Volume v., chapter 3

(Low, Marston & Co., London)._

With better success Kitchener adopted and steadily perfected a block-house system, by which lines of barrier were drawn across the country in different directions, and protected areas were formed. The system and its working are thus described in the history quoted above:

"One of the first reforms undertaken by Kitchener when he assumed command in South Africa was the strengthening of the railways. At that time the defences of the lines were of the simplest description, consisting almost wholly of open trenches at stations, bridges and culverts, while the line itself was patrolled by small parties of mounted men. In laying out these trench defences, the principal object kept in view was to render them inconspicuous and thus immune from artillery fire. The system required enormous numbers of men both for patrol work and for manning the long lines of trenches. … It was clear that some form of permanent or semi-permanent defence must be adopted, if security was to be gained and the railway guards reduced. Early in January, accordingly, the first blockhouses were constructed. …

"Planted at first only at stations, bridges, culverts, important cuttings and curves—at the points, in fact, which experience had proved to be most vulnerable—blockhouses came to be established at regular intervals of about a mile and a half down the whole extent of a line. This interval was steadily lessened. Ultimately it became as small as 400 yards on the Delagoa line and was reduced even to 200 yards on some portions of the Cape railways. A continuous fencing of barbed wire ran along the line; elaborate entanglements surrounded each blockhouse, and the telephone linked up the whole system. A somewhat later development was a deep trench bordering the line of barbed wire and running to within 100 yards of each blockhouse. …

"Until July the system was confined to the railways; but in July the idea first took definite shape of throwing blockhouse lines across country, and thus creating fenced areas of manageable size within which the Boers could be dealt with piece-meal. It is important to note that these lines almost invariably followed roads, which thus became to all intents and purposes as safe as railways. In other words, a great number of additional lines of communication were opened up and secured, and the striking power of the army proportionately increased. …

"While a thousand yards, or thereabouts, was the usual interval between cross-country blockhouses, the rule was invariably followed that each must be in sight of its neighbour on either side. The wire fence spanning this interval always ran in the form of an obtuse angle, so that fire could be directed along it from both ends without risk to either blockhouse. In order to secure accurate fire in the dark, rests were provided for the correct alignment of rifles. Ordinary barbed wire was used at first, but the Boers became such adepts at cutting it that a quarter-inch unannealed steel wire, specially manufactured in England, had to be substituted. In Cape Colony, an eight-strand cable, manufactured in special 'rope walks' established at Naauwpoort, was largely used. Not to be daunted, the Boers took to uprooting the stays and levelling the fence bodily. The stays, accordingly, had to be anchored securely to heavy rocks sunk deep in the ground. As on the railways, alarms of all sorts were devised to give the garrisons notice of an attempt to tamper with the fence. A spring-gun would fire, dangling biscuit tins would rattle, a weight would drop in the blockhouse, and on any such signal the garrison would fire down the line of the fence. But, when all precautions were taken, it was impossible, on dark nights, to prevent determined bodies of Boers from passing the barrier. The passage could be made dangerous and difficult; that was all. … Exaggerated hopes were built on the efficacy of the lines as barriers to determined men. … The Boers, for a long time to come, viewed with disdain the eruption of tiny forts. It was only by degrees that they awoke to the realization that they were taken like flies in a spider’s web. … Communication between commanders became more and more difficult; concentrations on a large scale impossible.

"The ramifications of the blockhouse system and the slow formation of protected areas were not the only signs that the day of conquest was approaching. Within these areas, under the able and energetic administrations of Lord Milner, who returned to South Africa in August, and, in the Orange River Colony, of the Deputy Administrator, Sir H. Goold-Adams, marked progress was beginning to be made in the establishment of civil industry and in administrative reconstruction. …

"With regard to the Boer non-combatant population, an important modification of policy was initiated in December. Orders were issued to all columns that no more families, save those in actual danger of starvation and those belonging to a privileged class, … were to be brought into the concentration camps. Since most of the accessible farms had already been emptied, the order applied mainly to the women and children who had preferred, in defiance of hardship, to accompany the commandos and who lived in nomadic laagers. The Boers, however much they had railed in the past against the inhumanity of the camps, were soon to realise and admit the essential humanity of the concentration system. The embarrassment and anxiety caused by the helpless non-combatants in their midst was to grow day by day. {622} Finally, at the Vereeniging Conference, the truth received frank and undisguised expression. ‘To-day,’ said Botha, ‘we are only too glad to know that our women and children are under British protection.’ The wretchedness of those who remained on the veld became, indeed, a powerful argument for submission."

_The Times History of the War in South Africa, chapters 10, 11, 14 (London, Low, Marston & Co.)._

It was not until March, 1902, that the men of authority on both sides of the war began to give tokens of a mutual disposition to discuss terms of peace. In the previous January, the government of the Netherlands had offered to act as intermediary between Great Britain and the Boers, and the proffer had been declined, the British government repeating its determination to accept no foreign intervention. At the same time it was suggested that, inasmuch as Mr. Steyn and Mr. Schalk Burger, the chiefs of the Orange Free State and of the Transvaal burghers, respectively, were understood to be invested with full powers of government, including the power of negotiation, those gentlemen could open, if they wished, direct communication with Lord Kitchener, who had already been instructed to forward to his government any offers that he might receive. On the 7th of March this correspondence was sent by Lord Kitchener, without comment, to the Transvaal government, then established at Stroomwater. The suggestion in it was rightly taken as an invitation, and acting President Schalk Burger at once asked for a safe-conduct for himself and the other members of his government into the British lines, with intimations of a wish for opportunity to meet the members of the Free State government, in order that they might concert proposals for peace. His wishes were readily complied with. On the 22d he entered the British lines, and all possible aid was given him in getting together the men whom he wished to consult. Some were brought away from active fighting, which went on without them, no pause on the military side being permitted for a single day, while the parleying of a month went on.

The Transvaal and Free State governments met on the 9th of April, at Klerksdorp, under British safe-conduct, and, after debate among themselves on that day and the next, sent a telegram to Lord Kitchener, requesting him to meet them and receive from them a proposal of peace. He replied promptly, inviting them to his headquarters at Pretoria, and there they were received on April 12th. Their proposal was on the basis of political independence for the two Boer states, under "an enduring treaty of friendship and peace" with the British government, as well as a customs, postal and railway union with the adjoining British colonies, and with concessions of the franchise to Uitlanders in the Transvaal. Kitchener could give no consideration to a proposal of this nature; but consented, after much discussion to cable it to London. At, a second meeting on the 14th (when Lord Kitchener was joined by Lord Milner, the British High Commissioner in South Africa) he had the answer of the British government to produce. It declared with emphasis that the government could not "entertain any proposals based on the continued independence of the former republics, which have been formally annexed to the British Crown." To this the Boer officials replied that they had no power to negotiate on any other basis than that of independence, and they asked for an armistice, to enable them to consult their people. This was refused, but, after some parleying, it was arranged that they should have free use of the railway and telegraph, and that military operations should be so conducted as to allow opportunities for meetings in all parts of the country, at which thirty burghers from each re- public should be elected, with authority to act for the people. These representatives were to meet on the 15th of May, at Vereeniging, to determine the answer they would give. Between the 11th and the 15th of May immunity was promised to all commandos whose leaders should be chosen as representatives, and this practically operated as an armistice during those days.

"History records no precedent," says The Times History of the War, "for the state of affairs which existed in South Africa between April 18 and May 15, 1902. War went on, but, to borrow a metaphor from football, the ball of war was continually rolling into ‘touch.’ Kitchener loyally carried out his undertaking to the Boer leaders. Commandos were allowed to assemble and confer unmolested; officers and messengers scoured the country by road and railway with free passes, passing through British outpost lines, receiving the unstinted hospitality of their foes, and occasionally, to the chagrin of a junior British officer, undergoing accidental capture, followed by immediate release on the production of the magic pass. Steyn, indeed, was too ill to take part in all this activity and had retired to a farm near Wolmaransstad. But De Wet, with amazing energy, travelled over the whole of the Free State, inspiring the burghers with his leader’s fiery spirit. At eight successive meetings he personally addressed practically the whole of the commandos and secured unanimous resolutions against any surrender of independence. The Transvaal leaders were scarcely less active, though the purport of their activity was by no means the same." These chiefs of the Transvaal, Louis Botha and others, were disposed to end the struggle for independence; those of the Free State, inspired by their unconquerable President, were not.

On the 15th of May the officials of the two Boer governments met the sixty delegates from the burghers at Vereeniging, and the question between surrender and a hopeless continuation of war was threshed out. The Free State delegates and a few of the Transvaalers had been bound by pledges to vote against any surrender of independence; but in the end they were persuaded by their own legal advisers that such a restriction on the free action of a delegate was contrary to the principles of law; and gradually the question of independence gave place to other matters of consideration in the discussion of terms. On the 19th a sub-committee was appointed to consider those details, and several days of bargaining with Kitchener and Milner, at Pretoria, ensued. There was much use of the cable meantime, to secure assent in London to what might be done. The result was a draft treaty which Lord Milner assured the Boer Commissioners was absolutely final, and must be accepted or rejected without any change, on or before the 31st of May. {623} They took it to the convention at Vereeniging on the 29th, and there, in two days of stormy debate, the no-surrender party, led by Steyn and De Wet, made their last stand. When the decisive vote was taken, their ranks were reduced to six, against fifty-four. The Boer commissioners returned at once to Pretoria, with the accepted draft-treaty, and it was signed on the night of the 31st, a little less than an hour before the expiration of the fixed term of grace. The following is the text of this treaty, which ended one of the worst of modern wars:

"General Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, Commander-in-Chief, and His Excellency Lord Milner, High Commissioner, on behalf of the British Government;

"Messrs. S. W. Burger, F. W. Reitz, Louis Botha, J. H. De la Rey, L. J. Meyer, and J. Krogh on behalf of the Government of the South African Republic and its burghers;

"Messrs. M. T. Steyn, W. J. C. Brebner, C. R. de Wet, J. B. M. Hertzog, and C. H. Olivier, on behalf of the Government of the Orange Free State and its burghers, being anxious to put an end to the existing hostilities, agree on the following points:

"Firstly, the burgher forces now in the Veldt shall at once lay down their arms, and surrender all the guns, small arms, and war stores in their actual possession, or of which they shall have cognizance, and shall abstain from any further opposition to the authority of his Majesty King Edward VII., whom they shall acknowledge as their lawful sovereign.

"The manner and details of this surrender shall be arranged by Lord Kitchener, Commandant-General Botha, Assistant Commandant-General J. H. De la Rey, and Commander-in-Chief de Wet.

"Secondly, burghers in the Veldt beyond the frontiers of the Transvaal and of the Orange River Colony, and all prisoners of war who are out of South Africa, who are burghers, shall, on their declaration that they accept the status of subjects of His Majesty King Edward VII., be brought back to their homes, as soon as transport and means of existence can be assured.

"Thirdly, the burghers who thus surrender, or who thus return, shall lose neither their personal freedom nor their property.

"Fourthly, no judicial proceedings, civil or criminal, shall be taken against any of the burghers who thus return for any action in connexion with the carrying on of the war. The benefit of this clause shall, however, not extend to certain deeds antagonistic to the usages of warfare, which have been communicated by the Commander-in-Chief to the Boer generals, and which shall be heard before a court-martial immediately after the cessation of hostilities.

"Fifthly, the Dutch language shall be taught in the public schools of the Transvaal and of the Orange River Colony when the parents of the children demand it; and shall be admitted in the Courts of justice, whenever this is required for the better and more effective administration of justice.

"Sixthly, the possession of rifles shall, on taking out a licence in accordance with the law, be permitted in the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony to persons who require them for their protection.

"Seventhly, military administration in the Transvaal and in the Orange River Colony shall, as soon as it is possible, be followed by civil government; and, as soon as circumstances permit it, a representative system lending towards autonomy shall be introduced.

"Eighthly, the question of granting a franchise to the natives shall not be decided until a representative constitution has been granted.

"Ninthly, no special tax shall be laid on landed property in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony to meet the expenses of the war.

"Tenthly, as soon as circumstances permit there shall be appointed in each district in the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony a Commission, in which the inhabitants of that district shall be represented, under the chairmanship of a magistrate or other official, with a view to assist in the bringing back of the people to their farms, and in procuring for those who, on account of losses in the war, are unable to provide for themselves food, shelter, and such quantities of seed, cattle, implements, etc., as are necessary for the resuming of their previous callings.

