 
 pose, and was used in the purchase of a silver service 
 of plate. 
 
 As early as 1821 the Chamber began its agitation for 
 a national bankrupt law, and the usury laws, which 
 later became part of the legislation of the State, were 
 the subject of its frequent and vigorous protest. 
 Among New- York merchants, opinions were pretty 
 evenly divided as to the benefits derivable from the 
 policy of protection to domestic industry, and many 
 were the discussions on this question during the first 
 half of the last century. In 1819 delegates were ap- 
 pointed by the Chamber to a Congress which met in 
 Philadelphia for the declared purpose of taking meas- 
 ures to defeat the then proposed tariff bill. The Con- 
 vention consisted wholly of delegates from New- 
 England, New- York, Pennsylvania and Maryland, and 
 William Bayard, President of the New- York Cham- 
 ber, was chosen President of the Convention. Accord- 
 ing to the resolutions of this body, revenue was stated 
 as the legitimate purpose of legislation on the subject 
 of duties ; and the abolition of drawbacks and the im- 
 position of cash duties were alike resisted as injurious 
 to commerce, manufactures and agriculture. In later 
 years efforts were made to commit the Chamber to one 
 side or other of the perennial controversy between the 
 
113 
 
 partisans of protection and free 'trade, but the resolu- 
 tions were uniformly tabled. An exception may be 
 noted in the earnest and forcible remonstrance made to 
 Congress, in January, 1828, against the further increase 
 of the duties on woolens, and the commendation 
 officially bestowed on a report by a Committee of the 
 citizens of Boston in regard to the further increase of 
 the tariff. 
 
 On all matters relating to the special interests of the 
 commerce of the port, the Chamber was unfailingly 
 vigilant. It effectively vetoed in 1834 a proposal to sell 
 the City Hall to the General Government for a Custom 
 House and Post Office, and in 1840 a Committee of the 
 Chamber reported their concurrence with the Committee 
 of the Common Council in the opinion, that the condi- 
 tion of the wharves and piers of the City was a subject 
 of just reproach. The expenses and charges of trans- 
 acting business at the Custom House, and for storage ; 
 the management of the Post Office and other topics of 
 cognate interest formed the subject of elaborate reports 
 by the Chamber, and one of these, bearing date of 
 March 2d, 1841, on "the unnecessary burdens upon 
 trade, more i)articularly minor charges and administra- 
 tive expenses," is not without relevancy to the griev- 
 ances of New- York commerce to-day. The New- York 
 Pilots and their efforts to obtain a monopoly were, for 
 a generation, a subject of continual trouble to the 
 Chamber, and it was only in 1845, when, in concert 
 with the Board of Marine Underwriters, a Board of 
 Pilot Commissioners was organized, that a satisfactory 
 adjustment of a much debated question was finally 
 reached. The recommendations of the Chamber for the 
 improvement of the entrances to the Harbor, both from 
 the sound and the ocean, were concurrent with its plans 
 for pier and dock extension, and both represent a phase 
 of activity which, extending through most of the nine- 
 
113 
 
 teenth centnry, is not likely to find itself exhausted in 
 the twentieth. 
 
 It is instructive to note the fact that the early phases 
 of the development of the Northwest were sympathet- 
 ically watched by the Chamber. At the June meeting 
 of 1847, upon the invitation of a Committee of citizens 
 of Chicago, the Chamber decided to send representatives 
 to attend the Northwestern Harbor and River Conven- 
 tion, to be held in that city, and the Chamber also voted 
 to convene a public meeting of the citizens of New- York 
 in order to appoint a deputation to attend the same con- 
 vention. Further evidence of the readiness of the 
 Chamber to lend its aid to anything calculated to advance 
 the interest of the mercantile marine of the United 
 States is found in a memorial to Congress of 1851 in 
 favor of an appropriation for opening a good inlet into 
 Albemarle Sound, for the reason that the work proposed 
 is one calculated to benefit the commerce and shipping 
 interests of the whole country, and thus is a national 
 object. Not less significant of the same spirit is the 
 memorial addressed to Congress in March, 1854, setting 
 forth the deterioration in the character of sailors and 
 the need of some measure or policy which would restore 
 the standard of seamanship and the character and quali- 
 fication of sailors in our mercantile marine to its former 
 elevation. It was specifically recommended that naval 
 schools should be established in some of the principal 
 seaports of the United States, the schools to be in hulks 
 anchored in the ports selected, for the reception of boys 
 and their preparation for sea service. 
 
