05 P ^ or-- LECTURE No. 43 BY DR. CHARLES E. CHAPMAN ADDRESS MR. J. W. SANGER HELD AT 237 MERCHANTS EXCHANGE BUILDING SAN FRANCISCO. CALIFORNIA 1919 Delivered under Auspices of Tne Foreign Trade Club of San Francisco W. H. HAMMER, President WM. E. HAGUE, Sec.-Tre aS . OFFICE : Room 5, Moiiadiiock Building San Ft Cal. Price 50 Cents F Foreign Trade Club SAN FRANCISCO OFFICERS WM. H. HAMMER .... President E. W. WILSON . . . First Vice-President E. G. BABBITT . . . Second Vice- President C. E. HYDES .... Third Vice-President WM E. HAGUE . . . Secretary-Treasurer EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE E. G. BABBITT . . U. S. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce F. A. BAILEY Matson Navigation Co. JOHN r\. COLE WiHitts &- Patterson BEN C. DAILEY Overseas Shipping Co. J. G. DECATUFk . . . Western Union Telegraph Co. J. J. DWYEK . . Port Department Chamber of Commerce DOUGLAS ERSKINE W. Pv. Grace &- Co. WM. E. HAGUE 100% Club WM. H. HAMMEFk Hammer r Co. C. E. HYDES Fireman's Fund Insurance Co GEO. I. KINNEY General Electric Co. WM. A. McKEE Dickerson 6- Gaskell, Inc. C. B. PERKINS Standard Products Co. H M. WADE .... Traffic and Commerce Attorney E. W WILSON . . Anglo 6- London Paris National Bank rrary SOUTH AMERICA: ITS LANDS, ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS By DR. CHARLES Er CHAPMAN Assistant Professor of American HistofyT University of California >re the Foreign Trade September llth. 1919. An address delivered before the Foreign Trade Club Wednesday evening:, Several years ago T remember there was a discussion as to what we should call the boulevard we were going to have out by Twin Peaks, and a number of names were proposed. Among others was a name proposed by the late Zoeth Eldredge, the his- torian, who suggested that we call it after a famous viceroy of New Spain, who was responsible for the founding of San Fran- cisco, a man named Bucarely. The name did not meet with favor, and among others who objected was a man who wrote a letter to the "Safety Valve" of the Chronicle. He said, in effect, "The people will never get these Spanish names around their tongues, and it is foolish to suggest them. Besides, who the hell was Bucarely?" As the President has announced my subject I feel that it amounts virtually to "What in blazes is South America?" There is a great deal of ignorance in this country about South America, and I suspect that even in this unusually well-informed audience there are a number with mistaken ideas. About twenty years ago the idea was prevalent among us that South America was all tropical ; that all the people down there were Spaniards ; that the popular sport of those countries was raising revolutions and setting up dictators ; and finally and this most of all we were sure about that they loved us as long lost brothers and were especially devoted to the Monroe Doctrine, which had saved them from so many ills. That is w r hat we thought. Now we know better. South Amer- ica is not all tropical. The people do not consider themselves as Spaniards at all and are not even all white; we have gradually come to understand there are a great many Indians down there. "We have also come to learn that the Monroe Doctrine is not alto- gether beloved by the Spanish Americans. But our information is still very far from being adequate. I might say, also, that the information of South America with regard to us is not adequate. There are reasons why it should not be so, but, at that, they know about ten times as much concerning us as we do about them. They have certain traditional reasons for knowing about the United States. Their governments are modeled, in theory at least, on ours. They send a great many of their young men to the United States for their education, particularly for such sub- jects as agriculture, mining, and engineering. Their newspapers devote considerable space to us. In addition to the daily news they have a weekly letter concerning us. You wouldn't recog- nize the information sometimes, but at any rate it shows a cer- tain amount of interest in us on their part. They study about us in their schools. I was amazed, astonished, and sad, when T learned that the poor little boys in Peru had to learn the names of the capitals of our States. I don't know what good it is going to do them, but it shows that they study us to some extent , To a certain extent they admire the United States, especially for our scientific and literary achievements. On the other hand, they are not so much impressed by some of the things we are im- pressed by about ourselves the importance of our big busi- ness, for example. In fact, they rather overdo their ideas on that score. They think we spend all our time chasing the Almighty Dollar. Now, to come directly to the subject: What, in a few words, is South America? The first thing to take up, naturally, would be geography. I am not going to spend much time on that. I assume that this club, at any rate, knows more about it than the average American. I might add, God help you in Foreign Trade if you don 't ! Just for example, very few Americans realize that South America, lies