"His Majesty’s Government shall place at the disposal of these Commissions the sum of £3,000,000 for the above-mentioned purposes, and shall allow that all notes issued in conformity with Law No. 1, 1900, of the Government of the South African Republic, and all receipts given by the officers in the Veldt of the late Republics, or by their order, may be presented to a judicial Commission by the Government, and in case such notes and receipts are found by this Commission to have been duly issued for consideration in value, then they shall be accepted by the said Commission as proof of war losses suffered by the persons to whom they had originally been given. In addition to the above-named free gift of £3,000,000, His Majesty’s Government will be prepared to grant advances, in the shape of loans, for the same ends, free of interest for two years, and afterwards repayable over a period of years with three per cent. interest. No foreigner or rebel shall be entitled to benefit by this clause."

The following military statistics of the War, as conducted on the British side, were published in a Parliamentary paper soon after its close:

The garrison in South Africa on August 1st, 1899, consisted of 318 officers and 9,622 men; reinforcements sent between then and the outbreak of hostilities, October 11th, 1899, totaled 12,546. Thereafter the troops sent up to May 31st, 1902, reached the great total of 386,081, besides 52,414 men raised in South Africa. The final casualty figures are: Killed, 5,774; wounded, 23,029; died of wounds or disease, 16,168.

A return made to Parliament in April, 1902, of the estimated amount of war charges in South Africa that had been and would be incurred up to the 31st of March, 1903, gave the following figures:

For the first year of the war (1899-1900), £23,217,000; for the second year, £65,120,000; for the third year, £71,037,000; for the year in which it ended, £63,600,000. Total, £222,974,000.

SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1902. Cape Colony and Natal at the Colonial Conference, London.

See (in this Volume) BRITISH EMPIRE.

{624}

SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1902-1903. Repatriation and Resettlement of the Boers in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony. Work of the first Eight Months of Restored Peace.

The following passages from a report dated March 14, 1903, made by Governor Viscount Milner to Mr. Chamberlain, British Secretary for the Colonies, will give some intimation of the task of reconstruction and restoration which the war had imposed on the victors, and the vigor with which it was performed:

"The Terms of Surrender were signed at Pretoria on the 31st May, 1902, but the Civil Government could not really begin to take over the administration of the new Colonies, and especially the country districts, for nearly a month after that date. At Lord Kitchener’s request no attempt was made to enter into possession of those districts until after the surrender of the Commandos, and though that surrender was accomplished with extraordinary celerity and smoothness, something like three weeks elapsed before any Civil officer could even set out for the house or tent, generally a tent, allotted to him in the wilderness which we were about to take over, devoid, as it was, of crops, of stock, of population, and, to a large extent, of habitable dwellings. The period over which this review extends is, therefore, one of about eight months—from the end of June, when the work of restoration commenced, till the end of February. …

"To begin with the Prisoners of War. The Vereeniging Terms entitled something over 33,000 people to be restored to liberty, and if they happened to be burghers imprisoned out side South Africa, to be brought back to their homes as soon as transports could be provided and their means of subsistence assured. Of this large number upwards of 24,000 were in prisoners’ camps in St. Helena, Bermuda, India and Ceylon; upwards of 1,000 were in a prisoners’ camp, at Simons Town, and about 1,200 were prisoners elsewhere in South Africa. Of the rest the great majority had been allowed to live in Concentration Camps, while the balance were on parole in different parts of South Africa and a few in Europe. The principal difficulty in connection with the prisoners was, of course, the bringing back and distribution of the 24,000 odd, who were at prisoners’ camps oversea. …

"The prisoners of war, on their return to South Africa, were, in the first place, with few exceptions, sent to the Concentration Camps of their respective districts, there to rejoin their families, if they had them, and to return together with them to their homes. They thus, in the majority of cases, helped to swell the enormous number of people for whom the Repatriation Departments of the two colonies had to provide the means of transport to their homes, and, as a general rule, the means of subsistence for months after such return, as well as the seeds, instruments and animals necessary to enable them to raise a crop. … In the eight and a half months that we have been at work, we have restored about 200,000 of the old Burgher population in the two Colonies to their homes, including all the inhabitants in the Concentration Camps in the Transvaal, the Orange River Colony, the Cape Colony and Natal, and the Prisoners of War. …

"By hook or by crook we had succeeded by the end of 1902, in enabling the people to sow a fairly large mealie crop, besides a considerable amount of forage, potatoes and other vegetables. The change in the attitude of the farming population, about that time, was very noticeable. The extreme depression which characterised them two or three months earlier had almost completely passed away, and they were looking forward to the future with much more hopefulness. I may say that almost the whole time, even when the outlook was blackest, their attitude towards the Government was not otherwise than a friendly one. They showed, with few exceptions, great patience under hardships, and much energy and resourcefulness in making the best of the small means at their disposal."

SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1902-1904. Death of Cecil Rhodes. Survival of his Influence and his Policy. Dr. Jameson, as his representative, made Premier of Cape Colony.

On the 26th of March, 1902, two months before the end of the British-Boer war, Cecil J. Rhodes died at Cape Town, and his death removed the most powerful of the personal influences that would have been reckoned on for determining the results of the war. He had been the master-spirit in South Africa for nearly thirty years. Indications of the part he had taken in the expansion of the British dominion in that part of the world, and in the conflict of British with Dutch ambitions which produced the war, will be found in Volume VI. of this work (see, especially, pages 460-466, 470-471, and 475-477, in that Volume).

Had he lived and been in health there can be no doubt that he would have been a leading actor in the political reconstruction of British South Africa since the war. He had been the Premier of Cape Colony from 1890 to the end of 1895; then his career was clouded by the "Jameson raid" into the Transvaal, and he was forced to resign. But the cloud would have cleared, as it has cleared from Jameson. Indeed, the new career of Dr. Jameson, since 1904, when a general election in Cape Colony brought the party of the Progressives into power, and put the former chief lieutenant of Cecil Rhodes in the place of Sir J. Gordon Sprigg as Prime Minister of the colonial Government, is indicative of the new career that would have opened to Rhodes. It is the Rhodes policy and the Rhodes influence that has prevailed, as was said by Mr. Edward Dicey in an article written at the time:

"When Rhodes’ life came to a sudden and melancholy end, Jameson felt the best way he could show his respect for his dead friend was to carry on the work of his lifetime. Amongst the Progressives there were several public men who, in normal circumstances, might have been selected as leaders of the party, but there was a well-grounded conviction that the man who could best carry on Rhodes’ policy, with the least breach of continuity, was Jameson. Even the few British colonists who had not altogether condoned the Raid, felt that there was no one so qualified to lead the Progressive Party as the author of the Raid. The result was that Jameson was appointed, by acclamation, the political successor of Rhodes. It was under the new leader that the battle of the general election in the Cape Colony has been fought and won. {625} The Progressive majority in the Cape Parliament is small; but, in spite of all disintegrating influences, it may be trusted to hold together till a Redistribution Bill has been passed. When the influence of the Bond was supreme in the Cape Parliament, the electoral divisions were manipulated in such a manner as to give thinly populated, rural constituencies equal representation with that enjoyed by the comparatively densely populated urban constituencies. This arose from the fact that in the country the Dutch settlers outnumbered the British, while in the town the British composed the vast majority of the electorate. The simplest way to rectify this abuse was to remodel the existing electoral system, by making population the basis of representation. This reform, however, was open to the objection that it practically disfranchised a large number of rural constituencies in which the Boers were in a majority. On Jameson being appointed Prime Minister, after Sir Gordon Sprigg’s compulsory retirement, his first step was to introduce a new Redistribution Bill based on a less invidious principle than its predecessor."

_Edward Dicey, The New Cape Premier (Fortnightly Review, April, 1904)._

SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1903-1904. The Labor Question. Investigation and opposing Reports by a Commission. Adoption of Ordinance to admit Unskilled Non-European Laborers. Beginning of Importation of Chinese Coolies. The Political Side of the Question. Debate in the British Parliament.

Early in 1903 Lord Milner appointed a Commission to investigate and report on the labor question in South Africa, which is a question between the mining people, who maintain that the needful supply of labor for profitable mine-working is not procurable, at rates which mine-owners can afford, from any other than an Asiatic source, and their opponents who deny the need of bringing either Chinese or East Indian coolies into the mining fields. In November the Labor Commission produced a majority and a minority report, the former agreeing substantially with the mine-owners, the latter in contention with them. The signatures to the majority report were ten in number, the latter were but two. In the discussion of the reports which took place in the Legislative Council of the Transvaal late in the year, one speaker made the statement that he was authorized by General Louis Botha to say that he and all the Dutch he represented were opposed to the introduction of Asiatics. A resolution favoring the introduction of Chinese was adopted in the Council by a vote of 22 to 4.

Ultimately, against the protests of a great majority of the Boer population, an ordinance to regulate the introduction into the Transvaal of unskilled non-European laborers was adopted by the Legislative Council. It applied to males of other races than those indigenous to Africa south of 12 degrees north of the Equator. The ordinance was to be administered by an official superintendent; the laborers were to be brought in by licensed persons only; they were to be employed only in the Witwatersrand district, and only in unskilled labor connected with the production of minerals, and they were to be sent back to the country of their origin, at the expense of their importer, at once on the termination of their contract, which should not be for a longer term than three years, renewable for two more. Provisions as to their treatment, their passport identification, their restricted residence, etc., were very precise and minute. The importation of Chinese coolies under the provisions of this ordinance began in June, 1904. At the end of the year over 20,000 had been brought in.

That the question has its political as well as its industrial side, and is one which concerns democracy no less than labor, is shown in the following: "The political and industrial position of the Rand, and, in some degree of the Transvaal as a whole, is almost unique. The only parallel that comes to mind is that of the town and district of Kimberly. A considerable European community is dependent—on the Rand entirely, throughout the Transvaal very largely—on a single industry for the maintenance of its prosperity. This dependence necessarily places great power in the hands of the small group of men who are the owners, or represent the owners, of the capital by which the industry has been created and is now worked. Their influence is supreme. No law which threatened their interests could be placed on the Statute Book. Men who offer any effective opposition to their wishes—like Mr. Wybergh, the Commissioner of Mines, Mr. Creswell, the manager of the Village Main Reef Mine, Mr. Moneypenny, the editor of the chief Johannesburg newspaper—find it impossible to retain their positions. Two dangers, and two only, threaten the permanency of this supremacy—the Trade Union and the ballot, the combination of the men employed and the possibility of an unsympathetic majority in the legislature when a system of self government is restored. Both these dangers would be increased in degree, and brought nearer in time, by a large and rapid growth of the white population.

"‘If 200,000 native workers were to be replaced by 100,000 whites,’ said Mr. Rudd, one of the directors of the Consolidated Goldfields Company, ‘they would simply hold the Government of the country in the hollow of their hand, and, without any disparagement to the British labourer, I prefer to see the more intellectual section of the community at the helm!’ ‘ With reference to your trial of white labour for surface work on the mines,’ wrote Mr. Tarbutt, another director of the same important company and the chairman of the Village Main Reef Company, in an often-quoted letter to Mr. Creswell, 'I have consulted the Consolidated Goldfields people, and one of the members of the board of the Village Main Reef has consulted Messrs. Wernher, Beit and Co., and the feeling seems to be one of fear that if a large number of white men are employed on the Rand in the position of labourers, the same troubles will arise as are now prevalent in the Australian Colonies, i. e., that the combination of the labouring classes will become so strong as to be able to more or less dictate, not only on questions of wages, but also on political questions, by the power of the votes when a Representative Government is established.’ {626} There have been other declarations of the same tenour; and, indeed, no one who is acquainted with the views that prevail among the circles of South African finance would seek to deny that this dread of a second Australian democracy influencing the political and economic future of the Rand is one of the chief motives that direct the policy of the more far-sighted men among those groups. …

"White labour, coupled with improved mechanical appliances, stands established as the feasible remedy for the admitted shortage in the number of Kaffir workers. To reject it in favour of the introduction of Chinese is a policy which has natural attractions for the owners of the mines. It is a policy which should not have won the support of the representatives of the British people."

_Herbert Samuel, The Chinese Labour Question (Contemporary Review, April, 1904)._

The bringing of Asiatic laborers into the mines was resisted as strenuously in Cape Colony as by the Boer burghers and the non-mining interests in general of the Transvaal. The leading colony addressed a petition on the subject personally to King Edward, saying: "Such an immigration, hampered and restricted as it is proposed to be by stringent regulations, would, even if it were possible to enforce such regulations, which is doubtful, introduce a servile element, alien to the country, destitute of rights, or interests, either in the present or future of South Africa, and worked for the benefit of masters, in many cases non-resident, thus constituting what would practically be a slave state, in close contact with the other free communities of South Africa. Your petitioners feel that the introduction of such a class of labour would place an obstacle in the way of the natural growth alike of European and native elements in the population. …

"Such an importation would decide whether South Africa is in future to constitute one of those great free communities under the British flag, the growth of which shed so much lustre on the reign of your august predecessor, or whether it is to be ranked as a mere plantation worked in the interest and for the benefit of foreign holders. Your petitioners therefore most earnestly pray that your Majesty may be pleased to withhold your sanction from any measure having for its object the importation of Asiatics into South Africa, and by so doing save them and those who may come after them from consequences that will be fatal to their peace and prosperity."