 On the subject of privateering, the Chamber has had 
 repeated occasion to declare its sentiments, and in April, 
 1854, it made an elaborate statement of these in the form 
 of a memorial to Congress declaring, among other things, 
 that in view of the magnitude of the tonnage of this 
 country, and its rapid increase, it is incumbent upon the 
 Government of the United States to exert a leading in- 
 
114 
 
 fluence in bringing about the abolition of privateering, 
 whether they regard the demands of justice and human- 
 ity or the interests of our citizens so much exposed on 
 every ocean. The principle which received the endorse- 
 ment of the Chamber as to private property at sea was 
 that free ships should make free goods, and the neutral 
 flag give neutrality to the cargo. 
 
 The outbreak of the Civil War found the members of 
 the Chamber united on the side of the North, without 
 respect to individual interest or business affiliation. A 
 week after the firing of the first gun on Fort Sumter, a 
 large and enthusiastic meeting was held in the rooms of 
 the Chamber, and the members assembled in such num- 
 bers that the entire building had to be thrown open for 
 their accommodation. The President, Pelatiah Perit, 
 announced the object of the meeting to be to take notice 
 of the alarming tidings of the outbreak of rebellion 
 against the laws in South Carolina, and he called upon 
 the Chamber to respond to the appeal of the President 
 of the United States by assisting the Government to 
 raise a volunteer force of 75,000 men. George Opdyke, 
 afterwards Mayor of the City, submitted a series of 
 resolutions which were unanimously adopted, pledging 
 the Chamber to sustain the Government and maintain 
 the honor of the national flag. James Gallatin called 
 the attention of the Chamber to the fact that a part of 
 the recent loan applied for by the Treasury had not yet 
 been taken, whereupon a special Committee of Finance 
 was appointed, and the balance of the loan, amounting 
 to eight millions of dollars, was at once subscribed, and 
 the Treasury Department notified of the fact that this 
 sum could be drawn at once. William E. Dodge then 
 submitted a resolution for the appointment of a Com- 
 mittee to receive subscriptions to be applied to raising 
 regiments of volunteers to proceed at once to the seat 
 of war, and also to provide for the support of the fami- 
 lies of such volunteers. 
 
110 
 
 All through the contest for the preservation of the 
 Union, the Chamber missed no opportunity to do all in 
 its power to strengthen the hands of the Government at 
 Washington. At the meeting of September, 1861, in 
 view of the unexpected magnitude of the contest, the 
 Chamber deemed it a duty to renew its pledge to the 
 Government of earnest sympathy and support, adding : 
 " That the members of the Chamber, having entire con- 
 fidence in the integrity and ability of the head of the 
 Treasury Department, will exercise their best efforts 
 individually and collectively, and in their connections 
 with moneyed institutions, to strengthen the financial 
 resources and credit of the Government." In February, 
 1862, a resolution was adopted setting forth that, in the 
 opinion of the Chamber, the financial condition of the 
 Government and of the country required the immediate 
 passage of the bill then before Congress, authorizing 
 the issue of $100,000,000 United States notes as a circu- 
 lating medium, and making them a legal tender in pay- 
 ment of all debts. The pledge was added that the mer- 
 chants of New-York would sustain the Government, by 
 all the means within their power, in giving credit and 
 currency to these notes until they could be placed on 
 a specie basis by the imposition of taxes adequate 
 for their redemption. 
 
 In the dark days of 1862, *'in view of the critical state 
 of public affairs and the need of united action on the 
 part of all patriotic individuals and corporations," it was 
 unanimously resolved, that the Chamber would "con- 
 tinue to sustain, by its influence with the commercial 
 community, and to the fullest extent of its means, the 
 National Government in a vigorous and determined 
 effort to maintain the integrity of the Union and effectu- 
 ally put down the rebellion." In January, 1863, the 
 Chamber issued a seasonable reminder " that, as it is a 
 Christian duty to respect and obey, so it is the patriot's 
 duty to honor and uphold the powers that be — to 
 
116 
 
 lighten the burdens that devolve on the Executive and 
 heads of Departments, disproportioned as they are to 
 human strength, and it is not a loyal part to aggravate 
 these burdens by the voice of unnecessary and injurious 
 complaint." When, therefore, the end came with Lee's 
 surrender, it was with no common feeling of satisfac- 
 tion that the Chamber was able to recall the fact that, 
 at the outbreak of the rebellion it had "solemnly 
 pledged to the support of the Government the vast 
 resources of this commercial community, urging the 
 instant blockade of the Southern ports at the cost of a 
 large and prosperous commerce ;" and that it had since, 
 " at each and every time, when the credit or the honor 
 of the nation has been in danger, renewed to the Grov- 
 ernment its assurances of support." 
 