almost wholly east of New York on the line of longitude. Very few of us realize how large those countries are. Even the small countries are pretty considerable in size. Take Chile: if you superimposed Chile on the United States it would reach from San Diego to Alaska. In the other direction it is about as wide as California. Much of South America is tropical, but the best part of it is not. It is temperate in its climate, and of the best type of tem- perate climate. I refer in particular to the southern part: Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and southern Brazil. Much of the tropical regions even is high in the air, on account of the eleva- tion, and has a liveable climate. With regard to the races of South America, we have come to realize that South Americans are not all white, but we have tended to swing too far the other way and to regard them as all Indians. The truth of the matter is that in the southern coun- tries of South America the proportion of white blood is greater than it is in the United States, when you take into consideration all the negroes we have in the South. Take, for example, a country like Chile. Its population is roughly about four mil- lion. There used to be a great many Indians there, but accord- ing to the latest figures there are only some 200,000 left. In Argentina the proportion is less. This is important from the standpoint of trade in the future. Those countries are gradually getting white. They are getting white for two reasons. One of them is immigration. Of course, immigration affects the east coast more than the west. But there is another cause affecting all of South America, and that is the operation of anthropological law. When white men marry peo- ple of other bloods, particularly castes, the result is not a mix- ture in the proportion of the two bloods, but part of the blood becomes pure white and part pure native, while some re- mains mixed. This is what the anthropologists call Mendelism, and it is true that it is being worked out in South America today. Here is another fact : the weaker element in society, the colored races, the red and the black, do not go ahead so fast as the white. They are gradually passing away. Now it is going to be a great many years before they are all gone, especially in lands where the Indians are in the great ma- jority, like Bolivia, Peru, and Paraguay, or where, as in north- ern Brazil, the greater part of the population is negro. But the thing to bear in mind is that inevitably at some time in the future, perhaps in the distant future, those lands are going to be white. That is going to affect, perhaps not you, but surely this country. I present it to you not merely as business men dealing with those lands, but as patriotic Americans. If you go in there now and get yourselves established your descendants will have a very much greater opportunity than you have at the present time, though I believe you, too, will profit now. The keynote, it seems to me, of an understanding of South America is presented, after all, through history. You will say : "Now the professor talks. He believes in history," which I suppose most of you regard as a form of polite literature of no use outside of the University of California, But it is true, and those of you who understand South America or any part of it will agree with me. You must bear in mind that the colonial period in Spanish America is still going on. That means that if you would understand South America you must know something of the colonial period. Spanish Americans did not enjoy so many privileges in their colonial era as we did in ours. Socially, politically, economically, and intellectually, they were held down much more than we. We only "kicked up a row" when England proposed to limit the actual independence we were enjoying. It wasn't that way in South America. The result is that South America is still in the colonial period. They are in many respects where we were before 1776, and in many others where we were about 1830. I believe it would be well for us to read what English travelers wrote about us in 1830. We would find conditions depicted which were similar to conditions as they are in some of the coun- tries of South America today. I haven 't the time to attempt to prove these assertions of mine, but I might give you one or two illustrations. A book was pub- lished in 1910, written by a man named Percy Martin. I am not referring to the Stanford Percy. This Martin was an English- man I think he is still alive. He had lived in Mexico twenty years. He therefore thought he knew all about it, and wrote a book. In his preface he said : ' ' The very idea of a revolution in Mexico is unthinkable." The book was hardly off the press before they were at it dow r n there, and they have been at it ever since. Anyone who had the faintest conception of Spanish American history would have known better than that. The case in Mexico, while not exactly parallel, was like the same thing which happened in Argentina under Rosas, and in Venezuela under Guzman Blanco. There is one country today where a similar condition exists, and unless it