WARDS OF THE UNITED STATES 



Notes on What Our Country is Doing for Santo Domingo, 



Nicaragua, and Haiti 



THE island of Haiti, upon which 

 are located the Black Republic of 

 Haiti and the Mulatto Republic of 

 Santo Domingo, is the scene today of two 

 of the most interesting experiments in 

 government that may be found anywhere 

 in the world. 



After a century of effort to maintain 

 itself as a separate, independent, sover- 

 eign nation, Santo Domingo in 1905 

 found itself about to fall victim to its 

 own excesses. Revolution had followed 

 revolution almost with clocklike regu- 

 larity. There were assassinations, there 

 were betrayals, there were conspiracies, 

 there were wars within and wars with- 

 out — war with Haiti over boundary ques- 

 tions and civil war over the control of the 

 government. Debts were piled up with- 

 out thought of the day of payment, or 

 even provisions for meeting interest 

 charges. Those who were in control of 

 the government, whether for a day or 

 for a year, were more concerned about 

 the money that could be abstracted from 

 the national treasury than they were 

 about the preservation of the national 

 credit. 



So long and so steady was the orgy of 

 revolution, speculation, debt-making, and 

 interest-dodging that the nation's credit 

 grew worse than that of its individual 

 citizens. Finally the day of reckoning 

 came. Foreign warships approached the 

 ports whose harbors had given refuge to 

 the great discoverer Columbus, and whose 

 capital city still contains what undoubt- 

 edly are his ashes, and demanded that the 

 claims of their subjects be satisfied — 

 claims for money advanced, claims for 

 interest accumulated, claims for property 

 wantonly destroyed — and they demanded 

 it at the point of big naval guns. 



Ordinarily the Dominicans, like most 

 of the other peoples of tropical America, 

 dislike the Monroe Doctrine and view it 

 as a reflection upon their strength. They 

 think thev are big" enough to take care of 



themselves and look upon that interna- 

 tional policy as one tending to interfere 

 with their sovereignty. 



ANY PORT IX A STORM 



When Santo Domingo's treasury was 

 empty, however, its borrowing capacity 

 at zero, and Europe at its door threaten- 

 ing to take over its administration, and 

 thus to collect its debts, no harbor ever 

 looked more like a haven of refuge to a 

 storm-tossed mariner than the Monroe 

 Doctrine did to the Dominicans. In a 

 hole from which they were powerless to 

 extricate themselves, they were ready 

 enough to negotiate a treaty turning over 

 the control of the country's customs to 

 the United States if, in return therefor, 

 the United States would protect them 

 from angry European creditors and re- 

 juvenate their treasury. 



And so it was that in 1905 the United 

 States undertook to serve as treasurer of 

 Santo Domingo and to vouch for her 

 debts. Under the modus vivendi first, 

 and then under the treaty, it was agreed 

 by Santo Domingo that the United States 

 should take over her customs-houses, put 

 them under an American Receiver of 

 Customs, and distribute the collections in 

 certain proportions among the several 

 necessities of the country. First, the cost 

 of the receivership should be met, not to 

 exceed 5 per cent of the collections ; then 

 $100,000 was to be paid monthly into the 

 interest and sinking funds for the amorti- 

 zation of the loan which had been made 

 under the guarantee of the United States ; 

 the remainder was to go to the Dominican 

 Government, with the exception that 

 when the revenues exceeded $3,000,000 

 a year one-half of the excess should go 

 to the sinking fund. 



There was a provision in the agree- 

 ment giving the United States some con- 

 trol over the power of revenue legisla- 

 tion. It was to be consulted when 

 chanqes of the tariff laws were consid- 



