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The American Business Community and Cleveland's Venezuelan Message

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Walter LaFeber
Walter LaFeber
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History atCornell University
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Abstract

The President's determined foreign policy pronouncement focused attention upon both the lack of unanimity in business circles and a surprising capacity for independent American action in international finance. For historians, the Venezuelan Message is a challenge inviting efforts to probe the depth and longevity of cleavage between public policy sentiment in the financial and industrial-mercantile sectors of the economy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , Winter 1960 , pp. 393 - 402
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1960

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References

1 Pratt, Julius W., Expansionists of 1898; The Acquisition of Hawaii and the Spanish Islands (Baltimore, 1936)Google Scholar, has been the most influential exponent of this thesis. The author gratefully acknowledges the constructive criticism given by Professor David Brion Davis of Cornell.

2 Cleveland warned Great Britain that she had to submit her case on the dispute to international arbitration or face United States resistance. He ended the message with a thinly veiled threat of force if the British Foreign Office refused to comply. Richardson, James D., ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789–1897, vol. IX (Washington, 1900), pp. 655–658Google Scholar.

3 Two of the influential accounts which present this view are Perkins, Dexter, The Monroe Doctrine, 1867–1907 (Baltimore, 1937), pp. 196–198Google Scholar, and Tansill, Charles Callan, The Foreign Policy of Thomas F. Bayard, 1885–1897 (New York, 1940), p. 728Google Scholar. See also Noyes, Alexander Dana, The Market Place, Reminiscences of a Financial Editor (Boston, 1938), p. 121Google Scholar.

4 Tansill does mention in a footnote the New York World poll of Dec. 25, 1895, in which 25 commercial groups throughout the United States approved Cleveland's position. Nevertheless, Tansill does not moderate his general conclusion that the American business community opposed the President's policy.

5 Peter B. Olney to Richard Olney, Dec. 20, 1895, Papers of Richard Olney, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.

6 New York World, Dec. 21, 1895, 1:8; ibid., 4:1. Olney learned about the Chamber's unhappiness in a letter from Abram S. Hewitt to Olney, Jan. 8, 1896, Olney Papers.

7 New York World, Dec. 20, 1895, 1:8, 2:1; also quoted in Perkins, Monroe Doctrine, 1867–1907, pp. 196–197.

8 Cortissoz, Royal, The Life of Whitelaw Reid (New York, 1921), vol. II, pp. 201–202Google Scholar.

9 Wall Street Journal, Dec. 19, 1895, 1:4; also noted in a letter from Charles Stewart Smith to Andrew Carnegie, Dec. 24, 1895, Papers of Andrew Carnegie, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.

10 Boston Morning Journal, Dec. 18, 1895, 4:6.

11 Wall Street Journal, Dec. 20, 1895, 1:2; New York World, Dec. 21, 1895, 5:1.

12 New York World, Dec. 20, 1895, 2:3–5; Bradstreet's, Dec. 21, 1895, p. 813. The World denounced Cleveland's course of action on its editorial pages and displayed its bias by headlining this survey: “TRADE DEPRESSED BY MESSAGE,” though not a single reply to the opinion poll could be construed in this manner.

13 New York World, Dec. 20, 1895, 1:8, 2:1. Quite naturally, large exporters, as Charles R. Flint of Flint, Eddy & Company, liked the message. See Flint's opinion of how favorably all the American Republics would receive the American pronouncement in New York World, Dec. 18, 1895, 2:3.

14 New York World, Dec. 18, 1895, 1:7.

15 Ibid., 2:3.

16 Straus to Cleveland, undated but probably Dec. 18, 1895, Papers of Oscar Straus, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C. Straus to Henry Dwight, Dec. 24, 1895, Straus Papers.

17 Carnegie to the Duke of Devonshire, Dec. 26, 1895, Carnegie Papers; see also Carnegie to London Times, Dec. 22, 1895, Carnegie Papers; Carnegie to New York Sun, Dec. 1895, Carnegie Papers. Carnegie saw the crisis as an opportunity to obtain a large order for steel from the United States Navy. See Carnegie to John G. A. Leishman, president of the Carnegie Steel Company [no specific date, but after the Cleveland message], Dec, 1895, Carnegie Papers.

