Reciprocity

Article marked titled, “Delay for Cuban Reciprocity.” Senator Gorman has consolidated the Democratic minority to oppose Cuban reciprocity, forcing the Republicans to agree to delay a vote for at least six months rather than face possible defeat of the reciprocity treaty. President Roosevelt intends to “keep the nation’s pledge” to Cuba and therefore plans to call for a special session later in the year to address the issue.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-03-13

Senator Beveridge does not expect any Michigan opposition to Cuban reciprocity. He believes that the next election will be a Republican landslide across the country.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902-09-26

After reviewing the annexed papers regarding a reciprocity treaty with Newfoundland, J. B. Osborne has determined that the Blaine-Bond Project of 1890 is a poor basis for a current reciprocity treaty.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902-09-13

Arguments against President Roosevelt breaking with the Republican Party over Cuban reciprocity.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902

President Roosevelt is pictured as a teacher, looking out the window of his classroom at a bear, a bison, and an elk on a fine day for hunting. At the front of the room on the blackboard is written, “Extra Session/Lesson/Panama Canal/Cuban Treaty.” The U.S. Congressmen are the students seated at their desks. Caption: Roosevelt–Boys: “This hurts me more than it does you.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903

Henry Melville Whitney, the Democratic candidate for Massachusetts Lieutenant-Governor, repeated his claim that President Roosevelt had said that he was in favor of reciprocity, or Continental Free Trade. Whitney says that Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and other Republicans witnessed the conversation where Roosevelt told him this.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-10-25

President Roosevelt is pasting a bill on a fence which reads, “Come hear my great speech on Reciprosity [sic] and Social Equality and other great things.” He has numerous “Speeches” in the pack that he carries. In the background is a mountain scene and a bear.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-04-05

Secretary of the Treasury Leslie M. Shaw, riding on a hobby horse labeled “Shaw’s Orations,” calls out to fleeing citizens in a valley to stand their ground in the face of a weakening “Stand-Pat Dam” in the background. Caption: Secretary Shaw — Courage, stand-patriots! You can save the dam yet!

comments and context

Comments and Context

The context of Joseph Keppler, Junior’s, cover cartoon in Puck is recent remarks by Secretary of the Treasury Leslie M. Shaw. As a politician (former governor of Iowa) but with banking experience, he cast an eye on the 1908 presidential nomination.

Uncle Sam offers a bouquet of flowers labeled “Reciprocity” to a woman labeled “Canada.” Uncle Sam is being held back by a businessman labeled “Trusts” whose feet are planted against a rock labeled “High Protection” and is pulling on Sam’s coattails, while the woman is being held back by a military officer labeled “Toryism” pulling on her fur wrap.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Canadian reciprocity — a phrase routinely invoked as more palatable than “free trade”; almost a euphemism in arguments against high protective tariffs — was a common theme of some politicians and many business through the years. A shared boundary between the United States and Canada was one logical reason, and traditional amity between two similar peoples was another.

President Roosevelt as a good samaritan offers a bottle labeled “Extra Session” to a fallen figure of rolled-up papers labeled “Cuban Reciprocity Treaty.” The U.S. Capitol is visible in the background.

comments and context

Comments and Context

The day before the date of this issue of Puck (which illustrates that magazines traditionally, by exigencies of production, printing, and distribution, had cover-dates a week or two different from the calendar), President Roosevelt transmitted a message to Congress. It addressed matters between the United States and Cuba.

President Roosevelt gives the Republican elephant labeled “G.O.P.” a spoonful of “Trust Legislation Tonic.” On the elephant’s abdomen is a “Reciprocity Plaster.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

Cartoonist Pughe suggests that by early 1902, President Roosevelt was manhandling his party, advancing a modified high-tariff policy and forcing trust-busting medicine down its throat. However, reciprocity had been President McKinley’s new policy trend when he died; and, as far as trusts went, neither the party nor the nation yet knew how much farther than the Northern Securities case the president would go.

A tiny dog labeled “Cuban Reciprocity” barks at a man who has climbed a fence out of fear. His hat labeled “Sugar Trust” has fallen to the ground.

comments and context

Comments and Context

The American “Sugar Trust” traditionally relied on sugar beets more than sugar cane, and its dominance was of course threatened by the prospect of an influx of cane sugar in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. However, Cuban sugar exports were factors, worldwide, before the war, even when clumsily administered by Spanish colonials. What threatened the Sugar Trust and American producers was the possibility of free trade or low import duties on Cuban cane sugar as American policies toward its new territories played out.  

