Page:Carl Schurz- 1902-03-09 Foreign Commerce.pdf/1



worthy President some time ago invited me to respond to a toast at this banquet, he added by way of encouragement, that at the dinners of the Chamber of Commerce every speaker was permitted and expected to speak as he thought. This happily agrees with an old habit of mine; and it is in fact to this habit that I owe the distinction of being an honorary member of this very Chamber of Commerce—a distinction of which I am proud, for it was conferred upon me some fifteen years ago, for having in the Senate spoken as I thought against an irredeemable paper money, and for the resumption of specie payments. I shall try now to show myself worthy of my honorary membership by speaking as I think on our foreign commerce—a subject so vast, however, that I shall, in an after dinner talk, be able only to touch a few important points of it.
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As a Chamber of Commerce you will, of course, recognize an active interest in the development of our commercial intercourse with the world as one of the primary reasons of your being. There is also at present among the people a very general feeling that something ails them, for which the extension of our foreign commerce would afford at least a partial remedy. But when the means are discussed by which that extension is to be brought about, we frequently witness wonderful efforts at profound reasoning and beating about the bush, as if there were some dark mystery to be solved. I do not think there is. Like many other things, our problem of foreign commerce may be reduced to very simple principles which will be universally recognized by all who do one thing: take the politics out of the matter and judge it on its own merits. This is important. I have known good business men in whose