18 New York World, Dec. 18, 1895, 2:2.

19 Ibid., 13:1; ibid., Dec. 19, 1895, 11:1; Wall Street Journal, Dec. 19, 1895, 2:1.

10 New York World, Dec. 21, 1895, 1:7–8.

21 Wall Street Journal, Dec. 20, 1895, 2:1; New York Journal of Commerce, Dec. 23, 1895, 1:3.

22 New York World, Dec. 21, 1895, 1:7–8; New York Journal of Commerce, Dec. 19, 1895, 5:1. In spite of pessimistic predictions from both sides of the Atlantic that the recovery was only temporary, the panic had in fact ended. By December 24 the gold exports had dwindled, buying of gilt-edged securities had increased, and general optimism prevailed. See Wall Street Journal, Dec. 23, 1895, 2:1; New York Journal of Commerce, Dec. 24, 1895, 1:6; Commercial and Financial Chronicle, Dec. 28, 1895, p. 1132; Banker's Magazine, vol. LII (Jan., 1896), p. 106Google Scholar.

23 Messages and Papers of the Presidents, vol. IX, p. 645.

24 New York World, Dec. 17, 1895, 1:1; Banker's Magazine, vol. LII (Jan., 1896), p. 107Google Scholar.

25 Quoted in Chicago Times-Herald, Dec. 21, 1895, 14:3. See also Banker's Magazine, vol. LII (Jan., 1896), p. 107Google Scholar; New York Journal of Commerce, Dec. 20, 1895, 5:1. Secretary of State Olney scolded a New York banker who had remarked to John W. Foster (former Secretary of State under Benjamin Harrison) that the Venezuelan message had undermined the New York market. Olney concluded, “while the Venezuelan message may have accelerated the conditions of things that has [sic] prevailed on Wall Street for the last two or three days, it was bound to come and was growing more and more imminent every day.” Olney to John W. Foster, Dec. 23, 1895, Olney Papers.

26 London Economist quoted in New York Journal of Commerce, Dec. 23, 1895, 1:3.

27 Boston Morning Journal, Dec. 18, 1895, 4:6; Bradstreet's, Dec. 21, 1895, p. 813.

28 Boston Morning Journal, Dec. 18, 1895, 5:3.

29 Ibid., Dec. 19, 1895, 4:3; F. W. Higginson to Olney, Dec. 21, 189.5, Olney Papers. Moses Williams, president of the Third National Bank, deprecated the war talk as a “bad thing for business,” but believed that the stock market would show no ill effects. Ibid.

30 Bradstreet's, Dec. 21, 1895, p. 813.

31 Ibid.; New York World, Dec. 20, 1895, 2:3–5.

32 New York Evening Post, Dec. 23, 1895, 3:4.

33 Chicago Times-Herald, Dec. 19, 1895, 5:3, 4.

34 Ibid., Dec. 21, 1895, 3:3, 4.

35 New Orleans Times-Democrat, Dec. 20, 1895, 2:5; Milwaukee Sentinel, Dec. 18, 1895, 9:4.

36 Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, Dec. 18, 1895, 4:1; Ibid., Dec. 19, 1895, 4:2.

37 Ibid., Dec. 21, 1895, 1:1–2.

38 Bradstreet's, Dec. 21, 1895, p. 813. Two of the leading Southern trade journals, Dixie (Atlanta, Georgia) and the Chattanooga Tradesman, had no comments at all. This was odd since both journals displayed much interest in the Latin American market for American manufactured and cotton products.

39 Memphis Commercial Appeal, Dec. 18, 1895, 4:1–2.

40 New York World, Dec. 20, 1895, 2:3–5.

41 Many Eastern financial leaders objected to the message not because it threatened war, but because the panic pointed up and further tightened the stringent money market. See the Commercial and Financial Chronicle, Dec. 21, 1895, p. 1080; New York Journal of Commerce, Dec. 23, 1895, 11:6.

42 Literary Digest, Jan. 4, 1896, p. 278.

43 Railway Gazette, Dec. 27, 1895, p. 858; Public Opinion, Dec. 26, 1895, p. 843; Literary Digest, Jan. 4, 1895, p. 278.

44 American Manufacturer and Iron World Weekly, Dec. 28, 1895, p. 919.

45 Public Opinion, Dec. 26, 1895, p. 843; Farm Implement News, Dec. 26, 1895, p. 18; Bulletin of the American Iron and Steel Association, Jan. 10, 1896, 12:1; ibid., Jan. 1, 1896, 1:1; Northeastern Lumberman and Manufacturers' Gazette, Dec. 28, 1895, 3:3. See also Oil, Paint and Drug Reporter, Dec. 23, 1895, 24:2.

46 Every businessman who is quoted by Perkins and Tansill as opposed to Cleveland's policy is a banker from New York. Perkins, Monroe Doctrine, 1867–1907, pp. 196–197; Tansill, Foreign Policy of Thomas F. Bayard, p. 727.

These results are interesting when coupled with George Auxier's conclusion that Midwestern newspapers “contributed” to “bringing about” the Spanish-American War. “Middle Western Newspapers and the Spanish-American War, 1895–1898,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. XXVI (March, 1940), pp. 523–534Google Scholar.