is checked by the United States it is going to result some day in a revolution. Take another example. I was traveling on a car one day last summer, and I became acquainted with an American who had been a drummer of some sort in South America. To quote him : ' ' That talk about our trade with South America is * the bunk. ' : Those are his words, not mine. "They are all Indians," he said, "and Indians do not buy." Now that is very true of a great many parts of South America, but let me give you just a few simple statistics so that we may see what the real situation is. In 1810 all Hispanic America, including Mexico and Cuba, had a population of fifteen million. In 1905 it had a population of ninety million an increase of six times. Something had hap- pened down there ! Take the case of one city, Buenos Aires. In the same time its population increased from 45,000 to 500,000 an advance of thirty times. But let us take another thing that I know you arc more in- terested in. Let us take invested capital. In 1810 there was very little foreign capital invested in Hispanic America. Vir- tually it was negligible. Take the figures in 1905. There an- billions of dollars invested there now. There are $1,500,000,000 in English capital invested in Argentina alone. That means something. Think was it is going to mean in another hundred years and the increase will be greater in the next hundred years than in the past. Take another factor. In 1810 there was no legitimate foreign trade at all, outside of the meagre trade with Spain. There was a great deal of smuggling, but all of it together was small as compared to the volume today,. In 1905 the total foreign trade of all Hispanic America, north and south, was three billion dol- lars equal to the combined foreign trade of the United States and Canada! There are the figures for 1905. Does it sound to you as if that drummer reported properly? He reported that there was no sense in going in there; that there was "nothing to it." I am supposed to say a little something about contemporary problems. Those countries are all republics and democracies in name. But in fact, in varying degrees to be sure, they amount to what we would call aristocracies. The families prominent in the colonial era are prominent today. They are the power behind the throne. In some of the countries where revolutions still occur they are the result of quarrels between different factions of the aristocracy. Now, with regard to the masses. I am obliged to speak very gen- erally. The masses have considerable freedom in many respects freedom of expression, for example. We here have no idea of the freedom of characterization of public individuals that there is in the newspapers, for example, of those countries. There used to be a president of Chile whose name was Barro Lugo. He was called "Burro Loco" by the Chileans, which means "Crazy Mule." I went to the races one day in Buenos Aires. It is quite the proper thing to do down there ; no apologies at all are necessary. The President of the country was to be there. He was twenty minutes late. Did they applaud him? No, they hissed him. They called him "Little Pig." They have a lot of freedom in that way, but that does not do them a great deal of good. The masses are really subordinate in the scheme of things. The educational systems are invariably poor, and the masses are therefore kept in ignorance and become tools of the leaders. They are very emotional and easily stirred up. Sometimes they will join revolutionary armies more or less against their will. I recall a case in a rather turbulent country where a certain man was trying to make himself dictator; so he wanted to raise an army of volunteers. He got his army all right. One of his captains sent him in twenty soldiers and said : "Here are twenty volunteers. When you return the rope with which these are tied I'll get you twenty more." One of the other great problems, and one we can hardly under- stand in this country, is the problem of the Church in South America. We can't understand it because we have not within our lifetime had any problem of a state-established church. We think if a man is a Catholic he is a Catholic in every respect, and that he is for the Church in every way. The massw >n South America are Catholic if they are anything, but they are against the Church as an institution. Their leaders have announced a liberal program which comes to about this: They want tolera- tion of other faiths but as a matter of law this usually exists at the present time, though with a string to it as affecting one's chances of entry into good society. They want disestablishment of the church and state; they want the church to stand on its own feet. They are against church marriage and church registry of births and deaths, and want civil marriage and civil registra- tion. They are fighting tooth and nail for divorce ! The Cath- olic Church frowns upon divorce. A most interesting country in respect to this program is Venezuela. It is a little bit turbulent, but they are putting the liberal program into effect. The hist thing to come was the divorce. The minister who brought it