NEED OF COMPREHENSIVE COMMERCIAL TREATY

109

German Government in its corresponding measures. The demands of the Social Democrats for lowering of the tariff rates on foodstuffs were met with flat refusal. Chancellor von BethmannHollweg announced to the Reichstag,1

151

"These attacks against our economic policy the Government will meet with determined opposition as heretofore. As I have repeatedly declared from this place, the stubborn and determined maintaining of our economic policy is matter of well-founded conviction on the part of the Confederated Governments."

Yet once outside the bounds of the German law, the Imperial Government like that of the United States, showed willingness to make concessions through diplomatic channels. Special commercial treaties had been concluded with the neighboring states for mutual economic advantage, yet the tariff reductions provided for in those treaties were (except in the agreement of 1907 when a part of the reductions was withheld) uniformly extended to the United States. This was done too, in the face of considerable protest from German Conservatives,152 who were wont to give vehement expression in the Reichstag to their views on what they termed American tariff chicanery.

The prohibition of American products on sanitary ground was a constant subject of diplomatic negotiations. In this the German Government was especially unyielding, and while the American Government always acquiesced in Germany's right to exclude any products which were found to be injurious to the health of the community, it often protested on the ground that the fact of unwholesomeness did not exist, and was unjustly so determined by the German authorities. It took eight years to secure the removal of the prohibition against the importation of American pork, and, while Germany consistently waited 153 until the United States had enacted a strict meat inspection law before the prohibition was withdrawn, she then destroyed her argument, based on sanitary grounds, by making the removal of the prohibition

151 V. R., Vol. 268, 195 Sitz., October 25, 1911, p. 7511 (transl. by author). 152 V. R., Vol. 260, 58 Sitz., 15 Maerz, 1910, p. 2132.

153 F. R., '91, p. 511.

contingent upon certain reciprocal concessions on the part of the United States in the Saratoga Agreement. Later, in 1894, a prohibition was enacted against the importation of American cattle on the ground of the prevalence of Texas fever, and this restriction still existed in 1910. In answer to the Social-Democrats' clamor for the removal of such restrictions, the Chancellor von BethmannHollweg reiterated that the exclusion of the cattle and the rigid meat inspection law complained of were sanitary measures that could not possibly be sacrificed for the sake of cheaper meat. He then proceeded to undermine the argument derived from health considerations by setting forth the advantages accruing to the cattle industry from the Imperial Government's policy.154

"Gentlemen," he continued, "you are always complaining of an undue protection of our cattle industry. Please consider at the same time, that German agriculture under this protection has succeeded in satisfying from within the country 95 per cent. of the entire meat needs. Moreover, in the last decade, the meat consumption in Germany has so increased that we scarcely lag behind that of England . This comparison does not encourage me to make experiments which would injure our cattle industry, and gradually bring us to a great dependency on foreign countries."

Such prohibitions were the chief ground of American protests to Germany in the commercial field. Such statements as the Chancellor's, as well as the terms of the Saratoga Agreement show that sanitary reasons were at least not the only grounds for restrictive measures. The chief grounds of German protests to the United States were the extra duties laid on sugar to offset German domestic bounties, and the special concessions made by the United States to Cuba and later to Canada, both of which Germany incorrectly considered contrary to the Treaty of 1828. What caused most hostility toward the United States, however, throughout Germany was not a grievance that could be handled by diplomacy. It was, namely, the growing preponderance of the American trade balance against Germany, the penetration of certain American industries

154 V. R., Vol. 268, 195 Sitz., October 23, 1911, p. 7514 (transl. by author).

CHIEF CAUSES OF COMMERCIAL CONTROVERSY

111

47

into the German Empire, and the aggravating realization of the increasing economic dependence of Germany upon certain raw products of the United States. Dr. Stresemann, advocating a liberal policy before the Reichstag, pictures the helplessness of the situation. 155

"That is the colossal strength of the United States, which they practice against us. They say 'Now what can you really do? If you want to lay duties on our cotton, then do it, then you only make dearer the raw material which you need; and if you wish to lay duties on our copper and petroleum, then do it, then you have only to pay more for the articles of your household and of the electric industry.' In these facts we can at present alter nothing, they lie in the conditions of nature, and SO also in economic affairs one is reminded of the Goethe saying:

'America, thou hast it better

Than our continent, the ancient." "

Apart from this natural economic situation it has thus been shown that the chief basis of controversy over the regulation of the commercial relations between the two countries lay in their contrasting interpretations of the "most-favored-nation" principle. The United States was correct in its stand that the Prussian treaty on which the relations were based, stipulated clearly in Article IX for a principle of reciprocity; it was also consistent in its application of that principle. Germany's standpoint that the two nations stood on a basis of unconditional most-favored-nation treatment therefore ignored the existence of the equivalence clause. It is true that the German Government for the most part during this period practiced that standpoint in favor of the United States as well as using it as a basis of claims for its own benefit. Nevertheless, the unconditional principle was not consonant with the treaty, was departed from at times, as in the Saratoga Agreement by Germany, and was, as we have seen, finally abandoned by the Imperial Government, which agreed to recognize the interpretation of the United States.

