uld be
ashamed to shirk.

V

THE OPEN DOOR

A speech made at the dinner given by the American-Asiatic Association
in honor of Rear-Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, at Delmonico's, New
York, February 23, 1899.

THE OPEN DOOR

The hour is late, you have already enjoyed your intellectual feast, you
have heard the man you came to hear, and I shall detain you for but a
moment. The guest whom we are all here to honor and applaud is
returning from a journey designed to promote the safety and extension
of his country's trade in the Chinese Orient. He has probably been
accustomed to think of us as the most extreme Protectionist nation in
the world; and he may have heard at first of our recent acquisition on
the China Sea with some apprehension on that very account.

[Sidenote: United States a Free-Trade Country.]

Now, there are two facts that might be somewhat suggestive to any who
take that view. One is that, though we may be "enraged Protectionists,"
as our French friends occasionally call us, we have rarely sought to
extend the protective system where we had nothing and could develop
nothing to protect. The other is that we are also the greatest
free-trade country in the world. Nowhere else on the globe does
absolute free trade prevail over so wide, rich, and continuous an
expanse of territory, with such variety and volume of production and
manufacture; and nowhere have its beneficent results been more
conspicuous. From the Golden Gate your guest has crossed a continent
teeming with population and manufactures without encountering a
custom-house. If he had come back from China the other way, from Suez
to London, he would have passed a dozen!

When your Peace Commissioners were brought face to face with the
retention of the Philippines, they were at liberty to consider the
question it raised for immediate action in the light of both sides of
the national practice. Here was an archipelago practically without
manufactures to protect, or need for protection to develop
manufactures; and here were swarming populations with whom trade was
sure to increase and ramify, in proportion to its freedom from
obstructions. Thus it came about that your Commissioners were led to a
view which to many has seemed a new departure, and were finally enabled
to preface an offer to Spain with the remark that it was the policy of
the United States to maintain in the Philippines an open door to the
world's commerce. Great Prote