_Parliamentary Papers, 1904 (Cd. 1895), page 133._

Mr. Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, returned to England in March, 1903, from a visit to South Africa, and made an extended statement in Parliament soon afterwards of his observations and his conclusions from what he had seen. On the labor question, then the subject of greatest agitation in South Africa, he stoutly supported the mine-owners in their contention that native labor, and supplies from beyond the Zambesi, to supplement the Kaffir supply, is a necessity of the mining industry; that white labor is impossibly expensive, and that the feeling against the introduction of Asiatic labor seemed invincibly strong. There was not, he maintained, the slightest foundation for the charge that the mine-owners wanted forced labor or slavery in any shape or form, but that they must have cheap labor if the mines were to be worked.

A few days later Lord Lansdowne, the Foreign Secretary, received a deputation from various missionary societies to protest against a proposed exportation of native labor from Central to South Africa. In reply to them he said that the Government had no more in view at present than an experiment with 1000 laborers, who would be taken from British Central Africa to the Rand District of the Transvaal and employed there under regulations very carefully framed. If objectionable results were found the experiment would be carried no farther. This was followed by warm debate on the subject in the House of Commons, where Sir William Harcourt and others denounced the greed of the mining companies, insisting that the mines could not pay fair wages simply because the rich mines were over-capitalized and the low-grade mines had been developed only for sale. Mr. Chamberlain again championed the mine-owners, and defended the policy of the Government, which sought, he said, to promote the general prosperity of the country by getting as many of the mines as possible into working order. The debate had no practical result.

SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1903-1908. Hostility to British Indian Immigration.

See (in this Volume) RACE PROBLEMS: A. D. 1903-1908.

SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1904. Census of all British South Africa. Whites and Natives.

A general census taken in 1904 showed a total white population in all British South Africa--south of Zambesi—of 1,135,655, and a colored population of 5,169,338. The distribution of this in the several colonies was as follows; Cape Colony, 580,380 white, 1,825,172 colored; the Transvaal and Swaziland, 300,225 white, 1,030,029 colored; Natal, 97,109 white, 1,011,645 colored; Rhodesia, 12,623, white, 593,141 colored; Orange River Colony, 143,419 white, 241,626 colored; Basutoland, 895 white, 347,953 colored; Bechuanaland, 1,004 white, 119,772 colored.

SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1905. Importation of Chinese Coolies Suspended by orders from London.

The Liberal Ministry in Great Britain, under Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, which succeeded the Conservative-Unionist Ministry of Mr. Balfour on the 10th of December, 1905, had been seated but twelve days when a despatch was cabled by Lord Elgin, Secretary for the Colonies, to Lord Selborne, the High Commissioner in South Africa, that "the experiment of the introduction of Chinese laborers should not be extended farther until they could learn the opinion of the colony through an elected and really representative Legislature, and they had accordingly decided that the recruiting, embarking and importation of Chinese coolies should be arrested pending a decision as to the grant of responsible government to the Colony"—that is, the Transvaal.

SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1905-1907. Fulfillment by the British Government of the Promises of the Treaty of the Vereeniging Treaty. Representative Government restored to the Boer States.

The seventh stipulation in the Vereeniging Treaty of May 81, 1902, which ended the Boer-British War (see above, A. D. 1901-1902), contained the promise, on the part of the British Government, that "military administration in the Transvaal and in the Orange River Colony shall, as soon as possible, be followed by civil government; and, as soon as circumstances permit it, a representative system tending towards autonomy shall be introduced." {627} On the 31st of March, 1905, the first step toward the fulfillment of this pledge was taken, by the issue of letters patent from the crown (without action of Parliament, inasmuch as the Boer States, in the eye of the law, had been under the suzerainty of the British sovereign, had been in revolt, had been subjugated, and were directly subject to the crown, as conquered territory), conferring a Constitution of Civil Government on the Transvaal. It gave popular representation in a legislature of a single chamber, styled the Legislative Assembly. Not exceeding thirty-five of the members of this body were to be elected, and from six to nine others were to be appointed by the High Commissioner of South Africa,—in which office Lord Milner had been succeeded of late by Lord Selborne. Every burgher of the former Transvaal Republic not disqualified by conviction for treason since May 31, 1902, was to be entitled to vote in the election of representatives; and so were all white males of British birth occupying premises at an annual rental of not less than $50, or possessed of capital to the value of $500. The debates in the Assembly were to be in English—not in English or Dutch, like the English or French of the Parliament of Canada; but there is a provision that the Speaker may permit a member to use the Dutch language. No bill passed by the Legislative Assembly which should subject the natives to disabilities or restrictions could become law until it had received the sanction of the Colonial Office in London.

This organization of a partially representative colonial government extended only to the Transvaal. The Orange River Colony remained still under the Crown Colony system, which had been the status hitherto of both the Boer states since the close of the war.

This limited realization of the promise of representative government to the Boers was undoubtedly all that could be expected from the Conservative Ministry in England, which went out of power soon after it had conferred the Transvaal Constitution. Its successors, of the British Liberal party, soon broadened the basis of self-government in the Transvaal, by a new constitutional instrument, which was outlined to Parliament on the 1st of August, and issued December 6th, 1906. This made the legislature a bicameral body, having, for the time being, an upper Council of 15 appointed members, which, however, it was said to be the intention of the Government to extinguish at no distant day. The elective Assembly was to be composed of sixty-nine members, elected by secret ballot for terms of five years. Every adult male of twenty-one years of age who had been a resident for six months, except members of the British garrison, was entitled to vote. The general lines of the old Boer magisterial districts were followed, and, on the basis of the census figures of 1904 the Rand would have 32 members, Pretoria 6, Krugersdorp 1, and the rest of the country 30. The constitution prohibited Chinese contract labor, and no more coolies could be imported into the country after November 15. Either the English or the Dutch language could be used for public business, and naturalization was made easy, but the Boers’ request for woman suffrage was denied.

A Constitution framed on similar lines was given to the Orange River Colony within the same year.

In the first elections for the Transvaal Assembly there were, besides Socialists and labor organizations, three parties engaged in a somewhat embittered contest. "The Progressives are the party of the great mining houses on the Rand; the Nationalist party is composed of British electors opposed to the enormous political influence which the mining houses have hitherto exercised; while the Boers at Johannesburg and Pretoria and in the rural constituencies are organized in Het Volk. There was a coalition between the Nationalists and Het Volk. These two parties united against the Progressives, and adopted as the chief plank in their platform a declaration that the one question on which the election must turn was, ‘Who shall control the Transvaal—the people or the mining houses?’ The Progressives on their part insisted that the question was, ‘Shall the Transvaal be governed by the people of the Transvaal, or from Downing Street?’ They were aggrieved by the action of the British Government in making legislation concerning non-European labor subject to review in London, and in the campaign they made no attempt to conceal their hostility to the Campbell-Bannerman Government. In this way the question of Chinese labor was forced to the front. The Nationalists and Het Volk coalition was successful," and General Lotus Botha, who has been the leading spirit and guiding mind among the Boers since the war ended, became the Prime Minister of the Transvaal Government then organized.

It has been fortunate for the Transvaal, and no less for South Africa at large, that so large-minded and strong a leader of the subjugated race was found for the trying period in which victors and vanquished were to have peace and friendship established between them.

SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1906-1907. Revolt of the Zulus in Natal. Their Grievances.

An extensive and determined revolt of the Zulus living within the Colony of Natal broke out late in January, 1906, as the consequence of an attempt to collect a poll-tax levied on them by the colonial Parliament. A police sergeant and two or three native policemen were killed in the first melée, and from that time until near the end of the following summer there was war. That it was prosecuted with fierceness, if not actual ferocity, by the whites of the Colony, is made manifest by the fact that about 3500 Zulus are said to have been slain and 2000 taken prisoners. The principal Zulu leader, a chief named Bambaata, was killed in a battle fought in June, and the revolt declined from that time. Sigananda, another chief, was condemned to death, and twelve prisoners, convicted by court-martial of complicity in the original murder of police officers, were executed; while thirty-eight others were sentenced to imprisonment for two years.

A serious question between the colony and the Imperial-Government arose in connection with these military trials. The sentences to death, confirmed by the governor and the Natal ministry, were about to be carried out, when Mr. Winston Churchill, with the approval of Lord Elgin, Colonial Secretary, cabled to the Natal premier ordering the suspension of the execution pending an investigation by the Liberal government, on the contention that the natives should have been tried in a civil court. {628} Premier Smyth refused to obey, but the governor postponed the executions, whereupon the Natal ministry resigned. Much indignation was evident in England, as well as in the colony, against what was regarded as an unwarrantable interference in colonial affairs by the Imperial government. The matter was concluded by Lord Elgin cabling to the governor of Natal that the home government had no intention of interfering in colonial matters, and that, upon the receipt of full information, it recognized the right and competency of the Natal ministry to decide the question at issue.

SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1907 (April-May). Imperial Conference at London.

See (in this Volume) BRITISH EMPIRE: A. D. 1907.

SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1908-1909. Formation of the Legislative Union of South Africa. The Framing of the Constitution. Compromise on the Race Question of Franchise. British Imperial Assent. The Royal Proclamation of Union.

Very quickly after the placing of the Boer colonies on a footing of political equality with their English neighbors a fresh desire for South African Union, in which they, who had fought to the death for its prevention only six years before, now shared, began to be earnestly voiced. Its genesis was explained clearly by a correspondent of the London _Times_ of May 24, 1909, who wrote "Economic causes of a special character assisted the process. A great wave of commercial depression, following hard upon the golden expectations of the peace, passed over the whole country, but made itself specially felt in the coast colonies. Here the situation was painful in the extreme. It was a tale of deficit, of retrenchment, of heroic Budgets. But far beyond the rolling hills of the Karoo and the flat tableland of the Orange River there was a wealthy State, a State with a surplus. The Transvaal, possessing in Johannesburg the principal centre of opulence and the chief market for produce, was in a position to exert economic pressure upon colonies whose principal source of revenue was derived from the profits upon their railways and from the sale of their goods to the great city on the high veld. The poorer colonies lived, so to speak, upon the custom of the Transvaal, and were unable to ignore, however much they might dislike, their position of dependence. A rate war or a tariff war between the Transvaal and the coast colonies could hardly end with a victory for Cape Town or Durban, and so by a process of reasoning which was not always pleasantly illustrated the coast colonies came to accommodate themselves to the view that some form of arrangement as to railways and Customs was desirable in their own interests. Other causes contributed to illumine and enlarge the horizon. A Zulu rebellion in Natal brought home the common danger to the white community from native unrest or from mistakes made by a weak colonial Government in its native policy; the grant of responsible government to the two conquered Colonies tended, not only to bring the English and Dutch leaders into habitual communion, but to give to the progressive section of the community a pressing interest in the construction of a Government which should be strong enough to resist the influences of the back veld."

The first action taken to transform the desire for Union into a movement to that end was early in May, 1908, by a convention of officials from the several colonies, assembled at Pretoria to negotiate a new customs agreement and to arrange intercolonial railway rates. The railway situation was nearly, if not quite, the most serious one that brought pressure to bear on some of the colonies, forcing them to seek a union in which conflicts of interest would be overcome. It was a situation which the High Commissioner, Lord Selborne, described briefly, in a review of the many reasons for Union which he addressed to the Governors and Lieutenant-Governors of the several colonies, on the 7th of January, 1907:

"Of all the questions fruitful in divergence of opinion or of interest to the Colonies of South Africa, there is none so pregnant with danger," he wrote, "as the railway question. It is not an exaggeration to say that a field more thickly sown with the seed of future quarrel and strife than the [State-owned] railway systems of South Africa does not exist. As long as the Governments of the five British Colonies in South Africa are wholly separated from, and independent of, each other, their railway interests are not only distinct but absolutely incompatible. There is a competitive struggle between the ports of Cape Colony and of Natal to snatch from each other every ton of goods which can be snatched. The Orange River Colony desires as many tons of goods as possible to be passed to the Transvaal through its territory, but it is to the interest of Cape Colony that no such tons of goods should pass into the Transvaal through the Orange River Colony. … In the same way it is to the interest of Natal to pass the goods consigned to the Transvaal from Durban into the Transvaal at Volksrust, and not at Vereeniging through the Orange River Colony. Thus the interests of Cape Colony, of Natal, and of the Orange River Colony conflict the one with the other. But when it comes to considering the railway interests of the Transvaal, then it will be found that the interest of the Transvaal is diametrically opposed to the interests of Cape Colony, of Natal, and of the Orange River Colony. The Transvaal loses revenue on every ton of goods which enters the Transvaal by any other route than that from Delagoa Bay [on the Portuguese coast]. … If the [Transvaal Government] were as indifferent to the welfare of the three sister Colonies as every State in Europe is to the welfare of every other State, the Transvaal would see that all the trade to the Transvaal came exclusively through Delagoa Bay. And what then would be the position of the railways and the finances of the three sister Colonies and of the ports of Cape Colony and of Natal? This divergence, this conflict of railway interests, this cloud of future strife, would vanish like a foul mist before the sun of South African Federation, but no other force can dissipate it."