155 V. R., Vol. 264, 125 Sitz., February 11, 1911, p. 4579 D (transl. by author). "Amerika, du hast es besser

Als unser Kontinent, der Alte."

CHAPTER V

SAMOA: THE UNITED STATES AND GERMANY IN THE PACIFIC

THE single instance in the course of the relations between the United States and the German Empire in which citizens of one nation came into conflict with the citizens of the other on a common territory is that of the Samoan Islands.1 Here no Monroe Doctrine operated to determine the policy of the United States. But the conflict between individual commercial interests, and between radically opposite government policies, together with the presence of an excitable and irresponsible native population, created a situation provoking controversy for over twenty years. It is also exceptional in the foreign policy of the United States as an instance in which the country departed from its traditions and united with other nations in a joint administration over a neutral territory outside the western hemisphere.

The Samoan Islands are situated in the southwest Pacific2 directly on the route taken by steamers plying between the United States' Pacific ports and the British Australasian colonies. The island of Tutuila contains in Pago-Pago one of the most perfectly land-locked harbors in the Pacific Ocean, 1600 miles from Auckland, New Zealand, in the steamer lanes between Australia and San Francisco or Vancouver via Hawaii. The three main islands, Savaii, Upolu and Tutuila, comprise together an area of a little over

1 The term Navigators' Islands has been frequently applied to this group, but the native name Samoa is now almost universally adopted.

2 The Islands are located between latitude 13° 30′ and 14° 30' south, and and between longitude 168° and 173° west. (Report of A. B. Steinberger, Special Commissioner to the Samoan Islands, 1873, House Ex. Doc., No. 161, 44th Cong., 1st Sess., No. 3.)

Extract of Report upon the Condition of the Samoan Islands, by John B. Thurston, Acting High Commissioner of the Western Pacific, Inclosure in No. 96. Correspondence respecting the affairs of Samoa, 1885-1889, A. & P. LXXXVI (C-5629).

1000 square miles, the first two being much the largest of the group but lacking good harbors. Apia and Saluafata, both on the Island of Upolu, are merely anchorages giving shelter from the easterly trade winds but open to the full force of the severe hurricanes to which the islands are subject. The latter physical factor was destined at one time to play an important diplomatic role. Commercially the most important product of the islands is copra,5 the dried meat of the cocoanut, which is gathered by the natives, shipped in large quantities to Europe and the oil then extracted and used in the manufacture of the best grade of candles, and the residue made into oil-cakes as food for cattle. The real commercial development of the island may be considered to have begun about the year 1857, when the powerful firm of Godeffroy, of Hamburg, established at Apia the headquarters for their large trade in the tropical products of the Pacific Ocean. The successful enterprises of this firm on the hitherto unclaimed islands became the basis for the interest claims of the German Government throughout the history of the Samoan controversy. That controversy was, through its entire duration, a three-sided one, involving continuously the German Empire, Great Britain and the United States. The interests of the first two were commercial and strategic, of the third almost entirely strategic, for the protection of trade routes.

7

4 Ibid., Savaii, the largest island of the group, contains approximately 325,000 acres, a large part of which, however, is unfit for cultivation and the rest has fertile but stony soil. It contains no harbors. Parts of the island reach an altitude of 5000 feet. Upolu, containing approximately 170,000 acres, has a large area of fertile soil and has been most highly developed commercially. It contains the harbors, so-called, of Saluafata and Apia, the latter being the trade entrepot for the islands, the headquarters of native government and foreign representatives, and the scene of most of the political conflicts between the powers.

5 Steinberger Report, p. 41. House Ex. Doc., No. 161, 44th Cong., 1st Sess., No. 3.

6 A little cotton is also exported, and the islands, especially Upolu, abound in tropical foodstuffs, breadfruit, bananas, coffee, oranges, limes, sugar-cane, pine-apples, and other of the typical south sea island products. (Wakeman Report, included in Steinberger Report, pp. 7 ff.)

'Thurston report: A. & P. LXXXVI (C-5629) p. 63.