Latin America and the United States: Addresses by Elihu RootRoot, Elihu
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Latin America and the United States: Addresses by Elihu Root
Root, Elihu
America -- Foreign relations; Latin America -- Foreign relations -- United States; United States -- Foreign relations -- Latin America
Now, there are governments which undertake actively to lead in this
direction, and they are governments which are making enormous progress.
Germany, a country regarding which Mr. White has just spoken in such apt
and appropriate terms, leads, and to a considerable extent in various
directions, it requires the combination of her manufacturers, her
producers, and her commercial concerns. Japan practically does also.
There is solidarity brought about by the wonderful organization of that
combination; so that it is one for all, and all for one, under
government leadership. We cannot do it here. Our country cannot take
that kind of lead. Our people do not conceive of that as a function of
government, and as far as the activities of our government are
concerned, they are largely engaged in breaking up organizations which
do increase the industrial efficiency of our country. I do not want to
be understood as criticising that. It is all right to break them up when
they are taking too great a portion of the field for themselves. It is
all right and important to break them up when they are monopolizing the
means of subsistence that should be spread throughout the great body of
the people. But we must recognize the fact that when our government does
enforce the law--a just law, wise law--against our great commercial and
our great industrial organizations, it reduces the industrial efficiency
of the country. There is only one way to counteract that effect, not
violating any law, but securing through organization the united action,
and concentrated action of great numbers of Americans who have a common
purpose, substituting that kind of organization for the organizations
which it is the duty of our government to break up, because they are
contrary to our laws.
I am much gratified by this meeting and by the association of so many
practical men, business men, who, by uniting, are really creating a new
force in this direction, upon which I am sure we ought to move.
Let me say one thing about the practical direction of your efforts. The
so-called Ship Subsidy bill has been reduced now to nothing but the
proposition that the Government should be authorized to pay out of the
profits of the ocean mail service adequate compensation to procure the
carriage of the mails by American steamers to South America; that is
what it has come down to. It passed the Senate, as Mr. White has said,
only by the casting of the vote of the Vice-President, and I do not know
what will be done with it in the House. I am afraid in these last days
that it may be lost in the shuffle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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