That a railway and customs convention should start the action which united the colonies of South Africa happened as logically, therefore, as the happenings which derived the American Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787 from a River and Harbor Convention at Annapolis in 1786.

{629}

The South African Railway convention, before adjourning, adopted a resolution recommending the appointment of delegates from each colony to a convention for the framing of a Constitution of United Government. Cape Colony led off in approving the proposal, followed within a day or two by the Transvaal and Orange River Colony, and a week later by Natal, where the strongest opposition was developed. The apportionment of delegates to the Convention was, for Cape Colony 12, for the Transvaal 8, for Orange River and Natal 5 each. On the 12th of October these delegates assembled at Durban, in Natal, under the presidency of Sir Henry de Villiers and were in session there until the 5th of November, when they adjourned to meet again at Cape Town, November 23. Their labors were not concluded until the 3d of February, 1909, when all differences had been harmonized or compromised and a draft Constitution approved, which every delegate signed that day.

The Constitution was officially published on the 9th of February, with a recommendation that the several Parliaments should meet on March 30 to consider the draft, and that the Convention should meet again in May on a day to be fixed by the president of the Convention and the Premiers in consultation. The final draft to be submitted to the Parliaments in June. Then a committee of delegates appointed by the Governments to proceed to England to facilitate the passing of the Act.

This programme was successfully carried through. Cape Colony and Natal contended for certain amendments to the draft Constitution, but the Transvaal and Orange River colonies approved the instrument and instructed their delegates to support it as a whole. The General Convention was reassembled at Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange River Colony, on the 3d of May, when it discussed the proposed amendments and agreed to eight of them. As thus amended the draft was adopted in June by the parliaments of each of the four colonies, and sent with that endorsement to the Imperial Government for the seal of Sovereign Law. It was followed by an official mission, composed of nineteen members, who represented, as a London journal remarked, "almost the whole of the driving power in South African politics," including, of course, such former antagonists as General Botha and Dr. Jameson, now shoulder to shoulder in powerful leadership of the movement for South African Union.

One feature of the Constitution, as framed by the four colonies and presented for the imperial approval, was profoundly repugnant to English feeling. It was the product of a compromise in the colonial convention, which ran a curious parallel to that in the American constitutional convention of 1787, which gave the Southern States a representation in Congress for their slaves. The question of elective franchises and legislative representation for the colored natives had troubled the South African union-making, just as the slavery question had troubled the American. Cape Colony had conferred the suffrage on its qualified colored citizens, and refused to disfranchise them; the other colonies had disfranchised all races but the white, and refused to allow a possible election from the Cape Colony to the Union Parliament of any other than members of European descent. The necessary compromise which secured the Union left the Cape franchise undisturbed for the present, but exposed to a future chance of being overruled; and it barred all but European humanity from both houses of the general Parliament.

This compromise was opposed with unyielding resolution by a strong party in Cape Colony, led by two former premiers, Mr. W. P. Schreiner and Sir J. Gordon Sprigg. Mr. Schreiner went to England to appeal there to the Imperial Parliament against the sanctioning of these provisions of the proposed Constitution.

Mr. Schreiner found in Great Britain almost universal sympathy with the feeling that he represented. In Parliament and out, it was expressed by all parties; but there went with it a prevailing opinion that the matter in question and the attending circumstances were such that the Imperial Parliament ought not to refuse assent to the action of the colonies. The Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, set forth the reasoning to this conclusion very clearly and concisely, when, on the 19th of August, he moved, in the House of Commons, the third reading of the South Africa Bill. "I wish," he said, "in submitting this motion to the House, to take the opportunity of putting on record the fact that this Bill, consisting of over 150 clauses and a very complicated schedule, has, after the most careful consideration by this House, been passed without amendment. It would, however, be a totally false impression were it suggested that as regards all provisions of this Bill there is unanimity of opinion in the House. In particular as regards some of the clauses which deal with the treatment of natives—the access of native members to the Legislature—as everybody who has followed the debate can see, there is not only no difference of opinion, but absolute unanimity in the way of regret that those particular provisions should have been inserted in the Bill. I wish before the Bill leaves the Imperial Parliament to make it perfectly clear that we here have exercised, and I think wisely and legitimately exercised, not only restraint of expression, but reserve of judgment in regard to matters of this kind, simply because we desire that this great experiment of establishing free self-government in South Africa should start on the lines and in accordance with the ideas of our fellow-citizens there which they have deliberately and after long consideration come to.

"It is perfectly true that the Imperial Government cannot divest itself of responsibility in this matter. We do not do so. I think that if we have yielded, as we have, on points of detail—on some points on which many of us feel very strongly—to the considered and deliberate judgment of South Africa, it has been because we thought it undesirable at this, the last, stage in the completion of an almost unprecedentedly difficult task to put forward anything that could be an obstacle to the successful working of the Bill. Speaking for myself and the Government, I venture to express not only the hope, but the expectation, that in some of these matters that have been discussed in this House, both on the second reading and in the Committee stage, the views which have been so strongly expressed, and practically without any dissent, will be sympathetically considered by our fellow-citizens in South Africa. {630} For my part I think, as I have said throughout, that it would be far better that any relaxations of what almost all of us regard as unnecessary restrictions upon the electoral rights and eligibility of our native fellow-subjects there should be carried out spontaneously and on the initiative of the South African Parliament rather than that it should appear to be forced on them by the Imperial Parliament here."

The Bill had already passed the House of Lords. It received the royal approval on the 20th of September; and, on the 2d of December, the Union of South Africa was proclaimed, to be of effect on and after the 31st of May, 1910.

Soon after the passage of the Bill, announcement was made that the Prince of Wales would visit South Africa to open the Union Parliament, as he had done on the opening of the Parliament of the Australian Commonwealth, in 1901.

In December it was made known that the Right Honourable Herbert Gladstone would be the first Governor-General of United South Africa.

For the text of the South African Constitution:

See (in this Volume) CONSTITUTION OF THE UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA.

SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1909. The Native Protectorates. Their Condition and Circumstances on the Eve of the Inauguration of the Union of South Africa.

"It should not be forgotten that the protectorates are in being to-day not because this particular arrangement of protection was economically necessary or inevitable, nor even because the general relationship of the native tribes of South Africa made it the best that could be devised. The fact is that they came into existence at different times and as definite and probably expedient results of various fortuitous crises in a chaotic native political history, which is at least characteristic of South Africa. …

"To-day the protectorates are to a considerable degree isolated native communities, so far at any rate as they are concerned with any possible united feeling among the other native tribes of South Africa. They are carefully guarded by their responsible officials from interference and possible harm from outside their own territories—that is from taking any considerable interest or partnership in the real or fancied troubles of neighbouring states. They are in a sense—and more than a political sense—inside a ring fence.

"As regards the relationship between the native inhabitants and the white settlers of the several protectorates, there are no striking points of difference. In Basutoland no land is held under white ownership. Such white residents as there are, apart from officials and missionaries, are there as traders and storekeepers. No land rights have been alienated to white men. In the Bechuanaland Protectorate certain areas are held by white men, but at the same time very large areas are reserved entirely for native uses. In Swaziland the relationship was, until a few months ago, upon a very different basis—a position surely unique in the history of the British colonial possessions. I have not space to describe even briefly the extraordinary intricacy of the concessions troubles or the heroic measures found necessary to effect a settlement at once just to the concessionaire and the native. It must be sufficient to say that today about half the area of the country is held in white ownership, while rather more than one-third is reserved for the exclusive use and benefit of the natives. In Zululand certain areas of land are held by whites, but the bulk of land is held in native possession. In each case, however, it is not probable that any more land will be alienated for purposes of sale or settlement by whites. It may be accepted without doubt, I think, that the natives will retain in perpetuity the land they hold at present. It will be seen that the material interests of the natives, at any rate as regards land, have been well guarded in the three protectorates."

_R. T. Coryndon, The Position of the Native Protectorates (The State, South Africa, September, 1909)._

SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1909. Introduction of Proportional Representation.

See (in this Volume) ELECTIVE FRANCHISE: SOUTH AFRICA.

SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1909. Native Labor Supplanting the Chinese.

See (in this Volume) RACE PROBLEMS: SOUTH AFRICA. A. D. 1909.

----------SOUTH AFRICA: End--------

SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS.

See (in this Volume) American Republics.

SOUTH CAROLINA, and Interstate and West Indian Exposition.

See (in this Volume) CHARLESTON: A. D. 1901.

SPAIN: A. D. 1870-1905. Increase of Population compared with other European Countries.

See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1870-1905.

SPAIN: A. D. 1898-1906. Gains from the Loss of Cuba and the Philippines. Growth of Close Relations with the Spanish-American States.

"In many a war it has been the vanquished, not the victor, who has carried off the finest spoils. Cuba and the Philippines have been like a tumor in the side of Spain, dragging her down in the race of civilization. They have drained her life-blood and disturbed all her national activities. Only a serious surgical operation could remove this exhausting excrescence; and Spaniards themselves have been the first to recognize that the operation, though painful, was in the highest degree beneficial. Not even the most Quixotic of Spaniards dreams of regaining these lost possessions. The war has been beneficial in at least two different ways. It has had a healthy economic influence, because, besides directing the manhood of Spain into sober industrial channels, it has led to the removal of artificial restrictions in the path of commercial activity. It has been advantageous morally, because it has forced even the most narrow and ignorant Spaniard to face the actual facts of the modern world.

"The war has had a further result in leading to a movement, for a closer sympathy between Spain and the Spanish states of South America. The attitude of these states towards the mother country has hitherto been somewhat unsympathetic; they have regarded her as hopelessly opposed to all reform; the hostility of Spain to the aspirations of Cuba and their own earlier struggles for freedom amply accounted for such an attitude. Now there is nothing to stand in the way of a movement towards approximation which has already begun to manifest itself, and may ultimately possess a serious significance."

_Havelock Ellis, The Spirit of Present-Day Spain (Atlantic Monthly, December, 1900)._

{631}

"Thoughtful Spaniards will tell you that a change has come over their country with the close of last century, and that this change has been developing since the accession of their young King. The starting-point of this evolution in national life was the close of the short struggle with the United States and the loss of what remained of their colonial empire. That turning-point in the modern annals of Spain caused a deep impression in the minds, not only of the governing classes of the country, but of the hard-working middle classes and of the masses themselves. … Almost immediately after conclusion of the peace treaty, first a few and then more and more Spaniards dared to speak out what at heart they felt, however sore and resentful—namely, that foreign and colonial foes had rendered Spain a service by ridding her of the colonies that hampered her revival in Europe and in fields of action and enterprise nearer home. This feeling spread widely among the masses and middle classes when they perceived the first-fruits of the concentration of the resources and energies of the nation in Spain between 1899 and 1905. Much capital had flowed back from the former colonies, especially from Cuba and the Philippines, and promoted a rapid increase in enterprises of every kind—banks, financial establishments, mines, industries, syndicates, trusts, shipping-interests that, developing, perhaps, too rapidly, were led to overproduction, and thus gave rise to local crises at Bilbao, Barcelona, Santander, Cadiz, Malaga. The rebound of the last year of the nineteenth century and of the first few years of the twentieth was a consequence also of the recovery of Spanish credit, effected by a vigorous reorganization of Spanish finance and budgets by the late Señor Villaverde, and by the gallant resolution with which Governments and Parliaments, backed by the press and public opinion, undertook to honor both the domestic engagements of Spain herself, and the engagements that resulted from saddling her treasury and budget with the debts of Cuba and the Philippines, and with the cost of the last and previous civil wars in the lost colonies. The restoration of Spain’s credit abroad and at home, the successful levelling of her budgets with a surplus revenue annually of several millions of dollars since 1900, dispelled the fears of her native capitalists; and they too, large and small, came forward to invest in mines, banks, companies and railways."