about, in order to set a good example, divorced his own wife ! Just a word or two with regard to some of the economic prob- lems of South America. South America is extraordinarily rich. (The gentleman on my left will tell you more about that, no doubt.) You may have heard of the famous mines of the Rio Tinto in Spain mines which were worked by the Phoenecians 1000 B. C. and which have been worked ever since. In recent years they have earned 75 per cent on the stock of the company. They are copper mines. I can't prove it, but I have it on the authority of various mining engineers that those mines are a bagatelle compared with the copper mines of Chile. The whole of Chile is full of an unthinkable quantity of copper. This is merely one illustration of the fact that South America is wonderfully rich. To use a hackneyed expression: "The sur- face has not been scratched!" Development has not taken place to any great extent because of the unsettled political conditions, but a satisfactory s*tate is gradually being evolved. They often have a primitive attitude toward business and foreign capital. Their leading men recognize that they need foreign capital, but the man on the street says: "They come and take all our wealth away. They are depriving us of it." They don't realize that though the foreigner takes some away he is building up the country, just as the English capitalists of the Nineteenth Century are largely responsible for the later pros- perity of the United States without any benevolent intention. Sometimes the government itself is down on foreign capital, and wants to tax it out of existence. There is another problem the need of a labor supply. The Indians (and they exist in great numbers) are not good laborers. White labor is needed. This is the problem of immigration. There are intellectual problems. I mention only the one, the need of a development of an educational system, so these people can be rescued from their ignorance, so the masses can get some idea whither they are going. Where they do spend much money on education they spend it where it is needed the least on the universities. The primary schools get very little indeed. The teachers are lucky if they get paid. I was passing through one of those countries, a prominent country, and the teachers were six months in arrears in their pay. That is worse than it is in this country ! The best secondary education, I believe, in South America is not in the public schools but in the English schools. There is a fact of importance for you men to consider, because, perhaps unintentionally, those schools serve as a powerful weapon for British propaganda. The children of the rich go to Europe for an education, preferably to Paris. They have a saying that "all good South Americans go to Paris when they die, ' ' and a good many go before they die. Just a word about some of their foreign problems. There are certain jealousies among the states. Several of them have had serious wars. That is something you want to know about. You don 't want to talk to a Chilean about Peru in too glowing terms, or vice versa. I pass by, also, some of their relations with Euro- pean countries. I do want to say something about their atti- tude toward the United States. It is one of mingled invitation, appreciation, and reproach. They want our capital and our commerce ; they appreciate some of the things that we have done ; but they reproach us for what they believe to be our imperialistic policy, our intention to swallow them up. You can get a major- ity vote any time on that proposition, that the United States is planning to go down there and swallow them all up. They are terribly afraid of us; afraid we are going to try it. Now they regard the Monroe Doctrine as a shield for United States con- quest and oppression and as a symbol of our hypocrisy. There is an enormous anti-United States literature in Spanish America, put forth, too, by some of their leading literary figures. While there is some justification for their arguments, they carry them much too far. For example, when we go into Central America and stop a little revolution they denounce it as an act of oppres- sion. It is. We are interfering with the sovereignty of a state. But of course we do it without any idea of conquest. A great deal of this anti-United States propaganda comes not wholly from their own study of the situation, but partly as a matter of trade propaganda on the part of our European rivals. Some of us, perhaps, don't realize the opportunities in trade in South America, but the Europeans do. Englishmen and French- men do ; Germans did ; and all of them have made use of this fear of the Yankee to stir up opposition to us. I attended a cer- tain congress down there, and had an opportunity to find out a great deal on this score. Their attitude is very well illustrated by the way in which they regard our public men. I don't believe it will be very difficult for you to guess who was the most hated man in the United States in 1916. FROM THE FLOOR: Roosevelt. Yes, Roosevelt. They hated Roosevelt because they were afraid of him. Now it will perhaps be more difficult for