A young woman wearing a hat labeled “Cuba” stands, with her arms crossed, trying to decide which of three paths to choose. The first path, labeled “Reciprocity,” leads to an angry “Beet Sugar Senator” who is offering “No Tariff Concessions.” The second path, labeled “Cuban Loan,” leads to Uncle Sam offering the “Platt Amendment.” The third path leads to the U.S. Capitol and “Annexation.” None of the paths look promising to her. Caption: Events are fast limiting her to one path.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Despite a wide array of nuances, concessions, and amendments at this time and over subsequent decades, the choices Cuba faced are generally well-depicted in Keppler’s cartoon. Generally, Cuba chose the middle path of those shown. In the aftermath of Spain’s defeat by America and Cuban insurrectionists, annexation was never a serious option, although Cuba’s first president Tomas Estrada Palma actually had favored annexation at one point. The sugar trust in the United States (traditional sugar-beet growers and industries) objected to the provision in the Platt Amendment that generously opened, and even granted preference to, Cuban cane sugar in the United States market. The Platt Amendment (named for Senator Orville H. Platt, R-CT and not, as widely assumed, after New York Senator Thomas Collier Platt) required Cuba to accept provisions that granted the United States de facto sovereignty over the island, and control of prerogatives otherwise enjoyed by free nations. Many of these were, however, modified through the years, and generally so in 1934. But the granting of a permanent military facility at Guantanamo Bay remained.

President Roosevelt puts a rescue boat labeled “National Honor” to sea, carrying lifesaving equipment and an oar labeled “Reciprocity.” Out to sea a ship labeled “Cuba” flounders, or perhaps founders. Roosevelt looks back toward shore at the “Republican Congressional Station” where several men wearing foul-weather clothing await the wreck of the ship and the flotsam to wash ashore.

comments and context

Comments and Context

A portion of Congressional inaction over the disparate choices to deal with Cuba’s situation subsequent to the Spanish-American War was indeed the variety of proposals and therefore conflicting ways to proceed. In the United States Senate, the Teller Amendment was a compact proposal of seven provisions leading to Cuban independence. American financial interests, particularly the Sugar Trust, applied pressure, especially to Republican Party, their traditional ally. The Cuban political elements and societal infrastructure — more sophisticated than in other acquired territories — asserted itself. President Roosevelt, characteristically, fashioned compromises and set a course, to Puck‘s approval at least for the fact that he acted. The Teller Amendment largely was adopted, Guantanamo was leased, and America assumed a somewhat paternalist position for a time.

President Roosevelt appears as a cowboy, on horseback, with Cuban President Tomás Estrada Palma, on foot, driving cattle labeled “High Protectionist, Senatorial Pledge Breaker, [and] Beet Sugar Senator” into the “Reciprocity Corral.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

The specific context of this cartoon, and the reference to “reciprocity,” is the question of America’s policy regarding sugar, Cuba’s chief export commodity. There were expectations after the Spanish-American War among Cuba’s leaders and provisional government, Cuban sugar growers, the American sugar trust, American sugar-beet growers, and various senators representing conflicting interests. Those expectations and hopes were settled by the Platt Amendment and decisions of President Roosevelt that granted free trade of Cuban cane sugar (no or low import duties imposed by the United States — virtual reciprocity, not that Cuba needed beet sugar) offset by Cuban guarantees of other American commodities and foreign-trade concessions. Cuban President Tomás Palma, once an advocate of annexation, backed this compromise. It sometimes is difficult to remember that Puck was a Democratic journal when reviewing such noble depictions and caricatures as in this cartoon of Roosevelt. Alternatively, of course, history remembers the public’s approval and the popularity of Roosevelt at the time. Noted, also, another phrase of Roosevelt’s that entered the language: the cartoon’s caption “A Strenuous Job.”

A “Tariff Wall” on the U.S. coastline has two gates, one labeled “Annexation” and the other labeled “Reciprocity.” A woman labeled “Cuba,” holding a bundle of “Raw Sugar” cane, is attempting to enter the United States through the gate labeled “Reciprocity.” She is being turned away vociferously by a man labeled “Sugar Grower” holding a piece of paper labeled “Tariff on Sugar.” In the background is a woman labeled “Porto Rico” carrying a bundle of sugar cane. She has entered through the “Annexation” gate over which the sugar grower and his tariffs have no control. Caption: Cuba — Why not let me in? Porto Rico is inside. / American Sugar-Grower — She didn’t come in this gate. She went through the other one – and I can’t control that!

comments and context

Comments and Context

It was certainly the case that domestic producers of sugar in the United States did not welcome, and lobbied against, the free importation of Cuban sugar and its free export to world markets. The situation pictured in Keppler’s cartoon was a bit more nuanced, however. Cuba, despite its problems under Spanish rule, had a functioning economy and export policies, and it had been assured of a minimal United States presence and relatively quick independence. Porto Rico (as then spelled in the American press) had minimal infrastructure, was deemed in need of special considerations, and was largely assumed to become an eventual part of the United States, by annexation, territorial status, or similar relation.

John Burroughs holds the door open for President Roosevelt as the finished Cuban and Reciprocity treaties hang on the wall.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-03-18

President Roosevelt rides over the “Cuban Reciprocity Bill,” the “Panama Canal Bill,” and the ratification of treaties towards a goal.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-03-16

President Roosevelt rides down the Capitol steps laden with the signed bills, Panama Canal treaty and Cuban Reciprocity bill, that he kept the Senate in an extra session to complete.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-03-21

Columbia, holding an apple labeled “1904,” appears as a teacher with students named “Rep. President (looking like Theodore Roosevelt), Rep. Senate, [and] Rep. House.” Beyond her on the board are these questions: “When is a Trust not a Trust? How about Tariff Revision and if so, why? Shall we have reciprocity with other countries?”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904