_World-Politics (North American Review, November, 1905)._

SPAIN: A. D. 1901-1904. Four Years of Political Shuffling in the Government. End of the Queen Dowager Regency. Coronation of the Young King, Alfonso XIII. Death of Sagasta.

A New Ministry, of Liberals, was formed in March, 1901, with the veteran leader, Praxedes Mateo Sagasta, at its head; but the military party was represented in the Government by General Weyler, as Secretary for War. Measures undertaken by the Government against unauthorized religious orders, to bring them under surveillance, gave rise to anti-clerical disturbances in some parts of the Kingdom, and were defiantly opposed by the Church. Legislative elections held in June gave the Government 280 seats, leaving but 70 to the Opposition; but any party controlling the conduct of elections in Spain was said to be able to secure whatever majority it desired.

The general condition of confusion and disturbance was continued in 1902, and constant recourse was had, in one region or another, to declarations of a "state of siege," involving martial law. General Weyler fought a battle of a week’s duration in February at Barcelona, with rioting consequent on a general strike.

See (in this Volume) LABOR ORGANIZATION: SPAIN.

On the 17th of May, his sixteenth birthday, Alfonso XIII., whose father, Alfonso XII., died before he was born, and who, consequently, had been, nominally and constitutionally, King of Spain since his birth, entered on the actual exercise of royal functions. He was crowned that day, and the regency of his mother came to an end. The coronation ceremonies were splendid; the oath taken by the young King was very simple: "I swear by God upon the Holy Bible to maintain the constitution and laws. If so I do, may God regard me; if I do not, may he call me to account." There is reason to believe that he took this oath with a serious sense of the responsibilities he assumed; but influences at Court, military, clerical, and otherwise reactionary, were stronger than the influence of his constitutional advisers for a few years, and the political distractions of the time were increased. The attempted action of Government against unauthorized religious orders ended in a compromise which gave authorization to every order demanding it.

On the 3d of December, 1902, Sagasta and his Cabinet resigned, and a Conservative Ministry, under Señor Silvela, was formed. On the 5th of January following Sagasta died. The liberalism he represented had no substantial unity left, nor were the opposing groups in a condition to give more consistency or strength to the Government. A new Ministry under Senor Villaverde succeeded that of Silvela in May, and was succeeded in turn by another in December, with Señor Maura at its head. Premier Maura, formerly of Sagasta’s party, but latterly more Conservative, held the reins for a full year, escaping two attempted assassinations in 1904, and giving place to General Azcarraga on the 14th of December in that year. The General was less fortunate, for he enjoyed the honors of the prime ministry but six weeks.

SPAIN: A. D. 1903. Agreement for Settlement of Claims against Venezuela.

See (in this Volume) VENEZUELA: A. D. 1902-1904.

SPAIN: A. D. 1904 (April). Declarations of England and France touching Spanish interests in Morocco.

See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1904 (APRIL).

SPAIN: A. D. 1905-1906. Unsatisfactory State of the Kingdom. Rapid Succession of Changes in the Government. Disorders in Catalonia. The King’s Marriage. Attempted Assassination of the King. Proposed Anti-Clerical Law, which came to naught.

In the character of its political parties, in the condition of its finances and in the general circumstances of the country, Spain appeared to be in an increasingly unsatisfactory state. Four changes of Ministry occurred within the year 1905, and no Government was found able to project any policy that promised permanency and definiteness of line. {632} Don Ramon Villaverde succeeded General Azcarraga as Premier in January, and was succeeded in the following June by Don E. Montero Rios, who had Don Jose Echegaray, the eminent poet, dramatist, novelist, and banker, for his Minister of Finance. In turn, Señor Montero Rios, after a reconstruction of his Cabinet in October with the help of the King, gave way at the end of November to Señor Moret. The Azcarraga and Villaverde Ministries had been Conservative; those of Montero Rios and Moret were of the Liberal type. The Parliament, which should have been convened early in the year, but was not called together until the middle of June, contained no majority which any Ministry could trust, and all the leaders in Spanish politics were afraid of it. Fresh elections in September gave the Montero Rios Ministry a decided majority; but it had quarrels within itself, and threatening disorders had arisen in many parts of the country, especially in half-rebellious Catalonia, which it seems to have lacked courage to face. An arrogant, insubordinate temper had been developed among the officers of the army, who disputed the supremacy of civil over military authority; and in many ways the conditions in the kingdom gave cause for grave anxiety to thoughtful minds.

Not much, if any, quieting of the disturbed conditions in Spain came during the next year. The Government stooped to a compromise with the insolent military faction, so far as to allow press offenses against officers of the army to be dealt with by courts-martial. On the 31st of May, 1906, King Alfonso was married to the English Princess Ena of Battenberg, who previously entered the Roman Catholic Church, much to the disturbance of Protestant feeling in England. The wedding festivities at Madrid were nearly made tragical by an anarchist attempt to kill the royal pair. As they returned from the marriage ceremony to the palace a wretch named Matteo Morales threw a bomb into the midst of the procession of carriages, killing a number of attendant people, but missing those for whom it was intended. The coolness and readiness of mind shown by the young king, and by his bride, excited general admiration, and indicated a strength of character that augured well for Spain.

In July the Moret Ministry found it expedient to resign, and the administration of Government passed to a new Cabinet, under Captain-General Lopez Dominguez. Then a strange change of attitude toward the Church of Rome was given for a brief time to the Spanish Government, as though it had caught the temper of France. There had been signs of a disposition toward some independence of secular policy a few years before, when the strenuous opposition of the Church failed to prevent the passage of a Spanish law which authorized civil marriage between persons legally qualified, whatever their creed might be. The Church continued its hostility to this law until it succeeded, in 1900, in securing an amendment which restricted the right of civil marriage to parties one of whom should not be a Catholic. Public opinion does not seem to have approved that concession, and the original provisions of the law were now restored. This drew on the Government a fierce clerical attack; in the face of which it brought forward, in October, a project of law which seems to have been modelled very closely on that French Associations Law, of 1901, by which all religious orders, along with other associations, were brought under surveillance and regulation by the State.

See in Volume VI. of this work, FRANCE: A. D. 1901, and, in this Volume, FRANCE: A. D. 1903.

This Spanish measure proposed to allow no religious order to be established in the kingdom without parliamentary authorization. It would empower the Government to withdraw the authorization of any order or association that it found dangerous to public tranquility or morals; it would permit any member of an order to renounce his or her vows; it would dissolve any order whose members were foreigners or whose directors lived abroad; it would command monasteries and convents to open their doors to representatives of the proper civil authority at any time; it would limit the property held by religious orders to the need of the objects for which they were instituted and put a limit on the gifts and bequests they could receive.

This seemed an extraordinary measure to come even under discussion in Spain. Some of the Liberal leaders were prompt in declaring opposition to it, and its passage through the Cortes was probably impossible; but it came to no vote. Debate on it, opened on the 27th of November, was brought soon to an abrupt and not well-explained end. The Prime Minister resigned suddenly, in consequence of alleged intrigues; Señor Moret, recalled to office, was forced to retire again almost at once; a new Ministry was formed by the Marquis Vega de Armijo, and nothing more appears to have been heard of the proposed Associations Law.

SPAIN: A. D. 1906. At the Algeciras Conference on the Morocco question.

See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1905-1906.

SPAIN: A. D. 1907. Franco-Spanish Bombardment of Casablanca.

See (in this Volume) MOROCCO: A. D. 1907-1909.

SPAIN: A. D. 1907-1909. The Maura Conservative Ministry. Unpopularity of the War in Morocco. Insurgency in Barcelona. The Ferrer Case. The Moret Ministry. Municipal Reform. Present Parties.

The Ministry of Marquis Armijo de la Vega held the Government little more than a month, giving way to Señor Maura and his party, who returned to power in January, 1907. Five changes of administration had occurred within a year and a half. Elections in April yielded the Government a majority, and the birth of an heir to the throne on the 10th of May gave much satisfaction to the country. The Liberals, however, were so indignant at the manipulation of the elections to the lower chamber that, on the advice of their leader, Señor Moret, they took no part in the senatorial elections which followed, later in May; and this proved singularly embarrassing to the Government. Bomb explosions and other anarchist outrages, centering in Barcelona, but not confined to that turbulent city, were being dreadfully increased, and a ministerial Bill was brought before the Cortes in January, 1908, providing measures of suppression so drastic, especially in its dealing with the Press, that a most formidable opposition was stirred up. The Government stood stoutly by the Bill for months, until its control of the Cortes was shaken by the coalition that took form against it. {633} In the end it withdrew the Anarchist Bill, but raised another obstinate and threatening storm by the proposal of a Local Administration Bill, quite startlingly revolutionary in its plans for giving more independence to municipalities and provincial councils. Contest over this Bill went on till early in February, 1909, when Premier Maura came to an understanding with Señor Moret, leader of one of the Liberal groups, which enabled a part of the extensive measure, relating to municipalities, to be passed. Among other things, this new enactment made voting in the municipalities compulsory, and elections held since are reported to have shown a heavy increase of vote, proving effectiveness in the law. The other section of the Bill, dealing with provincial councils, was held over for subsequent action in the Cortes, and had not been disposed of when Premier Maura and his Cabinet were driven to resign, in October, 1909.

The causes of the overthrow of the Maura Ministry came primarily from the serious war with the tribesmen of the Riff, Morocco, into which Spain had been drawn in the midsummer of 1909.

See (in this Volume) MOROCCO: A. D. 1909).

The war was exceedingly unpopular from the beginning, and made more so by early reverses in its prosecution. Riotous outbreaks and labor strikes occurred in several parts of the Kingdom, but most fiercely at the turbulent city of Barcelona, where they were suppressed with a severity which embittered feeling against the Government. This feeling was excited to a climax in October by the military trial and execution, at Barcelona, of Professor Francisco Ferrer. Professor Ferrer was a teacher of high standing and wide acquaintance in Europe, extremely radical in his political opinions, and accused of disseminating seditious doctrines in the school which he conducted at Barcelona. The military authorities there put him under arrest on the charge of having been a principal instigator of the revolutionary rising in July. He was tried by court-martial, without just opportunity for defence, according to common belief, and summarily shot, the Government disregarding many appeals from all parts of Europe for its intervention in the case. An extraordinary excitement throughout the world was produced by this tragedy, and it was felt in Spain with reverberant effect. After violent speeches in the Chamber of Deputies, October 20, Señor Maura felt it necessary to resign, and the Liberal leader, Señor Moret y Prendergast, was called by the King to take the Government in hand.

The Moret Ministry made a speedy good beginning in domestic policy, by reviving, in some degree, the further undertaking of reform in local administration which Señor Maura had attempted two years before. This was now done by a decree, designed to clear away the mass of ordinances and special decrees by which the existing municipal law has been gradually choked since it was enacted in 1877, and to restore to municipal bodies the liberty and initiative that they were originally supposed to possess. Señor Moret and his party had supported Premier Maura’s Local Administration Bill in 1907; but it had been opposed and defeated by the class of politicians who are trained to a distaste for any sort of political reform. According to all accounts, the Moret Ministry, with a much mixed and uncertain support in the Cortes, has thus far done well.

Municipal elections were held throughout Spain December 12, and the introduction of compulsory voting brought out an unprecedented vote, from which the Republicans and Liberals drew most. Altogether, there are said to have been chosen 481 Republicans, Liberals, and Democrats, 253 Conservatives, and over a hundred Radicals of various shades. Madrid elected 12 Republican councillors, 2 Liberals, 1 Democrat, and 7 Conservatives, thus giving the Republicans an absolute majority. Valencia chose 15 Republicans, against 10 of all other parties. In Valladolid, 12 Liberals, 6 Republicans, and 3 Conservatives were elected; in La Coruña, 7 Republicans, 3 Liberals, and 3 others; in Córdoba, 10 Republicans, 6 Liberals, and 6 Conservatives.