you to guess who was the most popular man at that congress. FROM THE FLOOR: Bryan. Yes, the most popular man in South America is William Jen- nings Bryan, because he is regarded as the most harmless American among us. Woodrow Wilson was quite popular in 1916. That was the time when Mexicans were shooting up Columbus, and Woodrow was "watchfully waiting." Also, they believe in the beautiful para- graphs he every now and then ' ' emits. ' ' They believe him to be sincere. There are a number of things I wanted to talk about in the general relations of Americans with Spanish Americans. There are a great many faults that are chargeable to us, faults aris- ing out of a certain national trait of ours which I hope and be- lieve we are passing through, but which, nevertheless, we now have, the trait of provincialism. We may not believe we pos- sess it, but all foreigners do. We have always lived to ourselves, and that accounts for this trait, but, I repeat, it is, I believe, passing. Our relations as individuals seem to show something of the provincial. We preach brotherly love, and say, "We love you like long-lost brothers, ' ' but we keep to ourselves. These Spanish American boys of the very best families sometimes come to our universities, and we don't even take them into our fraternities. I was once talking to a young man from South America, who was worth several million dollars. He had been through one of our universities, and I wanted to know how he got along and how he liked it. He said, "I got a good education, but socially I was a pariah." Now that is true. The wrong way of dealing with those peoples is too frequently in our diplomatic service. We have a lot of good, "deserving Democrats," and "deserving Republicans," too, in the diplo- matic service. Most of them are estimable men; many of them are fitted for the positions they hold ; but most of them are not. They are often men of high and distinguished attainments in this country, but they don't understand Spanish Americans, and that ' ' lets them out ' ' on the job. I am going to tell you the story of one diplomatic envoy I won't tell you his name, lest you think I am making propaganda. I want to show you how distinguished Americans can act when they get among Spanish Americans. "Once upon a time" an American Commission was appointed to go to South America to return a call which had been made by a Commission from Argentina. The American Commission was headed by a distinguished man, one of the moat successful men in this country. He was going down there to be polite. That was his sole object. He managed, as I might say, to "get by" in Argentina. When he got around to Chile and Peru, there the fun began. He was on an American battleship. When lie got to Valparaiso a banquet was given by the officials of the Chilean navy to the American officers on this ship. Preceding the banquet the boys had shore leave. This distinguished gen- tleman said to the young officers: "Now, remember, we want to make a good impression. Don't refuse anything they offer you." I hardly need to say in what manner that was interpreted by these young men. They didn 't refuse very much, and when they got to the banquet they were ripe for the feast. Here is what happened. Among us it might sound funny, but it didn't seem funny to the Chileans, who are a very dignified people. One midshipman picked up a bun and threw it at another midshipman. At length one young American conceived a very brilliant idea. Why throw buns at another midshipman? He grabbed a biscuit, and aimed at the Chilean admiral and he hit him ! They got through that banquet some way. The next thing on the program was a grand ball. The Chilean aristocracy carne down from Santiago in order to dance with these fine young men. The first American officer through the door threw his arms around a Chilean girl and kissed her. That ended the ball right there. We might excuse that in San Francisco, but it wasn't funny to the Chileans. But you say: Why blame the distinguished American? All right ! But let us follow him further. A little while afterward he was banqueted. He acted all right in the preliminaries, but eventually he made a speech, and that is where he fell. He made this speech before some distinguished Chilean bankers and business men. He said in effect. "Gentlemen: The United States is a very rich and powerful country." That is true, but if any of you have been in South America you will appreciate the impression that statement made. They don't enjoy hearing that dinned into their ears. He went on, "We know that you are poor ! We want to help yon ! Come to us, and we will give yon anything!" What could have been more generous than that? But you can easily see the effect it would have. Suppose someone came to us and said : ''You poor blatherskites ; we would like to make you better than you are !" We wouldn't care very much about that. Their press from one end of the country to the other shouted out against this man whom they proclaimed to be "no gentleman." That is nothing to what happened in Peru! Going to Peru this distinguished American sent a wireless to the President of