 The injuries inflicted on American commerce by the 
 depredations of the Alabama and other Confederate 
 cruisers, formed the subject of constant remonstrance 
 on the part of the Chamber, and of appeals addressed 
 to the enlightened sentiment of the mercantile com- 
 munity of Great Britain and to the sense of justice of 
 the British Government. It is highly characteristic of 
 the attitude of the Chamber toward public calamity or 
 distress, that in the very midst of these appeals its mer- 
 chants should have had hearts large enough and means 
 broad enough to assist the sufferers in Lancashire from 
 the enforced stoppage of cotton manufacture. The sum 
 of $150,000 was collected and disbursed for the relief of 
 the distressed, and a ship bearing the honored name of 
 George Griswold transported this relief to the starv- 
 ing operatives at Lancashire without any charge what- 
 ever by the owners of the ship. 
 
 But all this is merely part of a record probably 
 without a parallel among organizations devoted to 
 the promotion of commerce, of which, as we have 
 already indicated, the first notable item was the relief 
 extended to the fugitives from San Domingo in 1793. 
 
117 
 
 As Charles S. Smith, President of the Chamber in 
 1890, said, " But no matter which of the great political 
 parties held for the time being the reins of government, 
 this Association was bound by its traditions and pre- 
 cedents in all matters of State and national legislation 
 relating to commerce and industry, to promote good 
 laws, to amend imperfect laws and defeat bad ones ; 
 that in the matter of relief to sufferers by famine, fire or 
 flood more than two million dollars in charity have 
 passed through the hands of our Treasurer for these 
 commendable objects within the last quarter of a cen- 
 tury." To that impressive total must be added the 
 sum of recent benefactions, so that without going 
 further back than 1862 we find that the amount of 
 money disbursed by the Chamber for such purposes 
 has aggregated over two and three-quarter millions of 
 dollars. 
 
 In safeguarding the conditions of sound financial and 
 commercial progress since the war, the Chamber has 
 borne a distinguished part. It has had a share, fully 
 proportioned to the magnitude of the interests which it 
 represents, in combatting the recurrent financial heresies 
 of repudiation, inflation, and the unlimited coinage of 
 silver. Its work in this respect is not yet done, but it can 
 point with justifiable pride to the very solid results 
 which have been accomplished, results which, ten years 
 ago, the most sanguine hardly deemed possible. If we 
 leave the records of the past forty years to si)eak for 
 themselves, it is because they are part of the history in 
 which some of us have borne part, and with which all 
 of us are more or less familiar. We may confidently 
 say, without unduly exalting the character and influ- 
 ence of those of the generation to which the middle- 
 aged among us belong, that they have been worthy 
 of the early traditions of the Chamber, and have been 
 among the recognized influences which have shaped the 
 commercial history of our time. 
 
118 
 
 We close this brief history with the reminder that 
 sixty-one years ago last March, at a special meeting held 
 at the Mayor's office in the City Hall, it was resolved that 
 among the steps which should be taken to increase the 
 usefulness of the Chamber was this : "To procure offices 
 of a suitable size and in a central position for the accom- 
 modation of the library of the Chamber, and for the 
 daily meeting of such members as may choose to report 
 there." Writing in 1856, Dr. Charles King, President 
 of Columbia College, found occasion to lament that up to 
 that hour this judicious recommendation had remained 
 a dead letter, and to ask: "Shall it always be thus? 
 Shall not the time come when the Chamber of Com- 
 merce of New- York shall have its own hall, its library, 
 its archives, and its gallery of pictures ?" The time has 
 come at last, and a permanent home for the Chamber, 
 with all that it implies, is the completed achievement of 
 to-day, and it is this consummation of long effort the 
 Chamber meets to celebrate, with a full knowledge of 
 all the new opportunities that it offers, and a full 
 appreciation of the added responsibilities which it 
 entails. 
 
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