In present politics the Republicans are said to have gone into alliance with the Socialist or Labor party; the alliance having its leader in a Señor Lerroux, of Barcelona, who returned lately from a long political exile, and who has had warm receptions in a number of the chief cities, where he made stirring speeches. "Señor Lerroux," says a correspondent, writing from Madrid in December, "preaches neither anarchism nor atheism nor anti-militarism. But he asks for the abolition of the Monarchy and of the religious orders. He would make the army the humble servant of the State, promote lay education and local autonomy, and do away with indirect taxation. And he looks for the realization of this programme to a well-timed revolution. Such are the ideas with which the bulk of the Republican-Socialist coalition will go to the polls at the next general election. Between these two extremes—the Conservatives, representing the Monarchy, the aristocracy, and the Church, and the Republican-Socialist alliance, representing revolution—we see the present Government balancing itself uneasily, with a foot in each camp, amenable to pressure from both, and without any independent means of support, save that which it enjoys in virtue of its temporary control of the political machine."

----------SPAIN: End--------

SPALDING, Bishop John L.: On the Anthracite Coal Strike Arbitration Commission.

See (in this Volume) LABOR ORGANIZATION: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1902-1903.

SPANISH AMERICA: A. D. 1906. Growth of Close Relations with Spain.

See (in this Volume) SPAIN: A. D. 1898-1906.

SPERRY, Rear-Admiral Charles S.: Commissioner Plenipotentiary to the Second Peace Conference.

See (in this Volume) WAR, THE REVOLT AGAINST: A. D. 1907.

SPERRY, Rear-Admiral Charles S.: Commanding the American Battleship Fleet.

See (in this Volume) WAR, THE PREPARATIONS FOR: NAVAL.

SPHAKIANAKIS, Dr.

See (in this Volume) CRETE: A. D. 1905-1906.

SPIERS, Bishop: Murder of.

See (in this Volume) AFRICA: A. D. 1905.

{634}

SPITZBERGEN CONFERENCE.

"The Norwegian government, by a note addressed on January 26, 1909, to the Department of State, conveyed an invitation to the government of the United States to take part in a conference which, it is understood, will be held in February or March, 1910, for the purpose of devising means to remedy existing conditions in the Spitzbergen Islands. This invitation was conveyed under the reservation that the question of altering the status of the islands as countries belonging to no particular State, and as equally open to the citizens and subjects of all States, should not be raised.

"The European Powers invited to this conference by the government of Norway were Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

"The Department of State, in view of proofs filed with it in 1906, showing the American possession, occupation, and working of certain coal-bearing lands in Spitzbergen, accepted the invitation under the reservation above stated, and under the further reservation that all interests in those islands already vested should be protected, and that there should be equality of opportunity for the future. It was further pointed out that membership in the conference on the part of the United States was qualified by the consideration that this government would not become a signatory to any conventional arrangement concluded by the European members of the Conference which would imply contributory participation by the United States in any obligation or responsibility for the enforcement of any scheme of administration which might be devised by the conference for the islands."

_Message of the President of the United States to Congress, December 6, 1909._

SPOILS SYSTEM: Cause of Corruption in the United States Customs Service.

See (in this Volume) UNITED STATES: A. D. 1909 (OCTOBER-NOVEMBER).

See (in this Volume) CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.

SPRECKELS, Rudolph.

See (in this Volume) MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: SAN FRANCISCO.

SPRIGGS, SIR J. GORDON.

See (in this Volume) SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1902-1904.

SPRIGGS, SIR J. GORDON. Opposition to the Disfranchisement of Blacks in South Africa.

See (in this Volume) SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1908-1909.

SPRING-RICE, SIR C.: British Minister to Persia.

See (in this Volume) PERSIA: A. D. 1907 (JANUARY-SEPTEMBER).

STACKELBERG, General.

See (in this Volume) JAPAN: A. D. 1904 (FEBRUARY-JULY), and after.

STANDARD OIL COMPANY: Suit by the Government for its Dissolution. Decree of the U. S. Circuit Court. Appeal to the Supreme Court.

See (in this Volume) COMBINATIONS, INDUSTRIAL, &c.: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1906-1909.

STATE LEGISLATION, Need of Unity in.

See (in this Volume) LAW AND ITS COURTS: UNITED STATES.

"STATE RIGHTS": The question in Australia.

See (in this Volume) AUSTRALIA: A. D. 1902.

STEUNENBERG, EX-GOVERNOR FRANK, OF IDAHO: His assassination.

See (in this Volume) LABOR ORGANIZATION: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1899-1907.

STEVENS, DURHAM WHITE: Adviser to the Korean Foreign Office, by Japanese Selection. His assassination.

See (in this Volume) KOREA; A. D. 1905-1909.

STEVENS, JOHN L.: Chief Engineer of the Panama Canal.

See (in this Volume) PANAMA CANAL: A. D. 1905 and 1905-1909.

STEYN, PRESIDENT M. T.

See (in this Volume) SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1901-1902.

STOCK EXCHANGE, NEW YORK: Report on its Operations.

See (in this Volume) FINANCE AND TRADE: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1909.

STOCKHOLM: A. D. 1909. Lockout and attempted General Strike.

See (in this Volume) LABOR ORGANIZATION: SWEDEN.

STOLYPIN, P. A.: Premier of the Russian Government.

See (in this Volume) RUSSIA: A. D. 1906, 1907, and after.

STONE, ELLEN M.: Capture by Brigands in Turkey and Ransom paid for Release.

See (in this Volume) TURKEY: A. D. 1901-1902.

STÖSSEL, GENERAL.

See (in this Volume) JAPAN: A. D. 1904 (FEBRUARY-JULY); (FEBRUARY-AUGUST), and A. D. 1904-1905 (MAY-JANUARY).

STRAUS, OSCAR S.: Secretary of Commerce and Labor.

See (in this Volume) UNITED STATES: A. D. 1905-1909.

STRAUS, OSCAR S.: On the Chinese Exclusion Laws and their Administration.

See (in this Volume) RACE PROBLEMS: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1905-1908.

STRIKE, A GENERAL: THE IDEA OF IT.

See (in this Volume) LABOR ORGANIZATION: FRANCE: A. D. 1884-1909.

STRIKES.

See (in this Volume) LABOR ORGANIZATION.

STUNDISTS, POLITICAL IDEAS OF THE.

See (in this Volume) RUSSIA: A. D. 1902.

SUBMARINE SIGNAL BELLS.

See (in this Volume) SCIENCE AND INVENTION: SUBMARINE SIGNAL BELLS.

SUBWAYS, NEW YORK.

See (in this Volume) NEW YORK CITY: A. D. 1900-1909.

SUCCESSION DUTIES: Treaty concerning, between England and France.

See (in this Volume) DEATH DUTIES.

SUGAR TRUST, THE FRAUDS OF THE.

See (in this Volume) Combinations, Industrial, &c.: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1907-1909, and 1909.

SUDAN, THE WESTERN: A. D. 1903. English Ascendancy established in Nigeria.

See (in this Volume) AFRICA: A. D. 1903 (NIGERIA).

SUDAN, THE WESTERN: A. D. 1907. Great Changes wrought in Ten Years. The new Khartoum.

"After Khartoum had fallen the palace was looted and demolished, but on its ruins another stately pile has arisen wherein Gordon’s memory is kept green by a tablet marking the fatal spot where on the 26th of January, 1885, he was done to death. And even as a new palace sprang up on the ashes of the old, so likewise after a thorough clearing away of the ruins of Gordon’s city, a new Khartoum has been planned and built on the ancient site. This new city lies at an altitude of 1263 feet above sea level, has a moderate yearly rainfall of but some forty inches, and a mean annual temperature of 84° Fahrenheit; by water it is 1560 miles from the source of the Nile at Ripon Falls, and 1920 miles from the Rosetta mouth of that fertilising river. Slowly but surely vaccination is reducing the small-pox mortality among the Soudanese; the old mosquito-breeding pools have been filled up, and the mosquito brigade is still doing good work. Thus the new Khartoum may be said to enjoy a fairly salubrious climate, which, moreover, should yearly become more and more healthy. …

{635}

"South of Khartoum proper, across the desert race-course and golf-links, and hard by what remains of Gordon’s fortifications, dwell, each in their own settlement with its distinctive huts, the divers native tribes who make up the city’s indigenous population. Probably the new Khartoum of to-day, with Omdurman and the near villages, totals nearly one hundred thousand souls, and, considering that its geographical situation so admirably adapts itself to fostering the expansion of trade, I venture to predict that in another fifty years Khartoum will contain half a million inhabitants. …

"The material condition of the people is improving; indeed, it is already prosperous. For the first time in their history the Soudanese are an absolutely free people, living under a Government anxious to protect them from injustice and to promote their welfare; it is hard for stay-at-home Britishers to realise adequately how far-reaching is this change in a land ‘where slavery in one form or another has been for thousands of years a permanent and universal institution.’ …

"To Lord Cromer’s wise counsel and untiring efforts the new Soudan owes much, and in 1901 the Shillook and Dinka representatives fully recognised this, when, using for the simple ceremony a sort of dark green fez, they crowned him their king. In the name of his own great Sovereign, whose ensign holds sway on every continent and on all known seas, his Lordship promised that the sacred law of Islam shall be respected; and the very remarkable agreement of the 19th of January, 1899, gave to this hitherto down trodden people their Magna Charta, for Article II. stipulates that ‘the British and Egyptian flags shall be used together, both on land and water, throughout the Soudan.’"

_W. F. Miéville, The New Khartoum (Nineteenth Century, January, 1908)._

SUEZ CANAL: Renewed Agreements between England and France.

See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1904 (APRIL).

SUFFRAGE, Political.

See (in this Volume) ELECTIVE FRANCHISE.

SUFFRAGETTES.

See (in this Volume) ELECTIVE FRANCHISE: WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

SUGAR-BOUNTY CONFERENCE, AND CONVENTION.

As the result of a Conference, at Brussels, in which Germany, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, France, Spain, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway were represented, a Convention was framed and signed March 5, 1902, the occasion for which is set forth in these words:

"Desiring, on one hand, to equalize the conditions of competition between beet and cane sugars from different sources, and, on the other hand, to promote the development of the consumption of sugar; considering that this double result can only be attained by the suppression of bounties as well as by limiting the surtax"—the high contracting parties concluded a convention, the first article of which binds them as follows:

"to suppress the direct and indirect bounties by which the production or export of sugar may benefit, and they agree not to establish bounties of this kind during the whole duration of the said convention. In view of the execution of this provision, sweetmeats, chocolates, biscuits, condensed milk, and all other analogous products which contain in a notable proportion sugar artificially incorporated, are to be classed as sugar. The above paragraph applies to all advantages resulting directly or indirectly, for the different categories of producers, from the fiscal legislation of the States, notably:

(_a_) The direct bounties granted to exports.

(_b_) The direct bounties granted to production,

(_c_) The total or partial exemptions from taxation granted for a part of the manufactured output.

(_d_) The profits derived from surplusages of output,

(_e_) The profits derived from the exaggeration of the drawback.

(_f_) The advantages derived from any surtax in excess of the rate fixed" in a subsequent article.

Further articles elaborate the programme of measures for carrying out this agreement. It was to come into force from September 1, 1903; to remain in force during five years from that date, and if none of the high contracting parties should have notified the Belgium Government, twelve months after the expiration of the said period of five years, of its intention to have its effects cease, it should continue for one year, and so on from year to year.

_Papers relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, page 80._

Under this Convention, a Permanent Commission was established at Brussels. In July, 1907, this Commission gave attention to a suggestion from the Government of Great Britain, "to the effect that if Great Britain could be relieved from the obligation to enforce the penal provisions of the Convention they would be prepared not to give notice on the first of September next of their intention to withdraw on the 1st of September, 1908, a notice which they would otherwise feel bound to give at the appointed time." The ensuing discussion and correspondence resulted in the signing, on the 28th of August, 1907, of "An Additional Act to the Sugar Convention of March 5, 1902," renewing it for a fresh period of five years from September 1, 1908, with the privilege to any one of the contracting parties to withdraw after September 1, 1911, on one year’s notice, "if the Permanent Commission, at the last meeting held before the 1st September, 1910, have decided by a majority of votes that circumstances warrant such power being granted to the contracting States. The request of Great Britain was granted in the following article of the Additional Act:

"Notwithstanding Article I, Great Britain will be relieved, after the 1st September, 1908. from the obligation contained in Article IV of the Convention. After the same date the Contracting States may demand that, in order to enjoy the benefit of the Convention, sugar refined in the United Kingdom and thence exported to their territories shall be accompanied by a certificate stating that none of this sugar comes from a country recognized by the Permanent Commission as granting bounties for the production or exportation of sugar."

_Parliamentary Papers, 1907, Commercial, Number 10 (Cd. 3780)._

SULLY-PRUDHOMME, RENÉ FRANÇOIS ARMAND.

See (in this Volume) NOBEL PRIZES.

SULTAN AHMED MIRZA, The young Shah of Persia.