Peru and said : "I am coming to visit you in Lima." That was enough for the President of Peru. Immediately plans were made for receptions. They decorated the city, and put in all the money they could afford and a little more. Committees were organized, and finally the boat arrived at Callao, the port of Lima, which is only five miles away. When the boat got there this distinguished American heard that Callao had been put in quarantine by the United States Government. That meant the vessel would be held up two days in Panama. This American had a wife, and she was in the United States, and he was eager to get back and see her. He didn't want to stop two days in Panama; so he sent a message to Lima: "I have decided to go on ! I hear there is bubonic plague here; so I cannot stay!" Our American Minister there certainly did one thing worth while. He rushed to Callao and he said: "You come ashore or I go back, right here and now." So the "great man" agreed to come ashore, but said that nobody else could come and that he himself would so and see the President. Tie went to Lima and saw the President, successfully dodged the committees, and in two hours was back on his ship. I doubt if I can make you understand how mortally offended the Peruvians were. They have not gotten over it yet. That is typical of the way Americans act when they do not understand the ways of the Spanish-Americans. I had intended to illustrate that in other ways, particularly in our business re- lations. I have a good many stories I might tell, but since the time is going on and since we have a speaker tonight who is going to deal with trade, I will let that portion of my talk by. I want to say, however, that we are not all as bad as that. Fortunately, some of us know better. Fortunately, some Amer- ican business firms have gone into South America and have gone in in the proper way. We are learning; we are mining out of what I call our provincialism. In the course of time such things as happened on that trip will not be able to occur because Amer- icans will not be able to do such things. Americans will un- derstand better how to have contacts with foreign peoples. But we have a lot to do in the meantime in order to acquire a proper information with regard to South America. I had prepared a list of what I call my "fourteen points" of things we should do to develop our information with regard to South America, but I shall spare you their recital. It comes to this, though. We must study South America. We must increase our sources of information, and we must get men who can procure that information. I am tempted to tell you a little story. The most capable salesman I found in South America was will you believe me? a former professor of one of our American universities ! The man didn't know much about the business he was operating at the start. I think he must have acquired it later. But he knew the Spanish language and, more than that, he knew Spanish people. He knew what they considered a gentleman to be. He conformed to their methods to such an extent that the poor man will never again be a professor ! He is making too much money. One of my "fourteen points" I shall mention. I believe we should encourage all periodicals, for example, which tend to in- crease our information, and I have brought one here with me tonight, the Hispanic-American Historical Review, which owed its foundation, two years ago, to a San Francisco gentleman, Mr. Cebrian. You w r ill say: "This is nothing but something these historians have. It is full of junk, no doubt." Let me show you an example of the "junk" contained. Here is a list of all the newspapers of Argentina outside of Buenos Aires. Here is a list of the recent economic reports of different peri- odicals. There are, I suppose, a couple of hundred of them. Those are practical things, even in a poor historian's magazine. Here is another, and this is the most valuable thing. In each number is published a list of all the books and all the articles, historical and otherwise, that have been brought out in the Ilir'f months preceding concerning Hispanic America. Xow I see that I have talked a little longer than I believe you intended I should epeak, but, though there are many things I had thought of saying, I don't want my companion in misery here to get up and make some such speech as the British Jurist, Sir Frederick Pollock, once did. He attended a meeting of a scientific club, and he was down for a talk. The preceding speakers talked well, longer than I have, each one of them. Finally it got to his turn at half past twelve. His subject was "Applied Science." He got up and said: "The only thing I can think of to say at this time of night has to do with the ap- plication of the domestic safety match to the bedroom candle." There is a sequel to that. It so happened that one of our literary men, James Russell Lowell, was there. He imme- diately drew out a little piece of scratch paper from his pocket, and wrote this verse for Baron Pollock : ' * Oh, wise Sir Frederick ! Might the others catch Your happy science and supply your match!" Louis Roesch Co., Lith. and Print., S. F.