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Show Secretary Root and South America. . Harper's Weekly discusses Secretary Root's journey and mission to South America. It think it Is idle for the United States to try .ust Great Britain, Franco and Germany from their trade positions In South America. It says that all the money those countries have wanted for years they have obtained from Europe, and close trade relations have grown up. And then that there is a race preference towards Europe Eu-rope on the part of those people. Well, business is not, as a rule, obtained by courtesies. Business is governed by certain inviolable in-violable rules, and the merchant who expects to sell goods accepts as absolutely necessary certain things. One is to have the goods on tho spot; another is to be able to order goods and receive them when wanted; another Is to havo employes em-ployes acquainted with the customers, able to 'speak their language, able to supply their wants. These are things that the United States has never had in Spanish America, but England, Franco and Germany have all of them. They have tho goods; they have the ships; they havo the merchants': they are acquainted with the customs of tho country coun-try and they have direct cable connections all up and down the South American coast. Hence they buy what South American has to sell and they pay for it with their own goods. That the bulk of the products of South America eventually comes to United States does not matter. It comes by the way of England and Hamburg and the American pays for it, with two freights added, with his products, from the value of which one freight is subtracted, and tho United States is full of newspapers that are content with that situation situa-tion and say that if tho United States is not doing do-ing woll in running ships and selling goods to South America it is because there are other enterprises en-terprises at homo which pay them better. It would not matter much If the business was only for the present cr a few succeeding yeai's, but really that country is the one to which our coun- try ought to look, not only for trade but for homes 'H for her surplus educated people; yes, educated and uneducated people. One half of tho immigration that comes to us . from Europe ought to bo sent to South America, jH and it would naturally drift that way if Wo had iH any foothold on that continent, where men coma obtain employment. 'M About 4,000 miles of railroad . there belonging to Americans, if built through tho right countries, would nearly North-Americanize South Africa. '1 Wo havo no hope of getting a strong foothold for our people in that country in any other way. We buy their sugar, wo buy their rubber, wo jH buy their rare woods and many other things; iH that is, we absorb them; wo buy them In England jH and in Germany, and pay all the freights. "h But Harper's- Weekly thinks tho real mission of Secretary Root is to try to establish a closer relation with tho(South American states. iH That since tho war with Mexico the people of all Spanish America have had suspicions that wo have sinister designs upon thorn. iH Ono mission of Secretary Root will bo to take 'H this suspicion away, another is to reconcilo Pres- ident Roosevelt's idea of the Monroe doctrine to jB their idea; because the President's idea is that while tho Monroo doctrine will hold intact from jH foroign aggressions the soil of the weaker re- iB publics- of this continent, at the same time it will not interfere in the business between tho citizens of those states or the states themselves and Eu- 'H ropean citizens and governments. That foreign governments ought to have a right to collect their jB debts arising out of contracts, and further, that jB Indemnity may be exacted by force from Latin American commonwealths from injury or insults to foreigners, or from injuries Inflicted on the person or property of tho citizen, That is manifestly tho straight doctrino and jB tho people of South America and the governments ought to understand it. Wk It Is ono thing to save a country from doliber- H ato conquest it is- another thing to guarantee to jB save robbers and murderers from punishment. 9 |