See (in this Volume) PERSIA: A. D. 1908-1909.

SUMATRA: A. D. 1909 (June). Earthquake in Upper Padang.

See (in this Volume) EARTHQUAKES: SUMATRA.

{636}

SUNDAY OBSERVANCE: Legal institution of a weekly Rest Day. Recent Legislation in Europe. The Canadian Lord’s Day.

A British Parliamentary Paper, published in the spring of 1909, gave information, gathered by the diplomatic representatives of the Government, relative to legislation in many foreign countries bearing on the observance of Sunday, or otherwise prescribing a weekly Day of Rest. The facts presented in these reports were discussed editorially by the London _Times_ in an article from which the following is quoted.

"Within quite recent years the principle of the weekly rest-day has been enforced, with various practical modifications, in most of the chief Continental countries. It forms, indeed, a striking vindication of the claim for the observance of one day’s rest in seven—which was recognized among Eastern races long before the days of Moses—that while Sunday work has shown a regrettable, if in some ways scarcely avoidable, tendency to increase in this country, steps to restrict it have been widely taken elsewhere. While the English Sunday has been becoming in some respects more ‘Continental,’ the actual Continental Sunday has shown a distinct tendency to approximate to our own. … The review provided by the present report of the legislation already in force in France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Holland, and other leading industrial States gives plenty of examples of the way in which the general principle of making Sunday a day of rest has been accommodated to the necessities of a modern community. The case of France is particularly interesting, since the French method of observing Sunday has traditionally provided the English public with the most familiar contrast with its own. In France the law establishing a statutory weekly day of rest, and making that day Sunday, was passed so recently as in 1906. In common with the similar legislation passed in other countries, it allows partial and carefully regulated exceptions, to provide for the necessary sale of food, and for such uninterrupted attention as is required, for example, by foundries. But the application of the law is both thorough and extensive, while supplementary legislation is to be introduced, with the support of the Government, to extend its benefits to all servants of the State and to all other workers on railways, tramlines, and steamboat services who do not already enjoy it. On the other hand, while the report bears decided witness to the efficiency and success with which the law has been enforced, it notes certain points on which concession is being made by the Government in deference to the strong demands of certain interests which claimed that they were being unjustly sacrificed. …

"The law seems at first to have aroused opposition among many shopkeepers, especially those who were handicapped by competition with rivals whose business was carried on by members of the family, and therefore was not affected by it. … The difficulty is now said to be settling itself, as the public is gradually learning to restrict its shopping to week-days, when there is a wider field of choice. The encouraging evidence provided by the operation of the law of 1906 in France is supported more or less explicitly by the reports forwarded by His Majesty’s representatives in other parts of Europe. The aim and method of the various enactments show a prevailing similarity, and where they have already been sufficiently long in operation for a fair estimate to be made, their success seems to be recognized with but few exceptions. Material is not available in every case for forming a full opinion of the completeness with which the law of rest has been enforced. In Vienna, however, it is expressly reported that its administration is effective; and although no such statement is expressly made in the case of Germany, it appears improbable that the regulations, though less stringent than those of some other States, are lightly disregarded."

The Canadian "Lord’s Day Act" of 1906 is a measure of much stringency. Making numerous well-defined and carefully guarded exceptions for "works of necessity and mercy," and for such railway service as is subject to provincial regulation, the prohibitions of the Act include the following:

"To sell or offer for sale or purchase any goods, chattels, or other personal property, or any real estate, or to carry on or transact any business of his ordinary calling, or in connection with such calling, or for gain to do, or employ any other person to do, on that day, any work, business, or labour." "To require any employee engaged in any work of receiving, transmitting, or delivering telegraph or telephone messages, or in the work of any industrial process, or in connection with transportation, to do on the Lord’s Day the usual work of his ordinary calling, unless such employee is allowed during the next six days of such week twenty-four consecutive hours without labour." "To engage in any public game or contest for gain, or for any prize or reward, or to be present thereat, or to provide, engage in, or be present at any performance or public meeting, elsewhere than in a church, at which any fee is charged, directly or indirectly." "To run, conduct, or convey by any mode of conveyance any excursion on which passengers are conveyed for hire, and having for its principal or only object the carriage on that day of such passengers for amusement or pleasure." "To shoot with or use any gun, rifle or other similar engine, either for gain, or in such a manner or in such places as to disturb other persons in attendance at public worship or in the observance of that day." "To bring into Canada for sale or distribution, or to sell or distribute within Canada, on the Lord’s Day, any foreign newspaper or publication classified as a newspaper."

----------SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: Start--------

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: Summary of Decisions (1901-1906) touching the Governmental Regulation of Corporations.

See (in this Volume) COMBINATIONS, INDUSTRIAL: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1901-1906.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: Decision in the Case of the Trans-Missouri Freight Association.

See (in this Volume) RAILWAYS: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1890-1902.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: On Constitutionality of Utah Law restricting Hours of Adult Labor in Mines.

See (in this Volume) LABOR ORGANIZATION: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1902.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: In the Northern Securities Case.

See (in this Volume) RAILWAYS: UNITED STATES: A. D). 1901-1905.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: In the "Beef Trust" Cases, so-called.

See (in this Volume) COMBINATIONS, INDUSTRIAL: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1903-1906.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: On Interstate Commerce Act of 1887.

See (in this Volume) RAILWAYS: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1870-1908.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: Limiting Police Power to regulate Hours of Labor.

See (in this Volume) LABOR PROTECTION: HOURS OF LABOR.

{637}

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: In the Tobacco Trust Case of Hale vs. Henkel.

See (in this Volume) COMBINATIONS, INDUSTRIAL: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1905-1906.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: Concerning the Isle of Pines.

See (in this Volume) CUBA: A. D. 1907 (APRIL).

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: In Case of Virginia Railroads vs. the State Corporation Commission of Virginia.

See (in this Volume) RAILWAYS: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1908 (NOVEMBER).

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: On the Constitutionality of the "Commodities Clause" of the Hepburn Act.

See (in this Volume) RAILWAYS: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1906-1909.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: On the Right of a State to Specially Limit the Hours of Labor for Women.

See (in this Volume) LABOR PROTECTION: HOURS OF LABOR.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: Limiting State Authority in matters touching Interstate Commerce.

See (in this Volume) RAILWAYS: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1907-1908.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: On Law against Rebating in Armour Packing Company Case.

See (in this Volume) RAILWAYS: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1908.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: Invalidating Debts to an Illegal Combination.

See (in this Volume) COMBINATIONS, INDUSTRIAL: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1909.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: Affirming Fines on the New York Central Railroad Company.

See (in this Volume) RAILWAYS: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1909.

----------SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: End--------

SUTTNER, BARONESS BERTHA VON.

See (in this Volume) NOBEL PRIZES.

SWADESHI MOVEMENT.

See (in this Volume) INDIA: A. D. 1905-1909.

SWALLOW, SILAS E.: Nomination for President of the United States.

See (in this Volume) UNITED STATES: A. D. 1904 (MARCH-NOVEMBER).

SWARAJ. The Hindu term for self government.

SWAZILAND.

See (in this Volume) SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1909.

"SWEATING," ENGLISH ACT TO SUPPRESS. The Trade Boards Bill.

See (in this Volume) LABOR REMUNERATION: WAGES REGULATION.

----------SWEDEN: Start--------

SWEDEN: A. D. 1901. Unveiling of Monument to John Ericsson. The Nobel Prizes. The First Awarding of them.

A monument to the memory of John Ericsson, the Swedish-American inventor, was unveiled at Stockholm with impressive ceremonies on the 14th of September, 1901, that being the date of the reception of his remains at Stockholm eleven years before.

The first award of the munificent prizes for beneficial services to mankind, instituted by the will of Alfred Bernard Nobel, the eminent Swedish engineer and inventor, was made on the 10th of December, 1901.

See (in this Volume) NOBEL PRIZES.

SWEDEN: A. D. 1903. Agreement for Settlement of Claims against Venezuela.

See (in this Volume) VENEZUELA: A. D. 1902-1904.

SWEDEN: A. D. 1905. Secession of Norway from the Union of Crowns. Acceptance by King Oscar of his Practical Deposition.

See (in this Volume) NORWAY: A. D. 1902-1905.

SWEDEN: A. D. 1906. At the Algeciras Conference on the Morocco Question.

See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1905-1906.

SWEDEN: A. D. 1908. Municipal Office opened to Women.

See (in this Volume) ELECTIVE FRANCHISE: WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

SWEDEN: A. D. 1908 (April). Treaty with Denmark, England, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, for maintenance of the Status Quo on the North Sea.

See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1907-1908.

SWEDEN: A. D. 1909. Franchise Reform Legislation.

During many successive years, earnest attempts by the Swedish Government, strongly backed by liberal majorities in the Second or popular Chamber of the Riksdag, to answer the public demand for a broadening of the suffrage, were defeated in the First Chamber, whose members are elected by the provincial Landstings and by municipal corporations. Success was not attained until 1909, when a Franchise Reform Bill, establishing universal suffrage and proportional representation, was passed by the Riksdag on the 10th of February, by larger majorities. According to a Press report from Stockholm, "the leader of the Liberals declared in the Lower House that, though his party had originally opposed it, they would now vote for the Bill, as the country demanded a solution of this long pending question. The Social Democrats and a few extremists of the Liberal party voted against it, considering it unacceptable in principle and inadequate because it excluded female suffrage. In the Upper House the Bill was opposed by a few uncompromising Conservatives, to whom it seemed too democratic."

SWEDEN: A. D. 1909. Lockout and Attempted General Strike.

See (in this Volume) LABOR ORGANIZATION: SWEDEN.

SWEDEN: A. D. 1909 (October). Arbitration of Frontier Dispute with Norway.

See (in this Volume) NORWAY: A. D. 1909 (OCTOBER).

----------SWEDEN: End--------

SWIFT & COMPANY et al., THE CASE OF THE UNITED STATES AGAINST.

See (in this Volume) COMBINATIONS, INDUSTRIAL: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1903-1906.

SWITZERLAND: Backwardness of Woman Suffrage.

See (in this Volume) ELECTIVE FRANCHISE: WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1870-1905. Increase of Population compared with other European Countries.

See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1870-1905.

SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1902. General Election.

The general election, in October, of representatives in the Federal Assembly, returned 97 Radicals, 35 Catholic Conservatives, 25 Moderate Liberals, 9 Socialists, and 1 Independent, being a total of 167. The previous Chamber had contained but 147, the increase of population having raised the number of representatives.

SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1902. Use of the Referendum and Initiative down to that time.

See (in this Volume) REFERENDUM.

SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1905. Rupture between Radicals and Socialists. Completion of the Simplon Tunnel.

The coalition hitherto maintained between Radical and Socialist parties was broken entirely in the elections of October, 1905, because of the anti-military attitude of the latter, who sought to have all national feeling and policy sunk in international sentiments and principles. The Socialists elected but two representatives in the National Council. In April the completion of the Simplon Railway Tunnel, furnishing a second passage through the Alps, was celebrated with much rejoicing. The work of boring this twelve-mile length of tunnel had been begun in 1898.

See, also, (in this Volume) RAILWAYS: SWITZERLAND.

SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1909. Acquisition of the St. Gothard Tunnel and Railway by the Government.

See (in this Volume) RAILWAYS: SWITZERLAND.

{638}

SYDOW, REINHOLD.

See (in this Volume) GERMANY: A. D. 1908-1909.

SYNDICATES, German.

See (in this Volume) COMBINATIONS, INDUSTRIAL (in Germany).

SYNDICATS AND SYNDICALISM, French.

See (in this Volume) LABOR ORGANIZATION: FRANCE: A. D. 1884-1909.

SZELL MINISTRY.

See (in this Volume) AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: A. D. 1902-1903.

T.

TABAH INCIDENT, THE.

See (in this Volume) EGYPT: A. D. 1905-1906.

TABRIZ, SIEGE OF.

See (in this Volume) PERSIA: A. D. 1908-1909.

TACNA AND ARICA QUESTIONS.

See (in this Volume) CHILE: A. D. 1907.

TAFF-VALE DECISION.

See (in this Volume) LABOR ORGANIZATION: ENGLAND: A. D. 1900-1906.

----------TAFT, WILLIAM H.: Start--------

TAFT, WILLIAM H. President of the Second Philippine Commission. Civil Governor of the Philippines.

See (in this Volume) PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: A. D. 1901.

TAFT, WILLIAM H. Secretary of War.

See (in this Volume) UNITED STATES: A. D. 1901-1905, and 1905-1909.

TAFT, WILLIAM H. Report on the Purchase of the Friars’ Lands.

See (in this Volume) PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: A. D. 1902-1903.

TAFT, WILLIAM H. Organization of Provisional Government in Cuba.

See (in this Volume) CUBA: A. D. 1906 (AUGUST-OCTOBER).

TAFT, WILLIAM H. Special Report on the Philippine Islands.

See (in this Volume) PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: A. D. 1907.

TAFT, WILLIAM H. Elected President of the United States.

See (in this Volume) UNITED STATES: A. D. 1908 (APRIL-NOVEMBER).

TAFT, WILLIAM H. Inauguration and Inaugural Address. Cabinet Appointments.

See (in this Volume) UNITED STATES: A. D. 1909 (MARCH).

TAFT, WILLIAM H. On the Tariff.

See (in this Volume) TARIFFS: UNITED STATES.

TAFT, WILLIAM H. Statement, as President, relative to the Tariff Maximum and Minimum Clause.

See (in this Volume) TARIFFS: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1908-1909.

TAFT, WILLIAM H. Tour of the United States. Meeting with President Diaz, of Mexico.

See (in this Volume) UNITED STATES: A. D. 1909 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER).

TAFT, WILLIAM H. Legislation Recommended for the Conservation of Natural Resources.

See (in this Volume) CONSERVATION, &c.: UNITED STATES.

TAFT, WILLIAM H. On Injunctions in Labor Disputes and on the Expediting of Civil and Criminal Procedure.

See (in this Volume) LAW AND ITS COURTS: UNITED STATES.

TAFT, WILLIAM H. Special Message on "Trusts" and on Interstate Commerce.

See (in this Volume) COMBINATIONS, INDUSTRIAL, &c.: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1910, and RAILWAYS: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1910.

----------TAFT, WILLIAM H.: End--------

TAI HUNG CHI.

See (in this Volume) CHINA: A. D. 1906.

TAI HUNG-TZE: GRAND COUNCILLOR OF CHINA.

See (in this Volume) CHINA: A. D. 1909 (October).

TAIREN.

See (in this Volume) DALNY.

TAI-TZE-HO, BATTLES AT THE.

See (in this Volume) JAPAN: A. D. 1904 (JULY-SEPTEMBER).

TAKAHIRA KOGORO: Japanese Minister at Washington and Plenipotentiary for negotiating Treaty of Peace with Russia.

See (in this Volume) JAPAN: A. D. 1905 (JUNE-OCTOBER).

TAKUSHAN HILL, CAPTURE OF.

See (in this Volume) JAPAN: A. D. 1904-1905 (MAY-JANUARY).

TALIENWAN, Re-named Dalny. Later named Tairen, by the Japanese.

TAMMANY HALL: Struggles with it.

See (in this Volume) NEW YORK CITY.

TANG SHAO YI.

See (in this Volume) OPIUM PROBLEM: CHINA.

TANGIER: A. D. 1905. The German Emperor’s Speech.

See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1905-1906.

----------TARIFFS: Start--------

TARIFFS: Australia: The question in the First Parliament.

See (in this Volume) AUSTRALIA: A. D. 1901-1902.

TARIFFS: Tariff Excise Act.

See (in this Volume) LABOR REMUNERATION: THE NEW PROTECTION.

TARIFFS: Austria-Hungary: A. D. 1907. Settlement of the Austro-Hungarian Tariff Question.

See (in this Volume) AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: A. D. 1907.

TARIFFS: Balkan States: A. D. 1905. Serbo-Bulgarian Customs Union.

See (in this Volume) BALKAN STATES: BULGARIA AND SERVIA.

TARIFFS: British Empire: A. D. 1909. Resolutions of Empire Congress of Chambers of Commerce.

See (in this Volume) BRITISH EMPIRE: A. D. 1909 (SEPTEMBER).

TARIFFS: Canada: Attitude of Canadian Manufacturers’ Association toward Great Britain and the United States on Tariff Questions.

See (in this Volume) CANADA: A. D. 1903-1905.

TARIFFS: Canada and Germany: German retaliation for Discriminating Duties in Favor of British Goods.

Consequent on the discrimination in favor of British goods which was granted in the Canadian tariff of 1897, Germany took action which is explained in the following, from the Canadian side of the official correspondence that ensued:

"Prior to July 31, 1898, Canada, as a portion of the British Empire, received the most favourable tariff treatment in Germany, under the terms of the treaty which had long existed between that country and Great Britain. On the date named, that treaty, having been denounced by the British Government, ceased to have effect. Provisional agreements have since been entered into from time to time between Great Britain and Germany. Canada, however, has been excluded from the benefit of such agreements. The products of Canada are no longer admitted into Germany on the favoured terms known in the German tariff as 'conventional duties,' but are specially excluded therefrom and made subject to the higher duties of the general tariff. The reason assigned by the German Government for this discrimination against Canada is the enactment by the Dominion of legislation granting preferential tariff rates to the products of Great Britain. {639} The undersigned desires to point out that the policy of the Canadian Government was not designed to give to any foreign nation more favoured treatment than was to be allowed to Germany. The Canadian policy has been confined to a readjustment of the commercial relations of the Dominion with the British Empire of which it is a part, a domestic affair which could hardly be open to reasonable objection by any foreign government. It would therefore seem that the action of Canada afforded no just ground for complaint by Germany. The undersigned is of opinion that there has been some misconception of the Canadian policy in this respect, and hopes that upon further consideration the German Government will see that Canada, in taking the step referred to, did not forfeit her claim to the advantages accorded by Germany to the most-favoured nations."

The German Government, however, maintained with firmness the ground it had taken; but eleven years later, in 1909, a German Canadian Economic Association at Berlin sent delegates to Canada to confer with chambers of commerce and solicit efforts for bettering commercial relations between them. The Montreal Board of Trade declined to take any action, saying, substantially: "the reprisals against Canada were commenced by Germany on account of the granting of preference by the Dominion to Great Britain. If Germany now finds that she has made a mistake the Montreal Board holds that she should restore Canadian products to the conventional tariff, when the Canadian surtax on German goods will be automatically removed."

Finally, an agreement was reached which ended this tariff war between Germany and Canada. Announcement of it was made in the Canadian Parliament on the 15th of February, 1910, and it went into effect on the 1st of March.

TARIFFS: FRANCE: A. D. 1910.

A revision of the tariff, on which the French Parliament had long been engaged, was completed and became law on March 29, 1910, going into effect April 1.

TARIFFS: France-Canada: Commercial Convention with Great Britain concerning Canada.

See (in this Volume) CANADA: A. D. 1907-1909.

TARIFFS: Germany: A. D. 1902-1906. The New Tariff Law and seven Special Tariff Treaties with European Countries. A changed Commercial Policy.

In the Diet of the Empire the committee which had been laboring long and arduously on a tariff bill reported the measure in October, and its increase of duties, which the government did not favour, was stoutly opposed by Socialists, Radicals, and Liberals; but the Conservatives, representing the protected interests, constrained the government to withdraw its opposition and the bill was carried through as a whole, without change.

"How deliberately the Germans go about their tariff policy; how thoroughly they study all the strong and weak points in their adversaries’ positions; with what scientific care they measure their own manifold interests; how carefully they guard, in their work of tariff legislation, against disturbing the stability of existing business conditions may best be seen from the way in which the new tariff has been adopted. As early as 1898—_i. e._, more than five years before the expiration of the old tariff treaties—a Commission of government experts and leading representatives of the industrial and commercial interests was organized to make a detailed study of the needs of every industry whose products were in any way affected by the tariff. After five years of incessant work of that character, in which more than 2,000 experts took part, the new general or so-called ‘autonomous’ tariff was enacted into law (but not put into effect) by the German Reichstag.

"The new tariff law adopted on December 25, 1902, with rates considerably raised, formed the basis of diplomatic bargaining, of which it took more than two years to conclude commercial treaties with the following seven countries: Austria-Hungary, Russia, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Roumania and Servia. These treaties, which considerably reduce some of the rates provided for in the tariff of 1902, were enacted into law on February 22d of this year, [1905], and together form the new so-called ‘conventional’ tariff, which will be applied to all countries enjoying ‘most favored nation’ privileges. Deliberate and cautious as these steps have been, the new tariff is not to be thrust upon the business community of the Empire on short notice, but the country is given one full year in which to adjust itself to the new rates. Hence the date for giving effect to the new tariff law has been set for March 1, 1906."

_N. I. Stone, The New German Customs Tariff (North American Review, September, 1905)._

The chief point of interest for the United States in this law is to be found, not so much in the high rates adopted, as in the statement made in the Reichstag foreshadowing a changed policy on the part of Germany in making new commercial treaties. On the final day of the tariff debate Dr. Paasche, one of the leaders of the majority, asserted that the government had promised that it would no longer extend treaty advantages to other countries than those that reciprocate with corresponding concessions. ‘We expect,’ said Dr. Paasche, ‘that the government will undertake a thorough revision of all the treaties containing the most favored-nation clause. Promises of this kind were made to us in committee. We have absolutely no occasion to concede anything to such nations as are glad to take what we give by treaty to other countries without making us any concessions in return. The United States has introduced a limitation of the most-favored-nation clause; we have every reason to act in precisely the same manner."

_W. C. Dreher, A Letter from Germany (Atlantic Monthly, March, 1903)_.

In March, 1905, a few weeks after the conclusion of the last of the seven special tariff treaties referred to above, which modify the general German tariff of 1902-1906, in favor of the nations which became parties to them, the Consul-General of the United States at Berlin sent to the State Department at Washington the following table, showing, with reference to forty-six of the principal articles of German import from America (1) the then maximum or autonomous duty as paid under the tariff of 1879; (2) the same duties as modified and reduced by then existing treaty concessions; (3) the new autonomous duties that were to go into effect in 1906, and (4) the amounts to which each of these rates of duty would be reduced on merchandise coming from certain of the seven European countries which had just concluded treaties of commerce with Germany.

{640}

The figures show in all cases, unless otherwise specified, the amount in American currency of duty per double centner (100 kilograms or 220.4 pounds):

Merchandise. Tariff New tariff law of Difference. 1902 (to go into (adopted in 1879). effect in 1906).

Maximum. Reduced Autonomous. Reduced by treaty. by treaty.

Wheat $1.19 $0.83 $1.78 $1.30 $0.58

Rye 1.19 .83 1.66 1.19 .47

Oats .95 .67 1.66 1.19 .47

Barley .53 .47 1.66 .95 .71

Corn .47 .38 1.19 .71 .48

Wheat Flour 2.50 1.74 4.36 2.42 1.94

Malt .95 .85 2.44 1.37 1.07

Potatoes Free. Free. .59 1.24 (a)

Hops 4.76 3.38 16.66 4.76 11.90

Dried apples, pears, apricots, peaches .96 .95 2.38 .95 1.43

Dried Prunes 2.38 1.19 1.19

Fresh apples in barrels Free. Free. 2.38 1.19 1.19

Sausages 4.76 4.04 16.66 9.52 7.14

Lard 2.38 2.38 2.97 2.38 .59

Salted Meats 4.76 4.04 10.71 8.33-9.25 2.38-1.46

Butter 4.76 3.80 7.14 4.76 2.38

Cheese 4.76 4.76 7.14 3.57-4.76 3.57-2.38

Eggs .71 .47 1.42 .71 .71

Margarine 4.76 3.80 7.14 4.76 2.38

Wood Alcohol Free Free 4.76 Free. 4.76

Cows and oxen, per head 2.14 2.14 4.28 1.90 2.38

Horses, per head 4.76 4.76 21.42-85.68 7.14-28.56 14.28-57.12

Hogs, per head 1.42 1.19 4.28 2.14 2.14

Shoes, coarse 11.90 11.90 20.23 20.23 …

Shoes, medium 16.66 15.47 28.86 23.80 5.06

Shoes, fine 16.66 15.47 42.84 30.70 7.14

Lumber, rough … … 1.42 .47 .95

Lumber, dressed 2.38 2.38 2.38 2.38 …

Sewing machines 5.71 5.71 8.33 2.85 5.48

Sewing machines, power 5.71 5.71 4.76 1.90 2.86

Electrical machinery

a. Under 500 kilograms ( 1,102 pounds) per 100 kilograms 2.14 2.14 …

b. 500 to 3,000 kilograms (1,102 to 6,614 pounds) 1.66 1.42 .24

c. More than 3,000 kilograms 1.42 .95 .47

Machine tools:

a. 250 kilograms (551 pounds or less), per 100 kilograms. 4.76 2.85 1.91

b. 250 to 1,000 kilograms (551 to 2,205 pounds) 2.85 1.90 .95